Late '60s Postcard Relics

Ahead of our family's move to San Antonio in the summer of 1968, my grandmother took me to her home in Alamo Heights, mostly (I realize now) so I wouldn't be in the way of moving preparations. During that visit, I went with Grandma to the world's fair -- HemisFair '68, it was called. She got this card for me, and we sent it to my mother and brothers back in North Texas. "We had a good time at the Fair," my grandmother wrote. I signed it with my name.

I don't specifically remember going to the fair with Grandma, but I suspect that any memories of that visit have bundled with a later visit with my mother and brothers, after they'd moved to town. I don't remember the September 15 monorail accident at all, but I must have heard about it.

The card isn't dated, but it is postmarked July 12, 1968. The cancellation mark on the stamp mentions HemisFair. The front depicts the Institute of Texan Cultures, a worthwhile museum that's still in operation.

In summer of 1969, so famed for Apollo 11 and Woodstock's crowd control issues and the murderous doings of the Manson family, we headed out on the comparatively new Interstate system for a drive around the South: Texas to Oklahoma to Arkansas to Tennessee to (briefly) Georgia to Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana and back to Texas. Chattanooga was as far east as we got, and we stayed here.

On that trip, we'd previously stayed only in one- or two-story properties, so a five-story motor lodge was positively enormous. When you're eight. Again, my memories of the place are sparse, though there was the thrill of staying on the fourth floor, and I'm pretty sure a vending machine at the Chattanooga Howard Johnson's cheated me.

Cursory investigation reveals that there's only one Howard Johnson's in metro Chattanooga these days, in Cleveland, Tenn., which isn't the property on the card. If the structure is still there, it's flagged by another brand, and probably renovated beyond recognition. HoJo is a Wyndham Hotel Group brand now, incidentally, and I can't remember the last time I saw one. I never did associate Howard Johnson's with ice cream or food; for whatever reason, we didn't eat at them much when on the road. Mainly, they were the motels with orange roofs where we occasionally stayed.

According to Wiki at least, the brand is a b-school example of how not to deal with an adverse economy, especially if you're in the customer service business. The spikes in the price of gasoline beginning in 1973 cut into U.S. car travel, and so the company "attempted to streamline company operations and cut costs, such as serving cheaper food and having fewer employees. It proved disastrous as guests were finding this new era of Howard Johnson's restaurants and motor lodges unsatisfactory, compared to the services they had come to know for years." Oops.

Cavern Inn '72

The ultima of our family trip in the summer of '72 was that classic destination, Carlsbad Caverns NP. The cave was impressive, of course, but I was 11, so just going to stay in a motel somewhere was fun. We ended up at the Cavern Inn Motel in Whites City.

The back of the card is incredibly busy, with bullet-pointed lists of motel amenities (including "clean mountain air" and "sky ride to Indian Cliff House"), information about the national park (hours and admission), and a map. There's barely any room to write a message on the oversized postcard.

I was glad to learn that Carlsbad Caverns charged $1.50 admission at the time for everyone over 16, which means my visit didn't cost anything. These days, over 15 admission is $6 for admission without a guide, which is what I think we did, so in real terms cave admission is cheaper than it was in the early '70s, since $1.50 in 1972 equals about $8 now. That's assuming the card wasn't that old when we got it, which is a fair bet since it's got both a zip code and an area code on it, and besides, look how important orange and aqua are to the color scheme.

Silver Surf Motel '73

It's postcard week. Why not? It's a gray chilled February and I have a lot of regular work to do, both of which cut into going there and seeing that, much less writing about it.

Back in the summer of 1973, during a family trip to California, we spent the night in San Simeon, with the idea of visiting the Hearst Castle the next day. But it turned out that without reservations, the wait to get in would have been many hours, so we went on up to coast to San Francisco. One of these days, if I live long enough, I'll drive up the California coast again and make sure I have reservations to get into Xanadu.

(I checked the Hearst Castle web site today and discovered that it "will relive its Hollywood heydays of the 1920s and ’30s for one star-studded night during the 'Hollywood to Hearst Castle' event on Friday, March 9th." Among other things, the event will include a screening of Citizen Kane, which was not known to be William Randolph Hearst's favorite movie. Heh-heh.)

We stayed at the Silver Surf Motel that night. Our single souvenir from the visit to San Simeon is this postcard, a relic of the time when hotels and motels provided postcards and stationery to guests, supposedly as a convenience but of course really as marketing. The marketing effort has certainly worked in this case: the place is getting a mention almost 40 years later.

