"After this, will you leave me alone once when I'm telephoning?" he
asked. "The man told me right away he wanted to reserve a cabin for his
honeymoon. And then you quick pester me into asking him if he wants
twin beds!"
Grant rented a cabin to a gushy, heavily upholstered woman, and we
picked up our conversation where we had left off. "People certainly
have a lot of different subjects to talk about while they register," I
remarked.
"She certainly did have," Grant replied. "More than most." The
principal topics of conversation are weather (both "here" and "where we
came from") traveling conditions, and motels. Frequently an
out-of-state customer will linger in the office to complain about the
search that was made of his luggage and belongings at the border. And
occasionally a customer will take the opportunity to expound his entire
philosophy of life.
"We're missing a bet," Grant said, "by not having another business or
two as a sideline. We could make a fortune selling the little things
people leave behind and never call for--tooth brushes, bobby pins,
things like that. And," he added bitterly, "we could sell wigs, and
pillows stuffed with human hair."
His worst objection to cleaning the bathrooms in the cabins is the hair
that is usually all over the sink and floor. He has often talked, in
fact, of trying to get a law passed that would bar women from motels.
Scattered bobbypins, lipstick smears on towels, hair and powder would
be automatically eliminated in that way. (So would most of our income.)
Worse than hair, in my opinion, are ashes (the scattering of which is a
pastime engaged in by more men than women.) Both sexes sprinkle them
blithely all over the cabins--a trifle more thickly in the general
neighborhood of ashtrays. That part of "ring a round the rosy" which
goes "ashes, ashes, all fall down!" was probably written by a
cabin-cleaner-upper as she fell down, exhausted, after removing the
results of an average smokefest.
If ever the WCTU is supplemented by an organization to squelch dat ole
debbil Nicotine, I shall join it. I shall be one of its most vociferous
members, agitating violently for the suppression of tobacco, and for
the relegation to dungeons of those whose lips, pockets, or thoughts
are contaminated by cigarettes.
Grant and I had been in bed for about ten minutes when the doorbell
rang. It was the male half of the rigid old couple to whom I had rented
Mr. Hawkins' cabin. The door between the living room and the office was
slightly ajar, and when Grant answered the bell I proceeded to engage
in my favorite pastime--eavesdropping.
The man's voice was as severe and unyielding as his face. "May I
inquire, young man," he said, "what was the idea behind the way you
fixed our bed?"
Grant, of course, didn't know what he was talking about, and said so.
"Perhaps it is your idea of humor," the icy voice went on, fading as
Grant followed the man back to his cabin to see what was the matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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