In the 1980s, my girlfriend (eventual wife) and I spent the weekend in the Poconos. We intended to go skiing, but our plans fell apart when we locked the car keys inside the car. For whatever reason, we decided the best option was to call her roommate and ask her to deliver the spare set of keys.
We were in no particular hurry to ski. Our only deadline was to be back at work on Monday morning, and even that could have been negotiated. We ate potato chips until Liz arrived with the keys, then went to a very late breakfast and went skiiing later that afternoon.
I suppose there were romantic love-nest type of hotels in the mountains, notorious for heart-shaped jacuzzi tubs, but we stayed in a crappy roadside motel. The bed had a vibrator, but our spare change was locked in the car along with the keys.
Such is the nature of plans: things will go wrong, and you must adapt.
The next time I'd visit the Poconos would be 32 years later during the drive to New York city to pick up my daughter. As I described in my previous blog post, I got a flat tire when I hit something in the road, and sought refuge in a city somewhere in the Poconos. I could probably figure it out and share the specifics, but I have a hunch that the specifics don’t matter. I think all the small towns along that stretch of Interstate 80 are similar in spirit.
I found refuge in what was probably a happening place back in the 80s and early 90s, the sort of motel that drew people from both New York and Philadelphia to party before venturing out to the ski slopes, but this motel was in desperate need of a makeover, but no such help is going to arrive.
Like in superhero movies, you see someone in distress get rescued. But the superhero can’t possibly rescue everyone. For every person who drives off a bridge and their car is caught in mid-air by Superman, there are a hundred people within a square mile of that rescue that are murdered quietly with poison, or their wallet is picked out of their pocket, or they stub their toe in the solitude of their apartment.
Don’t tell me that superheroes help everyone in their universe. God doesn’t even do that.
And no economic stimulus package is ever going to arrive to save the motel where I stayed. That was fine. I only needed this room for the night, so I didn’t care that it was laid out like a medium security prison, or that a bunch of teenagers were carrying beer into the room across from mine. I just wanted the door to lock and the toilet to flush.
I mean no disrespect to the people living in the Poconos, nor to the proprietors of motels living decades beyond their expected usefulness. It’s a symptom of America’s disease, and we all share the burden of healing. There are motels like that in every city, and if your city has two malls at the turn of the century, I’ll wager only one is viable now. Your city probably has an old Kmart that’s now a church, and a shopping center that’s a U-Haul storage facility.
I survived the night just fine and went first thing to the Firestone Auto Center. It was Saturday, and this was my only hope for getting the tire fixed before continuing my journey into New York City. The man behind the desk didn’t look up when I said hello, but asked if I had an appointment.
“I’m passing through town,” I explained. “I hit something in the road. Can you help me?”
He shrugged. “It’ll be a while.”
“I’ll wait.”
He shrugged again but he took my keys.
And wait I did. I saw people come and go, some dropping off their cars and waiting for a ride; others hunkering down in the seating area near me. Families arguing there in the lobby, others complaining over the phone about lovers and bosses.
I could write a one-act play or maybe a novel about the cross-section of America that came and went while I waited for that flat tire to be repaired. Maybe someday I will write about it.
A few minutes before they closed for the day, he informed me the tire was fixed. As I made my way back to the highway, the blizzard I’d hoped to avoid had caught up to me, but I was happy to be making my way east again to pick up my daughter.
And in my next blog post, I’ll tell you about our escape from New York.