I don't remember much about the Silver Surf, specifically -- all the motels I visited before ca. 1980 have fused into a single memory of a room with shag carpets, a color TV with bad horizontal control, orange and aqua furniture, a bottle opener attached near the sink, a paper Sanitized For Your Protection ribbon, and occasionally Magic Fingers. The back of the postcard says, "a charming garden motel... 40 attractive ocean view rooms... enclosed heated pool... putting green... children's playground... coffee and TV in rooms... 3 restaurants and cocktail lounge adjacent... all major credit cards." That last one included BankAmericard and Carte Blanche, by gar.

The Silver Surf Motel is still around. Except for the motel marquee and the color schemes, its web site pics don't look that different than on the postcard.

Item From the Past: Igna 2, Bali

Swimming, bicycle rides, catching fireflies -- I did all these things with my daughters today, which would pretty much make it a Summer Day. I managed to catch a firefly between my palms, but it refused to be put in a jar. Lilly managed to get one in a jar, but almost immediately both girls decided that fireflies were born free, as free as the wind blows, so they released it, especially since it wouldn't light in captivity.

Fifteen years ago, Yuriko and I arrived in the town of Ubud on Bali, and parked ourselves at a guest house called Igna 2. It cost about 12,000 rupiah a night, all of about US $5.80 in those days. Not only did we get a room, more about which below, a lank young Balinese fellow who called himself Yogi brought us breakfast every morning. Usually its centerpiece was a fine jaffle.

Igna 2 was essentially a brick shack off the main road, a very Spartan place. One room, one bathroom, a porch. In this pic, Yuriko is standing next to the footpath from the main street we took to reach the place, only 100 feet away or so. She's also standing next to a tiny creek that ran near the property.

Because of the creek, the guesthouse had an amenity I’ve never gotten even in rooms costing 40 times as much, the sound of a gurgling creek accompanied by an army of singing frogs (or some kind of vocal amphibians) and a chorus of tropical insects. Every night, as soon as the Sun had set, the concert began.

The Lobby

Regards first to Jay and Deb, my brother and sister-in-law. Today is their 30th wedding anniversary. Traditionally the Pearl Anniversary, I think, though modern etiquette says an iPhone with 30 apps may be substituted.

The resort we visited last weekend has a lodge-in-the-woods motif, and is one of chain of a dozen such waterpark resorts in the nation. Like all of the hospitality business, it's been a difficult year or so for the waterpark resort business, though you'd never know it by visiting the chain's Wisconsin Dells three-room indoor waterpark on a Saturday afternoon. The outdoor part of the waterpark would probably have been just as popular, too, but it was unseasonably cool over the weekend.

I didn't take any pictures of the waterpark itself. My camera is dodgy enough without exposing it to a lot of humidity and the danger of splashing. But I did spend some time in the lobby taking pics, where the lodge theme was at its strongest. I liked the clock. It had feather-shaped hands.

There's a dissertation somewhere in the study of faux totem poles, and just how much influence Disney has had on them. I leave that to more learned minds than my own.

It wouldn't be a lodge without a few antler chandeliers.

Google that phrase (in quotes) and you get about 82,000 hits. A cottage industry for sure -- there must be artisans making them; buyers, collectors and enthusiasts; and levels of authenticity. Maybe the most authentic is one made from antlers of beasts you've slain yourself, but I wouldn't know. Of course, there are many decorative possibilities for antlers.

I saw two signs that said Memory Worth Repeating, and there were probably others around the property. In the context of that camera pictograph, the sign seemed to suggest I take a photo of the item it was attached to, the better to remember the item (though a "repeating memory" is an onion of an idea; too many layers to deal with here).

Instead of the item, I took a picture of the sign itself.

The Solo Southern Loop of 2009

The price of gasoline, which has been upsliding since its mid-winter, post-bubble lows of much less than $2/gal., makes me want to mutter gripes like Muttley. Especially during the last two weeks, when I was a more frequent buyer of gas than usual, along a route of roughly 3,000 miles.

During the spring, we planned two June trips. One for Yuriko, Lilly and Ann -- a visit to Japan, which began on June 4 and which will end the day after tomorrow. For me, a drive to Texas and back that began June 5 and which ended yesterday, though that description is a little too spare to capture the route I took, which was outbound from Illinois to Missouri, Oklahoma and the parts of Texas along I-35; and then a return by way of East Texas, Louisiana (Acadiana), Mississippi, West Tennessee, Jackson Purchase Kentucky and a long drive just yesterday from the southern tip of Illinois. All together, the loop beginning at metro Chicago ranged as far west as San Antonio, touched the Gulf coast in Louisiana, and proceeded northward by more-or-less paralleling the Mississippi.

