Hotels and Motels

Recently I traveled to the East Coast where I stayed in a very nice hotel. The spacious room contained a large and comfortable bed, nice high definition television, warm and comfortable bed covering, a sofa, and a well attended to bathroom. The room did not remind me of any part of my destination. The room, the lobby, the elevators, and the hallways all had the same look of hotels I have stayed in on the West Coast, the South West, the Mid West, the North and South East, and even Europe. In other words, they are sterile environments.

I am not a cosmopolitan world traveler. Yes, I have traveled a lot. I think I have been in 44 of the United States. My travels have taken me to Asia and Europe, and I have been in six of Canada's 13 provinces and territories as well as two or three Mexican states. So, I do not have a wide view of hotel accommodations everywhere in this country or anywhere else. But I do have enough of a view to see how travel hostelries have changed over the past fifty years.

Back when serving as a Marine I often went on liberty in Oceanside, California. There in that town overrun with high testosterone young men there was an oasis of a hotel called the Dolphin. The Dolphin Hotel was an unimpressive building painted white over brick with green trim. The front looked like a store with large panes of glass on which were painted the words "Dolphin Hotel." Under a wooden canopy a large wooden door with glass panes in it beckoned to be opened. No doorman, no porter, no one greeted guests as they went in and out.

The clean lobby, often empty of human life, housed an orange tabby cat. When a guest arrived and found no one attending the desk, the guest simply punched at a small bell to get assistance. Either a middle aged man or his wife would appear from what seemed to be the manager's living quarters.

Because of the quiet atmosphere, I liked spending Friday nights there. Saturday nights I had the pleasure of being the guest of a local family. This arrangement went on for over a year. The Dolphin, however, had atmosphere. The place reflected a time gone by; prewar California. The Dolphin Hotel had once been the hotel of choice of people visiting the beach side city for vacations. In the days I stayed there the guests were not vacationers, but people like me who wanted a safe and quiet place to be. A significant number of guests were young women who were newly married to Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton. They often sat in the lobby's ornate lounge chairs, or mission style sofas under the eye of the manager's wife. She engaged them in conversation and helped them adjust to their new circumstances.

Mostly I stayed in the same room. A rare Friday night occurred when my room number differed from the previous week. The room had California pictures on the wall. The spacious bed reflected the 1930s and 1940s and the bed covering pictured sunrises over palm trees with a mountain background. To use the bathroom and toilet facilities one had to go down the hall and make certain no one occupied either the bathtub or the toilet.

On Thanksgiving weekend I had eaten in the mess hall, but nothing about that meal is memorable. On Friday night, however, the manager came to the desk as I entered the Dolphin and said, "You need a real Thanksgiving dinner."

My response, "You're right, but I won't get one until I get home next year."

The manager said, "There's no need to wait. Come with me."

He opened up the front desk, invited me in, and took me to the apartment he his wife had in the hotel. There at a dining room table were four young wives whose husbands were confined to duties at the camp. I joined them and we had a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner.

Now, talk about a hotel experience.