Crossing the Date Line: Adventures of a Traveling Geologist

By John Sollo

Crossing the Date Line is a colorful, romp through 16 countries, from Argentina to Alaska, from Algeria to New Zealand. It weaves together real-life adventure with a little geology, a touch of history, a bit of humor and a fascinating assortment of some unforgettable characters. The book describes living and working in foreign countries and dealing with the various cultures, habits, languages and customs. His wife sometimes traveled with him, setting up homes in a jungle village in northern Argentina, a small town in South Korea, a construction camp in the Himalayan foothills and a fishing village along the southeastern coast of mainland China.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781483528250

Book preview

appreciated.

PROLOGUE

Mr. John, Mr. John, hollered the concierge. I had just finished checking in at the Monarch Lee Gardens Hotel on Silom Road in Bangkok when I turned and saw the worried look on the man hurrying across the hotel’s lobby toward me. Mr. John, are you leaving tomorrow? Yes, in the morning, I said. I was going to see you about a car. OK, good, he said, but, you must leave very early, big holiday starts tomorrow. I’ll have car for you at 4:30.

I thought that was much too early to catch United’s seven o’clock departure to San Francisco, but when I saw the look on his face, I acquiesced and said, OK, I’ll be ready at 4:30. In all of my travels through Asia, I always stopped overnight in Bangkok and stayed at the hotel and got to know the concierge well. He was a smart guy who always recognized me and remembered my name and who always provided me with timely airport transportation with the hotel’s private car. He went on to explain that tomorrow morning was the start of the Songkran holiday and that many people would be going home for the festival. He was worried that there would be a lot of traffic leaving the city and most of the people would be either going to or past the international airport.

In 1991, Bangkok’s old Don Mueang International Airport was the main airway hub through Southeast Asia, handling nearly 25 million passengers. It was located adjacent to the main highway about 15 miles from downtown and it was only a 20 minute ride from the hotel to the airport. I usually allowed an hour or so.

The next morning Silom Road was nearly deserted when we left the hotel and I was thinking that I could have slept for another hour. But I changed my mind a few minutes later as we merged out onto the main expressway northward toward the airport. There was a sea of cars. As far as I could see up the road ahead of us was nothing but cars. Five lanes of traffic, bumper-to-bumper, completely stopped, at 4:30 in the morning! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, literally tens of thousands of people all going in the same direction.

We slowly merged into the traffic and as we inched along, wedged in on all sides, the time went zooming by, like flood waters going down a storm drain. For the first two hours we made only eight miles, half way, and I started to get nervous as I realized that I would not get to the airport on time. I was going to miss my flight. At 6:30 a.m. I calculated that it was going to take another two hours to reach the terminal. We kept crawling along, inch by inch, foot by foot, and when we were still about a mile from the airport in this parking lot of slowly moving traffic, some passengers were getting out of their cars and, with luggage in hand, they were walking down the freeway. Those on foot were making better time than we were, but I wasn’t desperate enough to walk a zigzag pattern through all of that traffic. As we slowly crept along, I sat back and relaxed a bit and convinced myself that it was okay to miss my flight.

I told the driver that when we reached the airport we should stop at the United States departure area and I’d go in and make a flight reservation for the next day and that he could take me back to the hotel for another night’s stay. Finally at 8:45 a.m. we arrived at the terminal that was overflowing with cars and people. It was more than four hours after we had left the hotel!