Along the way, I wanted to visit as many people as I could. I saw my mother, both my brothers and my sister-in-law, two of my three nephews, both of my aunts, some relatives of one of my aunts, both of my first cousins, two first cousins once removed, and six old friends from high school, some of whom I've seen in recent decades, but others I hadn't seen in nearly 30 years. I met two of the children of two of these old friends for the first time, one a high school-aged girl, the other a baby girl only six months old. I even had a pleasant lunch with an editor of mine, one of the few not based in New York, but rather metro Dallas.

The other component of the trip, which should be no surprise, was to drive roads I've never driven, visit cities and towns I've never visited, and tour museums, historic sites, parks, churches, cemeteries, factories, and oddball attractions. I wanted to hear the dialects of the South and listen to the intense noise of the bugs at night. I wanted to find a store that sold Moon Pies and eat one.

I succeeded in these ambitions, though when planning the trip I naturally found more places to visit than I possibly could. Along the way, I shaved off destinations because I was tired, or wanted to spend more time with some of the people mentioned above. But I'm not complaining. I managed to pack in good variety, which is all I ask from the road.

I also planned it to be an inexpensive trip. Gasoline ended up being far and away the largest single expense, though I haven't tallied it up just yet. Everywhere south of Illinois, prices were around $2.50/gal. (add 30 cents in Illinois). I ate at few restaurants by myself, and on long drives especially, meals tended to be a sandwiches and grocery-store items at roadside picnic tables.

Of the 15 nights I spent away from home, I spent ten with relatives and a friend. I'd say that I sponged off them, but no. Reciprocity was at work. Anyone I stayed with would be more than welcome to stay with me and raid my refrigerator, as well. I camped four nights, with the most expensive site coming in at $13/night.

I paid for only one room. I got a late start leaving home on the first day, which always seems to happen, and packing for only myself didn't change that. So I was too tired by the time I got to mid-Missouri to want to find a campsite and pitch my tent in the gathering darkness. Exiting I-44 in Lebanon, Missouri, I saw a sign for an oddly named motel, and went to take a look.

The Munger Moss Motel lives off of Route 66 nostalgia. I can take that or leave it, but the desk clerk (and motel co-owner) was so personable and well-informed about the history of the motel -- vintage 1946, with an addition in the early '60s -- that I decided to stay. It was a good choice. I got one of the 1946 rooms, which had a TV but otherwise had a pleasant '40s sort of look. Small, but nicely appointed. And at just over $40 a night including tax, not too high a price to support Americana.

A Slight Difference in Latitude

A couple of inches of snow fell last night, meaning that the view from my back door this morning looked pretty much like this again, though it has mostly melted since:

That's actually a picture from Sunday morning, March 29. Roughly 48 hours later, thanks to the infrastructure that makes modern travel possible, I was able to point my camera at this view:

This is the Pacific Ocean at Punta de Mita in the state of Nayarit, Mexico, on the last day of March, 2009. Here in Estados Unidos de América, most of us have heard of Puerto Vallarta. I never actually saw more than about 10 minutes of The Love Boat, yet somehow I know that PV was a major port of call for that vessel. To an even earlier generation, The Night of the Iguana put the town on the map.

Not so Punta de Mita, also simply known as Punta Mita. "I say Punta Mita and I get blank stares," said an American expat we met during our visit. "So I say it's near Puerto Vallarta, and that gets a reaction."

Puerto Vallarta lies midward on the enormous Bay of Banderas, where the Rio Cuale meets the sea, a setting made all the more picturesque by the Sierra Madre in the background. Punta de Mita is a peninsula that defines the northern extent of the Bay of Banderas. The peninsula has a slender neck and more generous proportions toward its tip, with a small set of high hills marking its interior. From there, the land slopes to the sea, mostly in a way suitable for building. The peninsula is ringed by over nine miles of shoreline, sporting the classic white-sand beaches that make it into brochures but also rocky cliffs that look down onto scenes such as this:

As a resort- and second-home development, Punta Mita is in rompers. Serious development of the peninsula really only got under way in the late 1990s, with the Four Seasons Punta Mita opening in 1999. Later developments include a St. Regis resort, which opened in 2007, a number of residential properties and a couple of Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. A fair amount of other development has yet to be realized, though in the fullness of time I don't doubt that DINE, the master developer of the area, will achieve its aims. DINE, formerly a unit of Mexican conglomerate DESC but now a standalone commercial developer, probably Mexico's largest, is also at work on properties at Punta Ixtapa and Punta Gorda on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

My visit was in the dry season, so outside the lush green areas of the resorts and residential properties -- with their bright flowers and towering palms -- brown and gray and other earth tones dominated landscape, something like the one I see from my window at home this time of year. Northern Illinois is waiting for sustained warmth. The coast of Nayarit is waiting for the wet season, which I was told evokes a sudden, tremendous eruption of greenery and wildflowers.

