We have all been there.  And the more you travel, the earlier is the likelihood that you have been there.  After having made an extensive number of road trips, I have concluded that the size, quality, and décor of motel rooms vary considerably, placing them in several categories from low to high.  The one in which I recently stayed during a summer, cross-country trip, however, deserves a category not year created.  Therefore, I will create it now.  It is called “model motel.”

On a swelteringly-hot July night, I pulled into the antiquated Mustang Motel in the tiny town of Vomit, Iowa–or, at least that is what its name sounded like–and its wall and ceilings could have been more appropriately categorized as a huge pile of firewood than a place in which to sleep.  Just under the “Welcome” sign one could make out the outline of the letters which spelled the word “Condemned.”

How modern had the room’s bed, dresser, and desk been?  Let’s put it this way: I had visited many, 200-year-old buildings in the country which had proudly boasted that “Washington slept here.”  This one should have read, “Washington died here.”

I guess this furniture’s exposed nails could have been considered “decorations,” belonging to a unique, Early American (referred to the age of those who had built it) style labeled “failing grade workshop projects.”

There was, however, a generous “walk-through” closet–three hangers of sufficient rust to suggest the dawn of the Iron Age dangling from the ceiling and giving the eye something to do every time it was poked by them during the journey over the cardboard carpet from the bed to the bathroom–not to mention the “reward” extended to the ear by their unceasing chimes of “jingle hells” until they finally stopped clinking against each other–by the following Christmas!  I pitied the person who suffered diarrhea and therefore had to make the trip every two minutes throughout the night!

A plaque prominently hung in the room had the audacity to promise, “If anything is not functioning properly, call us and we will immediately repair it.”  My room’s previous guest had apparently taken them up on this offer and reported a hole in the ceiling.  The motel’s owner, still sipping his evening coffee in one of those styrofoam cups, entered the room.  After assessing its relative size, he promptly gulped down the remaining hot liquid and shoved the cup up in the hole, asking, “Is there anything else?”  I can only imagine the expression on that guest’s face!

Considerable travel experience has indicated that many motel bathrooms are very small—so much so, in fact, that there is seldom sufficient space below the sink for an enclosed cabinet.  My room in the Mustang Motel, however, had one.  But there had been so little space between it and the toilet that two holes into which one could plunge his knees had been provided when he had been in the sitting position, resulting in a condition which could be more accurately described as “wearing a bathroom” as opposed to “sitting in a bathroom.”  At least the plugged-up holes, visible from the bedroom side, provided a handy clue as to whether the bathroom was currently occupied!

The room’s door lock, apparently immune to the universal cup remedy, had not been operative, but I quickly dismissed the anomaly.  After all, this was the type of place people brokeout of, not into, I thought.

It had been so stifling hot during my stay that I could not sleep without the air conditioning, but I also could not sleep with it, since it emitted a blast not unlike the roar of a jet engine during take off.  The sound, however, seemed somewhat appropriate to the rest of the experience, since the bed had been at such an angle that I fully felt as if I had been making a steep approach for a landing to some unknown runway throughout the night.

By the following morning, I had apparently reached my “destination,” since my butt had been gravity-induced toward the foot of the bed, leaving my legs dangling in the air like the tentacles of an octopus.

Eager to greet the light of day and the fresh, morning air, I opened the door to my unit, but the guest in the next room had apparently backed his horse trailer into the parking spot fronting my door sometime throughout the night and left a tail-swinging horse (the Mustang Motel’s namesake?) to greet the start of my day.  However, the bulls eye butt view provided more than just a view—or obstructed one—and an air-fanning swing.  Instead, it proceeded to dilate the tunnel-like entrance of its derrière and released a fart whose proportions only an animal of this size could have created, the gaseous collection torpedoing into my room and creating a nuclear waste-reeking fog which rose to the ceiling and loosened the styrofoam cup.  It fell to the floor, but at least it provided a hole through which the stench could now escape, intermixing with the air’s low-level pollution.

I remembered, with fondness, the days when those petite, pretty maids went from room to room in the morning to clean them and prepare them for the next guests.  But not here!  Instead, the handy repairman owner, wearing his “official” undershirt uniform and still belching his midnight beer, also served in that function, stripping the inclined beds of their sheets and stuffing them in to the back of his station wagon, where I caught a momentary glimpse of at least a month’s supply of styrofoam cups.  I could only imagine what else he did with them!

Driving away from this “model motel” later that morning, I could not help but vomit through the open car window just thinking of my nocturnal nightmare.  But, I had thought, at least I had remained true to the tiny town’s name.