What would have been the start of this entry has been offloaded at the new Strib blog; you’ll forgive me while I continue to fracture my identity and workflow into a kaleidoscopic nightmare that can only result in total insanity. Unless you want to consider it all part of a whole, a distributed self. Okay? Thanks.
Anyway. Aside from that, nothing happened today aside from typing and driving. It’s been a maddening week. It’s been a wretched week. I’ve accomplished little that I wanted to do, and the reason is clear: the weather, and about that I will say no more. (Here.) But it’s interesting how the chill has killed my usual summer need to roam the back roads, take pictures, find deserted motels that harbor great secrets and inspire cabals to collect items which, when removed from the room, have odd powers. You know, places like this:
For the last few nights I’ve been watching “The Lost Room,” a Sci-Fi network (no, I won’t spell it the other way) mini-series that was apparently too good to continue, because it gutters out after two DVDs. I expect absolutely nothing of Sci-Fi miniseries, so this one surprised me: it’s “Lost” filtered through a David Lynch sensibility. The only reason I say something that pretentious is because it has a motel on the edge of nowhere with 50s decoration. Well, no, let me back up. The Lost Room is a place you enter using . . . The Key. With me so far? Because it gets trickier. Once you have The Key, any door will take you to the Room; from the Room, you can go anywhere. That’s enough for a mini-series, really, but they added a clever touch. Every commonplace object from the Lost Room does something in the real world – stops time, stops fire, teleports people, incinerates flesh, balances checkbooks, etc. Naturally, people want them. Naturally, rich people hoard them. Of course, secret societies form to collect them, to bring them all together, and use them to communicate with God. Binding all the characters together is a Cop on the Run, trying to save his daughter. I spent the first hour waiting for it to turn lousy so I could watch it without caring. Didn’t happen. So far, it’s good.
Perhaps it’s the power old motels hold over my imagination – the desire to find myself in some distant place on a hot night, sitting outside the room in a metal chair with a NeHi, listening to the traffic and the buzz of the sign, hearing the TV trickle from the next room, the gargling evacuations of the ice machine, the shudder of the soda cooler, the scrape of car wheels in the gravel lot. I’m not making that up from some movie I saw – as I have mentioned many times before, I was a traveling seed salesman down south in the summer of Malaise and the Fall of Skylab, driving around from town to town hawking Northrop King seeds, picking up racks, eking out room and victuals on a $20 per diem. Stayed in many classic motels, cheap, salesman’s rates. Burlap towels, scratchy sheets, hard soap, frizzy TV. On the weekends I’d buy a good 6-pack, dump it in the sink with a few buckets of ice, and click around until I could find a PBS station running I, Claudius. (It was running every Saturday, I think.)
I missed the last postcard show, so I don’t have the usual batch to add. Just as well. If I had 30 or so, I’d feel obligated to redesign the fargin’ site. I’ll add these eventually, but here are some previews.
The HiLo, a late 60s / early 70s joint. Can lighting:
Looks like it’s set up for some swingers to watch a couple demonstrate some new moves. Then there’s the restaurant. Gobbler chairs and vomit walls:
Let’s go back a few years. Here’s the Woods Inn:
Amazing: it survived. This would be where I put the embedded google map, but wordpress is acting like a jerk. So if it doesn’t show, well, try the string 221+west+hopi+drive+holbrook+arizona and see what you get.
Finally, the Ranchito:
Google says it’s still there, but I’ll be switched if I can find it in Street Views. It’s just not there.
I should note that it’s in Gallup. Where the motel in the Lost Room is located.
Later today: it all depends. Busy day, with video duties at work and a column and the blog and other things. Back ASAP.
Pass it along, if you wish
56 Responses to Thursday, July 30
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One of my favorite parts of the Institute is the motel postcard collection. That’s the first thing I found on this site (don’t remember how, but probably through StumbleUpon) and it kept me laughing like a loon for hours. My kids were worried about me and why I was laughing at a monitor, but someday they’ll understand.
I hadn’t realized you were still adding postcards to the site. Guess I’d better take another tour through.
I like the strib blog. Don’t you do some other things at the strib? Maybe they’ll let you link to them on your strib blog.
The Ranchito Motel is the “U” shaped building with the white roof a little west of where Google Maps says the address is, and on the south side of the street instead of the north, 1009 W Coal Ave, Gallup, NM.
… and only after commenting did I see the whole first page of comments. I knew I couldn’t have been only the second commenter on a two-day old post.
Oh my, the Ranchito Motel! We stayed there many times on the way from Dallas to Barstow to visit my mother’s idiot brother, probably in years 1962-1978 or so. Gallup is where you stop after you spend all day getting out of Texas. I think we were in a room at the El Ranchito when we first heard that Elvis had died (my sister was a big fan). Try to find a photo of Gabriel’s Pancake House in Arizona, though, and it’s pretty much impossible. Gabriel’s of Holbrooke was where we’d stop for breakfast after Dad had gotten us up before dawn to get back on the road out of Gallup. Wonderful trips, despite the fact that Barstow was on the other end. Hated Barstow.
Oh, and
To those who are wondering, “Why
isn’t ‘S-F’ the same as ‘sci-fi’?”
Well, you see, there’s a fine line
between Robert Heinlein
and ‘Son Of The Two-Headed Fly’…