Purple Prose

Not long ago, I wrote professionally about the Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood, Illinois. Lincolnwood is a small inner suburb north of Chicago, barely distinguishable to the untrained eye from, say, Skokie.

The Purple Hotel itself is in fact purple on the outside. On the inside, it's a realm of mold, mice and other tenants of a vacant building, and it will soon be demolished for new development. As far as I know, few mourn its loss, though people who grew up in the northern suburbs reportedly feel a touch nostalgic for the property, which reportedly had a heyday in the 1960s and '70s.

Not long after I filed the Purple Hotel story, I happened to go to a park in Skokie to attend an outdoor festival, and figured out that the Purple Hotel wasn't far away. So I went by foot the half mile or so to the site and took pictures. Here's the main entrance:

And other views.

It looks more gray than purple in these photos, but there's no doubt of the color when you're standing right next to it. Purple. Maybe it was the next big thing in 1960: hued hotels. But the concept never caught on, except for the Hotel Indigo, a small boutique chain that's part of the much larger InterContinental Hotel Group, and apparently doing a lot better than purple. There's even one near me. (The web site will talk to you, though in a pleasant voice.)

Here's the backside of the Purple Hotel. It's a little hard to see, but there are a couple of tennis courts in the picture, behind the fence. Weedy, unkempt tennis courts for post-apocalyptic games. Zombie tennis, anyone?

Adios, Bear Stearns, and Thanks for the Memory

By golly, we all have our own Bear Stearns stories, don't we? No? Well, I do. And I don't mean one along the lines of the poor sap I heard about on the radio today who bought more that $50,000 in Bear Sterns stock last week, just ahead of the implosion. Or the former CEO's taste for bridge, or odd talk from the Fed about "moral hazards" or suchlike.

Back in early 1999, I wrote: " 'How does this year's convention compare to last year's?' I asked a number of seasoned mortgage banking professionals at this year's gathering of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America in February.

" 'It's more sober.'

" 'Definitely more restrained.'

" 'You should have been at Nomura's party last year.'

"The sense [of the industry] I got was like the one you feel not long after you've nearly run your car off the road. Relief, but with a tinge of dread for what might have happened."

For those who've forgotten -- most everyone -- there was a brief but severe investor panic in the summer of 1998, precipitated by the sudden devaluation of the ruble. It blew over, but left the mortgage banking industry feeling a bit sober by the time MBA '99 in San Diego rolled around. (Ah, for those halcyon, pre-subprime meltdown days. Ruble crisis? Ha!)

That's not what I remember about attending MBA that year anyway, not really. I did my company business, memories of which bundle with other conventions in other places and other times. But in those days, you got a better airfare, at least according to the company's travel agent, if you stayed a Saturday night, and the convention started on a Sunday afternoon. (Company travel agent? Saturday night stays? This posting sure is taking me back to some lost way of life.)

I'd never been to San Diego before, and because of the overnight Saturday practice, I found myself with part of a weekend there with no work obligations. Among other things, I visited the San Diego Zoo and other parts of Balboa Park, and took a walk through the Gaslamp Quarter to a place that intrigued me: the US Grant Hotel.

After that, I had to attend the convention, but there was a surprise bonus, an evening function paid for by Bear Stearns. I wrote: "I did make it to a good party at MBA this year, thrown by Bear Stearns at the extraordinary Hotel del Coronado. The theme was Marti Gras (the party was indeed held on Fat Tuesday), and the food and band had a distinct New Orleans flavor." The party wasn't bad, but I spent more time wandering around the hotel. The Grant was dandy, but the Del was
astonishing.

Let 10,000 Hotel Rooms Bloom

Warm again after a period of fallish coolth. Mainly that means that mosquitoes are on the hunt again. After few mosquitoes most of this summer, they suddenly turned out in great numbers in late August, swooping in for blood.

