Shari Stiver Archives

October 15, 2013

Like Pulling Teeth

Some nights coming up with a story idea is like pulling teeth. This is one of those nights.

By the time I dropped Friend Shari off at her mother’s house, it was close to 10 p.m. I didn’t have the energy to unpack anything except my laptop computer and a pair of clean underwear.

Here’s the best I can do tonight.

We were in Manianna, FL, up in the Panhandle when I needed to do a U-turn to go to a place with some killer peanut brittle. When my headlight hit this sign, I asked Ms. Shari, “Is that the most clever marketing tool ever or the most disgusting thing you’ve ever seen?”

I’ll let you vote while I go to bed. The alarm is OFF. Do not call me before noon. On Wednesday.

October 14, 2013

The Day Got Stranger

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)?

October 13, 2013October 13, 2013

Motel Saga Continued

Friend Shari and I had another good day on the road. We left Ocala at a reasonable hour (for me, at least) and headed for Steinhatchee, where I had been talking up the blue crab claws at Roy’s for days.

We stopped at the Fanning Springs on the Suwanee River because that’s where we let the kids run off some steam when we were passing through. I told her we have pictures of Son Adam as a naked baby being sprayed down at a water faucet, but she declined to replicate the event.

She WAS willing to pose next to the bridge that spanned the river in 1934.

What!?!? No crab claws?

When we got to Roy’s, I told the waitress that I knew exactly what I wanted: an order of steamed blue crab claws.

In a tone that indicated that she had delivered the sad news more than once, she said they were out of crab claws AND oysters.

“You’re OUT of crab claws?!?! We drove 300 miles to taste those wonderful things. Are you SURE?”

She was sure.

We ended up with an excellent salad bar and a seafood platter that was good, but it wasn’t crab claws.

Establishing motel standards

You may have read about the difficulty we had agreeing on a place to stay Friday night. One porridge was too hot; one porridge was too cold; one porridge was too expensive; another porridge was, well, you get the idea.

Just outside Perry, I spotted a MOTEL sign on the other side of the road. I braked just short of smoking tires, did a U-turn and pulled to a stop in front of the place.

“I want to establish a set of standards of acceptability so we don’t go through what we went through last night. Let’s see if we can agree on a the minimum that we can live with.”

Do you like plants in the room?

I thought she’d like to have plants in the room. The fact they are live and not plastic should add points.

Clean bathroom important?

When we were coming into Mariana, I asked if she wanted to stop there or journey on to Dothan, 40 minutes up the road. She plugged “Starbucks” into her mapping program, found out the nearest Starbucks was in Dothan, and said, “Take me to Alabama.”

Are you influenced by sale prices?

Conversation lagged, so I fired up the MP3 playlist that I use on my bike. It might have been my imagination, but I thought she sang along to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” with just a little too much feeling.

Is a mural desirable?

Shari saw some of the works of the Florida Highwaymen, a group of 26 black artists who painted iconic Florida landscapes in the 1950s, and was taken by their style. I thought a room with a mural would get a high rating.

Do you require black-out curtains?

Does the room have to be completely dark for you to sleep?

Ash trays in non-smoking rooms

We ended up in a Motel 6 in Dothan close enough for us to double back to Mollywood so Shari can be photographed with Elvis.

Lynette, the front desk clerk, was one of the high points of the day. She was funny, helpful and put up with our bantering. She did tell us to expect one curious thing when we got to the rooms: the rooms are non-smoking, but they have ashtrays in them.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I argued.

“People lie,” she said. “They smoke anyway, and they were burning holes in our sheets and carpets, so we put ashtrays in all the rooms.”

I warned her that I’d be back if I could smell any smoke in MY room. As it turned out, the room was acceptable (and, better yet, it was only $35.63. I’ve paid a lot more for a lot less before).

If you decide to stay there, tell Lynette, a Chicago transplant, we said “Howdy.”