With the driver waiting at the curb, I took my bags and made my way through the crowded terminal and found the United Airlines ticket counter. There I got the shock of my life. I could see the anxious looks on the faces of the ticket agents as I approached the counter. I told them my name and to my astonishment they grabbed my bag, quickly checked my passport and ticket and told me they’d escort me through immigration and passport control, but that I’d have to run for the gate. It was 8:55 a.m. and the scheduled seven o’clock flight to San Francisco hadn’t left yet! As I hurried through the airport, still a little dumbfounded as to what was happening, the United escort said that due to the holiday traffic no one had made it to the plane on time for the morning departure and that the flight crew had only recently arrived. They wanted to leave at nine o’clock and the gate would be closing in just a few minutes. Luckily, Thai immigration, normally an incredibly deliberate and sober bunch of folks, was equally aware of the traffic snarl outside the airport, so they allowed me ahead of the line. They stamped my passport, I quickly thanked the escort and took off running for the plane. I had only one small carry-on bag and was making good time sprinting for the gate that was located at the far end of the concourse. I still wasn’t sure if I could make it, but the ticket counter staff had called ahead and they were holding the gate door open for me as I ran down the ramp and boarded the plane. The adrenalin was still pumping wildly as I quickly found my seat. A flight attendant came over and without even asking, handed me a glass of champagne. She knew that I’d had a tense morning. I was the last person aboard as they closed the door and away we went to San Francisco. I looked at my watch as we pulled away from the gate. It was 9:05 a.m. The concierge had saved me. If I had left the hotel five minutes later, I would have missed the plane. During more than 36 years and nearly a million air miles, that morning in Bangkok was the closest I ever came to missing a flight.

Whenever I hear someone say, I love to travel, I cringe. Yes, it’s great to see all of the wonderful things on display throughout the world, but it’s not always 5-star hotels and tour guides leading you through sanitized versions of life in a foreign land. I’ve done those tours. I’ve climbed China’s Great Wall, admired the Eifel Tower and the Louvre, rode elephants around Royal Chitwan in Nepal and viewed ancient Inca ruins high in the Andes, all under the watchful eye of a tour guide whose sound bites and glib narratives describe the famous surroundings. The next day it’s the same thing. But, as I’ve discovered, unless someone spends many months or even years somewhere, it becomes a blur in time and one never really sees the place in depth. By living outside of the United States for long periods of time I’ve come to realize that long-handled brooms and clothes dryers are rare and locally-made toothpaste tastes like rubber bands.

My travels as an engineering geologist working on many large-scale construction projects took me to the dense jungles of southeast Asia, the arid mountains of Chile and Peru, the great Sahara desert, the foothills of the Himalayas, the Alaskan rain forest and many places in the world where tourists seldom go. Places like Gangtok, Sikkim, or Soroako, Indonesia or Papua New Guinea, where there were no fancy hotels and the only tour guides were young men with machetes hacking a path through dense jungle foliage. It may have been exotic at times, but it was never glamorous. I’ve come to believe that often times the romance of travel isn’t nearly as evident when you’re actually experiencing it.

By sharing these vignettes of my work, I hope to give the reader a chance to discover the flavor and complexities of a different kind of travel. A kind of travel that few tourists get to experience, like shopping at the local market, getting a vehicle repaired at the corner gas station, finding a doctor or a pharmacy, opening a bank account or finding a barber or maybe a butcher shop that’s not too bloody. And even though my uncle Charles Moon Toliuszis always questioned why I was studying rocks, I decided to, as John Muir once said, Throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.

Actually, it was a bit more complicated than jumping over the back yard fence. It turned out to be a series of long, tedious airplane rides, restless nights in hotel rooms or bamboo huts and bland restaurant or camp food. But mostly it was work, 12 to 14 hours a day and often six or seven days a week for months at a time. There was some adventure along the way and if I had the chance to do it over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe find more time to play a few more rounds of golf. It’s all true, the names, the places, the whole thing. As a matter of fact, it may even have been more adventurous than I’ve described on the following pages. But that’s okay, because I’ve never liked too much exaggeration, except in a humorous way.