Recently I've written an article about the Beijing hotel market, for the purposes of which I had to interview someone in Beijing and also a fellow in Singapore who knows that market. The upshot is that a lot of hotel rooms will open this year and next, to accommodate visitors to the 2008 Olympics. A lot means about 10,000 new rooms by the time the Games open.

Which happens to be on August 8 next year: 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m. Eight happens to be a very auspicious number in Chinese superstition, to the point of Chinese angling for license plates with 8s on them as protection against the carnage on the roads of China. I have to wonder, though, if anyone has tabulated the number of traffic fatalities in cars with 8s on their plates compared with every other plate, or with the dreaded 4 -- the death number. No, I didn't think so.

The Japanese borrowed these number beliefs, too. Near when I used to live in Osaka was a parking lot with numbered spaces. None of the spaces included the numeral four. 1, 2, 3, 5... 11, 12, 13, 15 etc. No problems with 13, however, including 13th building floors. Yuriko still thinks it odd that anyone would consider 6 or 13 or 666 evil numbers.

Anyway, my suggested title for the article about the Beijing hotel market was "Let 10,000 Hotel Rooms Bloom." The editor didn't go for it.

Banff v. Jasper

Before we left for Canada, I consulted with a friend who knows the Canadian Rockies well, and regarding Banff Townsite, which is in the national park of the same name, he used the word, “nightmare.”

I’d already planned not to stay in the town of Banff, warned by other sources about crowds and the high cost of accommodation in summer. Instead, to explore Banff NP, we spent three nights at a motel, the Drake Inn, in Canmore, a town just outside the park’s boundary to the south. The Drake was decidedly plain, but had a delightful location along Policeman’s Creek, which runs through the town and which has a plank walkway on one of its banks—not a wilderness walk in any sense, but a pleasant morningtime stroll among pines and twittering birds and the gurgle of a creek.

Canmore had its shopping street, partly living off tourists, but it was still a fairly sedate place. Banff Township was not. “Nightmare” might be too strong of a word, but after an hour or so on the teeming sidewalks of Banff, a town saturated with retail space, I was ready to leave. Several streets in Banff not only feed off out-of-towners, but cater to the sort of person who considers shopping an essential part of any trip, or who might even travel just to shop someplace new. I won’t mock that sort of mindset (though I’m tempted), but I certainly don’t share it, and Yuriko doesn’t either, at least not much.

But there was something in Banff both Yuriko and I did want to see: the Banff Springs Hotel. You can’t very well come to Banff NP and not see it. That would be like going to Singapore and passing on the Raffles.

So we went into Banff Townsite and sought out the hotel, one of the grand old railroad hotels of Canada, and actually part of the reason Banff eventually became a national park. The railroad and its hotel were instrumental in bringing people to the area in the early days, many of whom no doubt help shape Canada’s parks policy in the early 1900s.

It’s an impressive pile o’ stones indeed, particularly the backside, which commands an extraordinary view. Canned histories of the hotel would have you believe that the builders got it backwards, and that the front should have faced the mountain vista, but I don’t think so. The entrance is the workaday side of a hotel like this. The back is where guests can lounge around and soak in the view.

Later, we spent time at Jasper Townsite, the main town in Jasper NP, a much more likable place than Banff. Both are ringed by forests and mountains, but Jasper feels more remote. Which it is, since it’s further from the Trans-Canadian Highway than Banff. It’s also smaller, less crowded and really has only two shopping streets, the main drag Connaught Dr. and the parallel Patricia St. Jasper reminded me of Flagstaff, Ariz., because both towns have a main street fronted by businesses on one side and by a rail line on the other, complete with a railroad station—a fine old restored station in the case of Jasper.

But Jasper had more going for it than a passing similarity to Flagstaff. You might ask, who needs a town in a wilderness national park, especially when you aren’t even staying there, but camping a few miles away? A family of four does. In Jasper we bought groceries and gas and ice cream, ate a few meals, did our laundry, bought and mailed a fair number of postcards, and let the kids play at a well-appointed municipal park a few blocks from the main street, something that often interested them more than the prospect of walking another couple of miles in the woods, no matter how promising the scenery.

We also spent a short while at the town’s log-cabin visitor center, sitting around on its front-porch benching looking out onto a pleasant lawn and beyond that to the train station. On other occasion, I had the chance to wander around the back streets of the town by myself, and enjoyed the sight of two churches, both little jewels of construction, each set at 45-degree angles to their street—which was the same street, the curiously named Geikie St. Two blocks apart, it was almost as if the two church buildings were facing off: one Anglican, the other Lutheran.

