Motel 6

I am so old, I remember getting rooms at Motel 6 for $6 per night. Pumpernickel bread was pumperpenny bread back then. My wife and I took a motel room in the Detroit area for $6 that made Motel 6 look luxurious. You could not open the door even half way because it banged into the bed. We sometimes slept in the car or a pup tent to avoid paying $12 for a room. We stayed in places with rules against cooking in the rooms. My wife carried a pan you could plug in and we cooked in the room anyway. I was against it but my wife was the edgy one, always sneaking past “No Trespassing” signs to make me uncomfortable. She bullied me into driving on a Florida beach where I got stuck and had to be recued by a guy way cooler than me. Laundromats were scary. We ate out of grocery stores and at KFC. If we went to a restaurant, we lingered over cheap glasses of wine and French fries. Once when I left change on the tray the waiter was holding, he waited so long for a bigger tip that I scooped up the coins and took them back. Our car broke down and had to be towed more than once. Driving at high speed on a highway near Shreveport in August, we burned through the brake line and only by luck and downshifting off the exit did I navigate to a stop in a dead end street a few feet from water. We eventually visited all 50 states. Twelve years ago for our 40th Anniversary, we drove to Teddy Roosevelt National Park and picked up North Dakota as the last one. Those were the very best of times.

Advertisement