Remarkably, for I wasn’t an exceptional student, I received an ‘A’ in historical geology during my first semester at St. Joseph’s College, in Indiana. I found that I loved studying geology, the study of pressure and time on our precious Earth. The Earth’s time span is unimaginable, an ice age here, a billion years there, a few dinosaurs, a chain of mountains, earthquakes and tsunami, volcanic eruptions and the flow of molten lava. I’m not sure what draws us to things, but I discovered that I liked learning about the Earth and how it has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years. During the second semester I surprised myself again and got another ‘A’ in physical geology. I didn’t know it at the time, but those two ‘A’s propelled me into a career in engineering geology. It was all quite unexpected, the idea of traveling around the world flying to cities like Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai or Seoul and often working to provide electricity for people who find it a luxury to have a single, 40-watt light bulb in their home.

I’ve tried to describe a few interesting events that happened at each stop along the way. Some feelings and thoughts I had while living and working outside the United States are difficult for me to remember, but that isn’t true of the smells. Like the pungent aroma of burning leaves on an October evening, the smells take you back to another place and time and forever mark a place in your memory. They remind you of the places that you’ve been. Whether it’s the flavorful mixture of garlic, olives and onions at an open-air market in Argentina, the putrid open sewers in a small village in China or the damp, musky odor of the Laotian jungle, the smells linger on, embedded in your memory. But, wherever I went I found one smell to be constant and never changing. No matter where you are on our marvelous planet, when you dig a hole in the ground the smell of freshly dug up earth is always the same. If you’re in Alaska, Algeria, Chile, Nepal, or Laos the freshly dug ground has that same pungent earthy odor. It doesn’t make any difference where you are.

I made many trips to Asia and every time I flew across the Pacific Ocean, a day was either taken away or given to me without anyone asking how I felt about it. Exactly how the days come and go so easily, I couldn’t quite say, but it happened to me a number of times. Each time I crossed the wide Pacific and the International Date Line I ceased to exist for a whole day and then on the return trip they conveniently gave it back to me. Going westward across the Pacific, if I left San Francisco on a Sunday I would arrive in Hong Kong on Tuesday, even though the flight is only 15 hours. Monday never came. Or, going the other way, I’d arrive back in San Francisco several hours before I had left Hong Kong. Luckily, not being on the planet for a full 24-hour period doesn’t hurt at all, and except for eating three airline meals and maybe having to watch two or three, full-length Terminator movies, one can still act as a reasonable, normal being except for a bit of jet-lag.

Life cannot offer many finer things to do with your precious time than to travel around the globe, disappear for a day, and then reappear in a remote corner of the world helping to build a power plant that will supply people with an electric light bulb for their home or maybe an electric pump for their community water well. It was a wonderfully satisfying feeling and I’m forever grateful that I was able to help make it happen.

Sitting at home in front of a computer or soaking up the news from a television in the family room, it’s easy to believe that the world is small. But it didn’t feel small when I was out in it. As a matter of fact, it seemed really big. One of the great things about being alive today and living in America is that most of us have the ability to get up and go anywhere and experience the world that previous generations couldn’t have dreamed of. With only a passport, a plane ticket and a little know-how we can go help other people drink clean water, wear clean clothes or cook food inside their homes.

I saw many interesting things during my travels, but above all else the thing that I learned the most was that America is truly a wonderful country. Even to have been born at all is a bit of a miracle, but to have been born in this spectacular country, is without a doubt, the greatest piece of luck that a person can have. My travels provided mountains of evidence that there are many things in the United States that deserve praise - our National Parks, the great rivers, the mountain ranges and the prairie, the bustling cities, but none more than the ultimate extravagance of grocery shopping. Returning home from a developing country, the cultural shocks are deafening, especially when first going to the grocery store and wandering, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, through the cereal aisle and discover that there are seventy-five varieties of breakfast cereal. Every possible substance known to man that can be either frosted, toasted, dried, puffed, coated with sugar, stuffed in a bag, and boxed is on the shelf. There is breakfast cereal that is sugar-coated, cinnamon-coated, with bananas, with apples, with honey and nuts, with peanut butter, with marshmallows, with strawberries and blueberries and even with milk chocolate. It is stunning. In the developing countries where I worked if I found a single box of Corn Flakes or Rice Crispies I’d be thrilled. Where we shop in California we have a choice of 130 varieties of salad dressing and seven different brands of peanut butter. There are eight varieties of apples and 11 types of laundry detergent, 15 brands of frozen pizza and eight brands of paper towels. Milk can be purchased 28 different ways and we can buy mayonnaise that is either fat-free, light, real, original, low-fat, cholesterol-free, with olive oil or even with extra-virgin olive oil. On my every return to America, I was dazzled, and often befuddled, by the wealth of choices. In some respects it’s almost too much. I’m not complaining, it’s simply a fact of life in America.