Soap to Go

Got some soap in the mail today. It isn’t too often you can say such a thing, but I can, at least for now. My friend Ed has just returned from parts of the ethnic salmagundi formerly known as Yugoslavia (or more charmingly I think, Jugoslavia – why did English-language maps make that shift?). Upon his return, he sent me a souvenir, a small bar (15g) of soap in a small box marked Hotel Central Zagreb on one side, with the greetings DOBRO DOSLI – WILLKOMMEN – WELCOME – BENVENUTI on the other. The word “soap” is also in the same four languages (I assume) elsewhere on box.

Most surprisingly, there’s an ingredient list on one of the side flaps, in English. At least, the word “ingredients” is in English, but items such as sodium tallowate may be universal.

Ed was right in thinking that this is my kind of souvenir. When I was a kid, I participated in stripping every motel room we ever stayed at of its soap, matches, postcards and stationery. Even as an adult I do this, though it’s harder to find hotel/motel matches, postcards and stationery than it used to be. Souvenir soap endures, however.

Item from the Past: New York, 2000

Had a good visit to New York, though I was on the verge of being sick most of the time. I flew in late Saturday the 4th and checked into the Paramount Hotel, which is just off Broadway up at 46th Street, the heart of Broadway. The hotel was clearly an older one that had been renovated with rooms mostly like mine, small but tidy.

It looked like the owners had turned a decorator loose in the hotel with the instructions to make it moderne la a 30s and 40s, but not spend too much on the process. One touch included colored light bulbs in the elevators, a different one in each. One more touch, probably accidental, was that at all times down in the lobby, there seems to be guys dressed completely in black, just hanging out.

That first evening I had a decent but not stellar barbecue dinner at a place called Texas Texas, a few blocks from the hotel, on Broadway at the north end of Times Square, which, even until late, is as crowded as a theme park — which some people compare it to. It’s quite different than in the early 1980s; the city has, famously, cleaned it up. No complaints from me about that. Nearby, 8th Avenue in Midtown hasn’t especially been cleaned up, reminding me, with its dank little shops, crummy sidewalks and throngs of people, of some of the cities of southeast Asia.

On Sunday morning I rode the subway northward to the area of Columbia University. Though not landscaped much, Columbia does indeed have weighty buildings and the feel of an important university. Not far away is the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the Episcopal see for New York, and a massive Gothic edifice besides. I looked around there quite a while, and stayed for a high-church service that included a visit by one of the local bishops and some baptisms.

Afterwards I walked to Grant’s tomb, which is officially known as the General Grant National Memorial, and run by the park service. I understand that it's been renovated recently, and it looks it — the marble skin, for instance, is a stunning white. Inside, the Grants lie downstairs, and there are a handful of exhibits on the ground level, and one park service employee without much to do. The tomb is located in Riverside Park, a long strip of land overlooking the Hudson River.

Then I took a bus southward. We had to detour because of the New York marathon, and eventually I ended up near where I’d thought of going, the Metropolitan Museum. I’d spend the better part of a day in that one in August 1983, but it’s very large and worth another look. But by this time — 3 in the afternoon — I was more than a little tired, and so I opted for something smaller: the Guggenheim Museum.

The building is an eccentric Frank Lloyd Wright design, a spiral with exhibit rooms jutting off in one direction. Makes you wonder if it was a kind of joke on New York by Wright, whom I’ve read didn’t care for the city much. Still, the exhibits were good. The main temporary show was devoted to six female Russian painters active before 1917 — their takes on Impressionism, Cubism, etc.

Monday and Tuesday I was at my NY office most of the time, though Monday night I had a fine dinner of sushi at a place my managing editor recommended. It was very much like being in Japan, except for the customers. After that, I took the subway to Greenwich Village and walked around. I enjoyed a visit to a jam-packed used book store there, the kind I don’t visit much any more, unfortunately.

On Tuesday evening, I caught an evening flight home. Just as I was getting ready to board, the TV at the gate (CNN, I believe) made the first of the now-infamous Florida predictions: Florida for Gore. The crowd was unusually interested in the TV at the gate that night. I thought there would be a winner by the time I got to Chicago, but of course that didn’t happened.

