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      March 26, 2024Cheap Motels of My YouthGeorge Bilgere

      They lay somewhere between
      the Sleeping In The Car era
      and my current and probably final era,
      the Best Western or Courtyard Marriott era.
       
      The Wigwam. Log Cabin. Kozy Komfort
      Hiway House. Star Lite. The Lazy A.
       
      Just off the interstate, the roar
      of the sixteen-wheelers all night long.
      The dented tin door opening to the parking lot,
      the broken coke machine muttering to itself.
       
      “Color TV.” “Free HBO.” “Hang Yourself
      in Our Spacious Closets.” A job interview
      at some lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere
      branch campus of some agricultural college
      devoted to the research and development
      of the soybean and related by-products.
       
      Five-course teaching load, four of them
      Remedial Comp. Candidate
      must demonstrate familiarity
      with the basic tenets of Christian faith.
      Chance of getting the job
      one in a hundred. Lip-sticked
      cigarette butt under the bed.
      Toilet seat with its paper band,
      “Sanitized for Your Protection,”
      dead roach floating in the bowl.
       
      As the free HBO
      flickers in the background,
      you stare in the cracked mirror
      at a face too young, too full of hope
      to deserve this. And you wait
      for the Courtyard Marriott era to arrive.

      from Cheap Motels of My Youth

      George Bilgere

      “When I was eight years old my parents got divorced. My mother packed her three kids into an old Chevy station wagon and drove us from St. Louis to Riverside, California, looking for a fresh start. She had visited there when she was an Army nurse stationed in LA during the war and fell in love with the place. That cross-country car trip, full of cheap diners, cheap hotels, and desperation, changed my life. I fell in love with the vastness and beauty, the glamor and tawdriness, of America. I’ve travelled all over the country since then, on that ancient and deeply American quest, the search for home.”

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