UPDATE on Motel 6 room

When I checked in, I pulled down the bed cover and gave the sheets and pillow a quick sniff test. They seemed to be OK in my ashtray-equipped non-smoking room,

I finished this post and rolled into bed around 2 a.m. Central time, which would have made it about 3 a.m. Head Time since I live in in the land of Eastern time. The bed was great; the pillow was OK; the air conditioner was a bit noisy, but kept the room at the right temp. Life is good.

Smoke embedded in innards

I was out like the proverbial light. For about an hour, that is.

I woke up with my nose stopped up and a scratchy throat. My quick sniff test hadn’t been deep enough to pick up the smoke deeply embedded (pun not intended, but I’ll take it) in the mattress, pillow innards or some other place. I popped an antihistamine that helped, but I was conscious of that smoke every time I woke up.

The price was great; clerk Lynette was a delight, and the room was much better than expected, but I’ll never stay in a place again that puts ashtrays in non-smoking rooms. And, I have a spot reserved in a very hot, smoky place for people who smoke in non-smoking locations.

I don’t know if the ashtray thing is a local option or if all Motel 6 locations do it. I think I’ll solve the problem by never staying in one again.

October 12, 2013October 12, 2013

Picking a Motel

It’s always a challenge figuring out where to stop for the night when you are traveling with new folks. I’m not overly picky: I’m looking for somewhere clean and cheap.

I made the mistake of letting Friend Jan pick a place in Louisville on our trip this winter. Bad Move.

Friend Anne didn’t mind playing the role of spatting newlywed to win a discount in Lake City.

I tried to show Friend Shari alligators around Lake O, but they must have been federal alligators laid off because of the government’s shutdown. We spotted one little one at the Canal Point locks, but he wouldn’t have made a slipper, let along a set of shoes.

We were getting hungry and were going to be too late to get to Roy’s in Steinhatchee, so we opted for the always great buffet at the Golden Corral in Okeechobee.

Hotel Jacaranda

The meal was so large, that Shari immediately passed out. She came to when we passed through historic downtown Sebring. She REALLY came alive when we got to historic Avon Park and the Hotel Jacaranda. I’ll have more pix of it when I’m not so sleepy. Unlike Shari, I didn’t get a nap.

I DID shoot some pictures of the diving woman in front of Reed’s Motel. I shot her in 1990 when I did a story on U.S. 27 between Little Havana in Miami and Havana, FL, on the Georgia line.

By the time we got to Ocala, my passenger was whining that it was six hours past her bedtime. Instead of a place to lay my head, though, she wanted to find a Starbucks joint so she could steal my van and get a jolt before I had hit my snooze alarm for the third time in the morning.

Smoking rooms harder to find

THEN we went looking for a motel. She’s a smoker, so that eliminated most of the more modern, upscale places. She wanted a Mom and Pop with loose standards.

She picked the first one because it was named after a long-legged bird she is fond of. Let’s just leave it at that. It was a 1950’s place that rented by the week. I got a little worried when I noticed that the windows in almost all of the rooms were open. So were a lot of the doors. In one of the doors was a guy who was busily scratching parts that itched. I suggested we go to the next place listed on the GPS.

It was a fancy bed and breakfast. I don’t like them because I don’t want to be warm and fuzzy with the owners. I want a good, anonymous room where I can throw a wet towel on the bathroom floor and not feel guilty.

We can’t afford a place with “grounds”

Candidate three was eliminated because it was too fancy: it had “grounds.” “We can’t afford anyplace that has grounds,” she said.

Candidate four was similar to Candidate One except that the windows were closed. All but one of them. When our headlights played across the rooms, a guy carefully pulled back a corner of the curtain and stared at us. It wasn’t clear if he was expecting someone to be making a pickup or a delivery, and I don’t think he had pizza on his mind.

We finally came up with a place that was minimally acceptable. (If we wanted a microwave or a fridge, it would cost $5 extra.)

When the desk clerk asked if we would like adjoining rooms, I said, “Nah, she’s a smoker. If she sets her bed on fire, I’d be happy to have her in a different building. He took me at my word. She’s not only in a different building, I’m pretty sure she’s in a different area code.

I’LL find the room tomorrow night.