Item from the Past: UP II

September 6, 2000

We’ve just returned from the Upper Peninsula. On the whole it was a good trip, though it didn’t quite go the way we planned. Our original thinking was to spend the first night in a motel in Green Bay, and then two more nights at the Hiawatha National Forest, at a place called Pete’s Lake, in our little tent. That’s more or less what I did by myself over Labor Day weekend in 1989, though at that time I stayed in Marinette, Wis., overnight, which is a little further up the road. And I stayed at Pete’s Lake two nights, but not by plan. It was just the place I picked.

This time we went to a Microtel motel in Green Bay for the first night. Odd name, and a brand I’d never stayed at, but the description in the guidebook sounded good, and turned out to be accurate. The rooms are basic, the price not too bad, and the best part was the pool, which Lilly was very happy to use on Saturday morning. It had fountains, a whirlpool effect in one corner, a “volcano” that dribbled water, basketball nets and water slides that were too big for her. Mostly the other guest were people with small children, a fact confirmed at the pool that morning, which was chockablock with kids and their chunky, middle-aged parents. I fit right in.

On Saturday, we pressed on to the Nat’l Forest, picnicking along the way, setting up camp at little Pete’s Lake, eating noodles for dinner and bedding down fairly early, as we tend to do while camping. Sometime in the dark night, an enormous thunderstorm broke over the Upper Peninsula. Over our tent, in fact. No light except the lightning, intense rain and rolling thunder, and the whoosh of the wind through the endless rack of trees. It was like being inside the storm. Lilly slept through it. Yuriko and I didn’t.

It would have been quite a thrill, but for one thing. We discovered that night the value of a ground cover, which we did not have under our tent. We’re only camping dilettantes, and fortunate enough never to have been rained on in the half-dozen campouts we’ve done, so we didn’t have one, and we didn’t appreciate the creep of water through the ground and up into the tent and into our sleeping bags & pillows &c. We do now.

The next morning (Sunday) everything was wet enough, with no prospect of sun to dry it all out, for us to change our plans. We discussed spending the day in the UP and returning to Green Bay, but the travel spirit moved us and we decided to return home via lower Michigan. Then, after breaking camp, we drove up to Munising, Mich., and the Pictured Rocks Nat’l Lakeshore. Lake Superior was foggy, cold and grey, the austere patriarch of the Great Lakes. (“Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings/ In the rooms of her ice water mansions.”) I want to see more of it someday. Say, from the wilds of Isle Royale or Whitefish Point or from the Canadian side. There’s a place on the Canadian side called Thunder Bay. Is that not cool geo-nomenclature?

We crossed the Mackinac Bridge (third-longest suspension bridge in the USA, says my almanac) on Sunday afternoon and began looking for a place to stay. Unlike Pete’s Lake, which was less than half occupied, the accommodations were mostly full around the Straits of Mackinac, so we headed south and ended up at Gaylord, Mich., in a golf/snowmobile resort. The golf season is declining, and the snow season hasn’t started yet, so we got a good deal on a fine room and access to an excellent outdoor heated pool. Which of course Lilly liked best of all. While I was sitting around in that pool with Lilly, a clutch of other guests — two middle-aged couples — discussed in great detail all the places they’d played golf. It’s a subculture I’ll never understand.

Monday was a tough drive home. You’d think that rural Interstates in Michigan would be free of traffic jams, but no, not on Labor Day. We did stop briefly in Lansing, and saw the outside of Michigan state capitol. In a way, it was all a test to see how Lilly would take to a long car trip, and in that she did very well. That is, she didn’t complain too much, and often we were able to provide her with things to do. For as long as I can remember, I liked those long trips. Maybe that’s part of growing up in Texas. Or more likely, that’s just me.

50% Off, Come 2015

Exceptionally busy today. I think a regular job would be less work, all things considered. Had a job interview, an article to finish up, an interlude during which we thought Ann was going to be seriously ill. Fortunately, she seems to be better now.

Finally, at last, it’s unambiguously warm, the way May should be. This means that we’re certain to be blasted by a cold front next week. Call me a pessimist. I’ve lived here long enough.

Another letter from Best Western came today. This one was from the hotel we actually stayed at, with its distinctive parrot-decorated return address. It was from a new general manager, one Laurie Ward, who apologized again and offered us half off our next stay, upon presentation of the letter.

When will that be? Who knows? Five or ten years might be reasonable estimates, if then. But I have files. This letter will find a home in my files, and if the time ever comes, I will take it to Florida and demand my 50% discount.

Gripe for the Day

The door to warmth from the cage of endless winter swung open today, just long enough for the inmates to marvel at the sight of greenery and feel the tickle of the afternoon sun outside when — slam. Shut again. Frost warning again tonight. This is why tomato planting is contraindicated even in early May, here in northern Illinois.

