 |
| Tom Bodett would not be pleased |
About 30 miles outside of Charlotte, we decided to grab a cheap hotel and grab something to eat. By cheap, I mean inexpensive. Little did I know that both appellations would become evident and appropriate.
Kathy, in her various sojourns, has stayed in Motel6 up nort there a ways, don't ya know. Te only time I have ever spent in a motel6 was outside of Baton Rouge, La. when I saw Va. Tech play LSU back in 2007. The experience then wasn't pleasant, but I figured, “what the heck, I am further east.”
We pulled into parking lot and Kathy took the dog off for a pee break. A lady in a dilapidated Nissan drove up behind the car and asked me in that, "hey bud, come ere" kind of voice, if I wanted to buy an expensive computer monitor. It seems as though she needed hotel money, or about 40 bucks. Not being in the market for a computer screen just then, I declined and she trundles to the opposite end of parking lot, where she was apparently successful in securing a sale. She backed her car up and then left the hotel property. I guess having the money meant she now had options with her supplier of monitors or meth or both.
We took a walk around the block, so to speak. Our two year old boxer, Sierra, set about to sniff and pee on every patch of grass she could find. The space we were in had three hotels, including a red roof inn and a Holiday Inn Express....hmmm, oh well.
The red roof had a bunch of contractors who were hanging out after a day's labor. Having worked in construction before, I wasn't really bothered too much by the sight. The dead end nature of the street the hotel was on gave me concern for Kathy and the dog if they were by themselves. Since we take the dog out most of the time together, this wasn't much of a concern either. About 20 minutes of ghetto sight-seeing and we made our way back to the hotel.
We found a sports bar and grill next to the hotel on the way in, so we figured, given the hour, we would just eat there and get a good start on the next day. The duty manager at the motel, Marvin, was funny and quite helpful. When we came in, he was conversing width a man who spoke with a very thick Spanish accent who was trying to find a blanket. The man was holding, in his hand, the 2 ft wide decoration that they keep at the end of the bed. The man and Marvin went back in forth about how Motel 6 didn't have "extra" blankets and eventually, the man gave up and went away.
Marvin greeted us and took our information, got us a room and told us the rate would be like 56 bucks. The roadside billboard mentioned a 36-dollar rate and we inquired as to the difference.
"Let me tell you how it is..." Marvin said. After describing how it was, Marvin said he would hook us up with the single rate, although we were in fact a couple with a dog.
Feeling like we just hit a mini jackpot, we grabbed our stuff, hiked down the hallway to room 112 and opened the door to a closet with a 19 inch tv, a sawed off desk and a full size bed that had more than a few springs, sprung.
Since we were hungry, we turned on the TV to keep Sierra from barking at the ghosts of the hallway and we walked over to the bar and grill to get some eats and maybe have a beer.
The establishment, ironically called "Winners.” Upon entering the bar, Kathy noticed a strange smell, which she deemed, “debilitating.” She whispered in a voice not quite loud enough to move me to action about how we might go somewhere else instead. I declined to act on due to the lateness of the hour. We sat down at a table covered with a cloth from the seventies, clearly cleaned on the first day and never since.
The place was run by a middle aged black lady named Ebony. Quite pleasant and friendly and she was assisted in holding the bar down by her daughter, two grandchildren under the age of 10 and a construction worker from OHghO who had been working for eight days straight and was gonna get drunk, for a change.
It seems OHighO had a penchant for all things Hank Williams III. Little hank, who remarkably sounds like his epically famous grandfather, takes all of the bad from him and his dad Hank Jr. Most of his songs have something to do with screwing, drinking or taking drugs and OHighO couldn't get enough. Using a downloader jukebox like the one a Stewies in Sidney, he played tune after tune from III, till I felt like I wanted to stab myself in the ears to lessen the pain.
We looked at the menu. "What do you have on tap?," asks Kathy.
"We don't have no draft beers on tap," replied Ebony
Sensing the need to be helpful, I chirped in, "what do you have in bottles?"
"We got, (blah, blah, blah), Yeungling..."
"Perfect, we'll take two and a menu"
Typically bar food, Kathy decided on the chili because she didn’t want a hamburger, and after perusing the menu, she thought it would be the safest choice. I thought for a millisecond that the supremo burger with bacon and chili would be the perfect ticket, but had second thoughts about bar chili. Our beers delivered, Kathy started looking over maps from the hotel about local attractions in Atlanta (now three hours in the rearview mirror) as well as hiking trails and such in the area. I contented myself to a speed replay of the last national championship football game between Oregon and Auburn.
Our food was delivered in little paper fast food trays lined with translucent white paper. Kathy’s chili was covered in a yellow, cheese-like substance, which had congealed into a surface worthy of accepting incoming air traffic. Somewhere in the middle of my lettuce and bun was a mechanically perfect meat patty that reminded me of my school lunch days. When I ordered the burger, Ebony asked me if I wanted mayonnaise, “cause, unless you ask for mayonnaise, we don’t give it,” she said I know… biting irony to be asked for something that you don’t get if you don’t ask for it. “Ketchup and Mustard will be fine,” I said.
Our food delivered, I didn’t have a good feeling about the Chili Kathy chose. As fate would have it, she didn’t either. Served in a small, clear deli plastic container, with chips on the side, she managed to break a couple chips while jack-hammering through to the prize. The chili itself, when exposed, looked like a can of Hormel that perhaps you might put on a hot dog on a Sunday afternoon. I could just feel the heartburn building.
We thought about going somewhere else after our beer, but decided that perhaps we could have another beer and hopefully wash the taste and experience from our mind and body. Kathy was nearly out of chips, but still had more chili, a conundrum to which Ebony attempted to resolve in her down-home, southern way.
“More chips, baby girl,?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Kathy replied.
Feeling bad for her, I offered a few of my French fries to get her through the bottom of her container.
We paid our tab before OHighO could get another dollar in the downloader and went back to the motel. Inside the room, our TV was playing rerun episodes from, “Sons of Guns.” The show, about a Louisiana gunsmith with a gift for making exotic gun builds, was working on a complex build of three M-16’s set to fire in tandem. We watched a couple episodes while the sprung springs attempted to cut into our spines.
We woke up Sunday morning, full of pain and a couple funny stories to tell. As I write this, Kathy and the dog are out on their final pre-car ride pee break. We are off to find a place known to both of us for breakfast and then on toward our exploration of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Did you get a doggie bag for the chili. Please keep us informed of places to stay in the future, hopefully centipede free.
ReplyDeleteReen