MOTEL

It's funny the things you do when you're on holidays. Like standing on a wind-swept and oil-stained car-park eating a packet of cornchips and drinking a tepid Coke for morning tea. I'm strictly a coffee and biscuit man myself in normal circumstances, but get yourself out of that dull workaday routine and you do some madcap, reckless things. Like a packet of cornchips and a tepid Coke for morning tea. Anyone can serve icy Coke, or even warm Coke, but to get that not-too-cold-not-too-warm temperature takes real skill. I found myself thinking thus mid-chip by the roadside.

There aren't many road-houses in most one-and-a-half horse towns as you pursue your quest of discovery of this great country. But I picked the wrong one. McDonalds (and their ilk) have a lot to answer for, and one of the things they should be held accountable for is their fixed smiles and saccharine politeness. It is most noticeable in its absence, such as at a road-house in a one-and-a-half horse town where their attitude is from some other era. Good Lord, they're doing you a favour! You don't expect them to smile and pass the time of day as well for chrissakes!

There is some cold logic, borne of experience, behind the Coke (albeit tepid) and chips. They come in sealed containers, delivered from somewhere else, usually a Big City of charm and sophistication, industry and commerce, hygene and customer service. While it might be tempting to try a piece of the Home-Style Fruitcake (made Right Here on the Premises), there is a not inconsiderable risk of it either being the consistency of plasticine or potting mixture. The hot chips may turn out to be just lukewarm and with enough grease to fix that squeak in the rear-left wheel-hub that's been bothering you for the last hundred or so miles. The tea may be bright red in colour and taste like kerosene. I thought I was pretty safe with the Coke and chips but they got me with the Coke. Tepid.

Places where you buy petrol used to be called service stations, but since most have changed so that the only service rendered is to considerably lighten your wallet, the name has fallen into disuse. An awful lot of places now kindly let you put the petrol in your car yourself. A few don't, but in such a situation should your hand stray to the bowser without expert guidance, a gormless flunkey emerges from the bowels of the building to grumpily take over depressing the trigger of the petrol nozzle. (Mind you, unless you grasp the nettle and take action the flunkey is unlikely to appear until a good half-hour has elapsed.) This same highly trained operative is unlikely to do much else however. Check your change.

The name 'roadhouse' means there's fuel for both car and driver, although the car almost invariably comes off better.

The place to rest the weary driver and passenger used to be the hotel, which metamorphosed into the motel. The universal design is to enable you to drive your car right up to the door of your room. This is either to keep as short as possible your stagger from car to bed, given that the hours behind the wheel have probably atrophied or paralysed your legs, or in case that either of you (car or driver) should become lonely in the night. You are in close proximity and neither should pine for the other.

Motels have become one of the great institutions of a a mobile society and one of the great historical and literary arts of modern times is naming them. Take the town of Echuca for example. Echuca's riverboat history is celebrated in its motels: the Steam Packet, the All Rivers Motor Inn, the River Village, the Big River, the Port of Echuca Motor Inn. Every other sign could be obliterated and through the names of the motels you can learn something of the history of a town. The Campaspe Motel (after which of course the Campaspe River was named). The Nirebo (named after something or other).

Some motels' names are less clear but I'm sure a bit of digging would reveal fascinating tit-bits. Such as the Tally-Ho and Cheshire Cat in Palm Beach Queensland. Or the Neath in Cessnock (where I assume a person can simply just be). Some are simply generic: Panorama, Country Road, Blue Gum, Hillview, Big Wheel, Premier, Beach, Surf, Glen-Villa, Pine (all shwr tlt tel TV tea mkg refrig).

And the signs. They too are works of art designed to tempt the weary traveller to try this or that particular haven of rest, and on the sign detail all that awaits you within. Attempting to read all this information will inevitably cause your car to rendesvous with the electricity pole outside the motel, totalling your car and cutting power to the motel, rendering it an unlikely first choice of place to stay.

How do you choose a motel? This is one of the continuing dilemmas of modern society. One way is personal recommendation. However if you actually know someone who has stayed the night in Stagnant Ponds (pop. 9000), and they can positively recommend The Panorama (or Bella Vista or Highway or whatever) it will mean that it will be booked out. The risk in the technique of seeking advice is that they may advise you on no account to stay at the Panorama (or Bella Vista or Highway) and that will be the only one with a vacancy. Better perhaps to chance it on your own.

Price is a rough guide. Paying slightly more will give you a TV set that actually works and bedclothes that do not slide off in the night. No matter how much you pay they all have airconditioners which make enough noise to wake the dead.