Am I complaining about the weather? No, just griping. With a complaint, you have some hope of redress. Griping is for griping’s sake.

Speaking of griping — complaining, actually — it took a month, but my letter to Best Western, “the world’s largest hotel chain,” finally resulted in a reply (see April 5 for details about our last day at the Best Western near Busch Gardens). It was a suitably apologetic letter, which is good, but it also included $100 gift card, worth about a night’s stay somewhere in the chain, which is much better.

So I am mollified. I’m removing them from the Dees Hotel Do Not Stay list. Back up to neutral for BW, since in fact I hadn’t given the chain much thought until I found the location in Tampa to be convenient to our purposes. I’m certain we’ll be able to use the card sometime before a year is up. A year because, if you read the back of the gift card, you’ll note that “after 12 months a monthly service fee will apply.” My italics.

Here’s some griping, then. A service fee on a gift card? This isn’t specific to BW, since certain other retailers have annoyed their customers with the same bad idea. It’s greedy, it’s grasping, it’s gratuitous, to alliterate on the matter. “We need to make the gift cards a revenue center!” management thinks. Boneheads.

Not the Best Best Western

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to err on the side of keeping your complaining, carping, bitching and bellyaching to yourself, but I’m going to suspend that rule for today. The problem described below isn’t of great importance, but it did touch a nerve—mainly because I didn’t get what I paid for, and for no good reason other than thick-headed hotel employees. So earlier today I wrote this letter to one Ric Leutwyler, senior vice president of brand quality and member service at the hotel chain Best Western.

“Dear Mr. Leutwyler,

“My family and I stayed at the Best Western All Suites Hotel near USF behind Busch Gardens from March 27 to April 2, 2005, in Room 1300. On the whole, the stay was pleasant, but unfortunately toward the end there was a serious lapse in service, and no acknowledgement of it by hotel staff.

“On April 1, we stayed in until just after noon, affixing the No Maid Service sign to the door. The sign specifically said that if a guest needed maid service for the room, the front desk needed to be informed by 3 pm. As we were leaving at about 12:30 pm, I called the front desk and asked for maid service.

“When we returned to the room briefly at about 4 pm, we noticed that nothing had been done, so I went to the front desk in person and asked for the room to be cleaned. When we returned for the day at about 10:30 pm, nothing had been done. There was a considerable amount of garbage in the room, no clean towels, and little toilet paper.

“I returned to the front desk to see what could be done. The woman at the desk was polite enough, but she couldn’t say why the room had never been cleaned, and said that the cleaning staff was gone. 'At least can someone remove the trash?' I asked. I thought that was only reasonable, considering that I pay for that service when renting a room. No, she said, the cleaning staff is gone. She didn’t use these words, but she meant: It’s not my job, go away.

“I don’t remember her name, or know whether she was the shift manager or not, but I know what a good manager would have done. A good manager would have taken two minutes and removed the garbage personally. That simple act would have made amends for the hotel’s error, and prevented this letter.

“As we were leaving the next day, there was no inquiry about how we liked our stay, and no acknowledgement of any problem. I paid fully for a day in which I received aggravating, substandard service, and will think twice before staying at a Best Western again. I’ve stayed at hotels all over the world, and this has never happened anywhere else.

“Since you are SVP of Brand Quality, I thought I would share my experience with you.”

Like I said, a minor complaint, but I think Best Western ought to dole out a tongue-lashing to someone over this. Still, I was honest when I said that property was, on the whole, pleasant. All the rooms (all suites) faced a courtyard shaded by palms and other trees, with a kidney-shaped pool and a hot tub in the mix. It wouldn’t have been a vacation for Lilly without that pool.

Also, breakfast was no extra charge each morning. I’m not taking my kids anywhere that doesn’t do this. Mostly, it was average breakfast food, but the grits were unexpectedly tasty, and the orange juice was a consistent delight. It was Florida, and the juice should have been delightful, but you can’t count on these things.

The property is near Busch Gardens, located near a good many other hotels and motels, so even in spring break the prices were competitive—less than $100 a night. Considering the location and amenities, that was a good deal. We didn’t actually go to Busch Gardens, though the roller coasters were visible from the Best Western parking lot. I had no special interest in it, Yuriko didn’t care about it, and most importantly, it’s still outside of Lilly’s zone of awareness. For her, the theme park world is bipolar: Six Flags and DISNEY! More about that tomorrow.