Shari got to meet Elvis. She was so taken by Mollywood Imports of Dothan that I thought she was going to rent a truck and leave me. The day was destined to get stranger.
Motel 6 did the right thing
I added an update to last night’s Motel 6 posting where I discovered at about 3 in the morning that my non-smoking room (with an ashtray) smelled so much like smoke that my head stopped up and my throat was scratchy.
When I checked out, I asked to speak to a manager. Yolanda said she could help me, so I described the problem to her. She asked if I’d like my money back.
“I’m not asking for my money back. The room was worth what you charged except for the smoke part. I just wanted to let you know why I won’t be back. As a separate matter, you should make a note for housekeeping that the tub doesn’t drain and that there are no non-slip treads on the bottom of the tub. I reached for a towel and nearly went down hard.”
“I think it’s a Motel 6 policy to put ashtrays in all the rooms, and none of our tubs have non-slip material in them,” she said. “I know you didn’t ASK for your money back, but would you take it if I refunded it?”
I figured I had done the honorable thing by refusing it once; I accepted the credit this time. I have to say that both Lynette and Yolanda did a great job of customer service.
Union Station in Montgomery
I’ve always wanted to see some of the Civil Rights memorials in Montgomery, so we got off I-65 and headed for the old Union Station where the visitor’s bureau lives. It was closed, so I took a few pictures of the building and this 1897 electric street trolley that was on exhibit.
1906 building
At the end of the block from Union Station stands a building dated 1906. I’ve always been a sucker for dates on buildings, so I took this as a record shot. As I was clicking through the slides, I did a double-take. What is the long, green object toward the right side of the photo? There’s a second one to the right of the photo (the black curly thing is a shadow of the “snake” above it).. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)
What IS that? A snake?
I called Shari in her room. “In all your years of construction, did you ever hear of suspending a snake from a string on a building you were working on?”
Once I convinced her I wasn’t kidding her, she said she had heard of putting owls on a building to scare off birds, but the snake thing is a new one.
“When I told her about the second snake, she asked if they looked alike; that would mean they were fake.”
“I see them suspended from what appears to be a single point and they don’t form an arc like the St. Louis arch does,” I told her. “The snakes DO appear to have similar curves, but they’re facing different directions, so they are a little hard to compare.”
Have any of you folks heard of stringing up snakes (dead, alive, fake or real)?