I once saw a motel which had the usual signs plus 'inspection invited'. After sitting in a car all day, will your back unkink sufficiently so you can peer under the bed? What will you find there? A discarded pair of knickers? After avoiding semi-trailers all day I doubt that one has the emotional energy to cope with conducting a thorough and rigorous inspection. Should you actually discover discarded under-garments under the bed I doubt that you would be able to summon the energy to walk away and find another place of rest. On the other hand, you may get lucky and the owner of the under-garments may return to claim them; someone who casually kicks their knickers off under the bed in a motel may make an interesting blind date.

Motels are more than places to stay. They are forces for social change. Every motel is in the business of promoting the watching of television in bed. In every motel it's the same: the only place to watch TV is either in, or on, the bed. Moreover there is nothing else to do. There is nothing quite like driving hundreds of kilometres to sit indoors and watch a bit of telly. In bed. Although there's not anything, a guide or something, to let you know what exactly you might be able to watch. This confirms the idea that all television is basically the same: colour & movement, diversion for the road-weary.

One of the rituals on first settling into a motel room is checking to make sure there's a Gideons Bible (and so I guess there actually is something to do apart from watching TV). The Gideons Bible is usually in a drawer near the bed, just in case you're in need of a calming bedtime read of the Book of Revelations. Not that I've ever read the Gideon's Bible provided in a motel room but it's reassuring to know that it's there. After all, there is a lot in it for the weary traveller:

"He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, 'Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!' And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys."

That's 2 Kings 2:23-24, and the bloke was Elisha who obviously had powerful empathy with someone who's driven all day with a car full of kids.

It's a little-known fact that all motels are also in the employ of the tea industry by providing those little packets of brown dust which allege to be coffee. Nothing could put you off coffee so assuredly as the brown dust.

It also would appear that the motel industry supports the aims of the Clean Navel Society. Or at least it seems so; I always find the showers will not shower any part of my anatomy higher than the navel, unless I adopt some sort of prayerful pose before the five squirts of water from the navel cleansing device. Because there are only five squirts of water the towels are correspondingly small.

Popular culture has it that motels are hot-spots for sin. It seems like a nice idea but I regret the greatest sin I have encountered in a motel is the brown dust. That's brown dust in the packets masquarading as coffee. Any other sort of dust I am not qualified to comment upon because the lights are usually too dim and I don't carry a torch (read on). The wattage of the lights may also suggest a link with the Optemetrical Association (drumming up business from people who wonder if their eyes are clouding over) but it's hard to be sure.

Things happen in motels. There I was watching TV on the bed (where else?) when the power went off. Now, it's very dark in the country. In other rooms, all the Good Brownies had torches but not me. So I set off for the front office, where a bemused proprietor sat with a candle. I embarked upon this quest because there were two things to do: nothing or something. And this was the something. I find it gives one the illusion of being in control of a situation.

"When do you think it'll come back on?" You can take classes in the art of conversation, learning most of all that all-important opening gambit. I have not been to these classes.

The proprietor looked sheepish. "Hard to say, really." This is the sort of definitive statement that has made this country great. I wouldn't have minded the offer of a candle but none was made. But I'd made my point; I wasn't going to cower in my room, do nothing and silently accept the blackout. I bowled up to the front office, said my piece then went back to my room, then did nothing and accepted the blackout. I went to bed. Nothing else for it, really, in spite of the early hour. The power came back on forty minutes later. But having laid down and started snoozing I decided to stay there. Nothing else for it, really.

Next morning I paid my bill. And wouldn't have minded a discount for the power break. After all, the highlight of any motel stay, my night's TV watching (from the bed), had been severely interrupted. But no discount was offered, and after all, he has a business to run. (It is a severe handicap in this life to be able to see things from the other fellow's point of view.)

"Where you headed?" he asked, as he added up the bill. I was caught completely by surprise. My few days of road houses and motels had atrophied my ability for small talk. So I did the only thing I could think of: I told him. "I was there last year," he replied. "Where do you live?" My address was on the account. You write it there when you check in, presumably so that if you abscond with the tiny towels and brown dust in the middle of the night they can track you down. Although if you were a towel thief it's surely unlikely that you'd put down your real address. Although if I was the sort of thief who would take those tiny towels I probably would not have the wit to put a false address.

"IT'S ON THE FUCKING BILL, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS!" It's what I wanted to say, but didn't. It turned out he had been nowhere near there, but some miles distant where he had partaken of the delights of a revolving restaurant. Had I been in the mood for repartee I might have made some acid comment about the height and rotation of such places seeming to guarantee appalling food, but I was not in the mood. And besides, someone who deliberately places brown coffee dust in the rooms for guests probably has sawdust on toast for lunch.

I made a mental note not to return there. It's unlikely I'll be in that town again anyway, but should I be passing through, I'll choose another motel. Which I know already will be like the last. Exactly. 

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