But surely the greatest and most remarkable thing regarding all of my travels was the fact that no matter where I had been or how long I’d been away, I was always going home to Samantha. From the bramble bushes of San Francisco, I had picked a rose. Sam has helped me gather my thoughts and exercise my memory, difficult tasks to be sure, while compiling these 15 chapters of my working life. I am deeply grateful for the gracious editing that she did so that you readers can understand the content of these musings. My infinite and heartfelt thanks to Samantha.

CHAPTER 1

The Seeds of Revolution

(Setif, Algeria)

After the long flight from San Francisco and a sleepless night in Paris, I finally had my feet on the ground in North Africa. I had arrived on an Air Algerié flight from Paris via Marseilles that had delayed its take-off when French police quietly surrounded the old Boeing 727, boarded the aircraft and removed two swarthy-looking men who were sitting in the row of seats directly behind me. No announcements were made, the police departed with the two men in handcuffs and we continued on across the Mediterranean Sea to Algiers.

It was November of 1975, a time of year when the temperature and climate in North Africa is perfect with warm, sunny days and mild, pleasant evenings. I was 30 years old and except for a year in Korea with the U.S. Air Force and a few days in Havana, Cuba with my parents when I was ten, this was my first trip outside of the United States. Algeria would not have been my first choice, but I was excited about the adventure of living and working in a foreign country. It’ll change your life, my boss assured me after I accepted the assignment. He was right, it did.

I was met at the Houari Boumedienne Airport on the outskirts of Algiers by senior geologist, Bert Hebbron, and his chauffer, Muhammad, who was driving an old but remarkably sturdy, circa 1950s Land Rover. The Rover was painted gray, made of real steel and had the spare tire on the hood. It was heavy and tough with a tight suspension that felt every bump. It was the kind of vehicle that you might see in a movie like, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or some Mad Max adventure. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safe to be in when navigating through the narrow streets and chaotic traffic of Algiers.

Bert had gotten us rooms at the St. George Hotel. The hotel, once the jewel of the Mediterranean, sat high above the Bay of Algiers and displayed panoramic views of the whitewashed, French colonial palaces of the city. With its elaborate network of flagstone paths that wound through beds of hibiscus, roses and flowering cacti, and with tennis courts lined with palm and banana trees, the St. George was once the favorite hotel in North Africa. Built in 1880, it defined the height of France’s 130-year colonial rule of Algeria. On a second floor balcony overlooking the city and the bay, there was a plaque recording the fact that General Eisenhower used the hotel as headquarters for the U.S. Army’s Allied Expeditionary Forces when American and British troops were pushing Rommel’s German troops eastward along the North African coast during World War II.

The St. George’s lobby was astonishingly ornate with marble floors and columns, fancy wood-carved tables and numerous extra-large, over-stuffed armchairs that small children could get lost in. It had the warm, tropical, Mediterranean atmosphere in which you’d expect to see a man in a Panama hat and a white, seersucker suit walking through the lobby where revolving ceiling fans help cool the clientele. Adjacent to the lobby was a bar that reminded me of Rick’s Café in the movie Casablanca and where I half expected to see Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman strolling arm-in-arm.

The St. George was surely a fine hotel during the 1940s and 50s, but in 1975 it looked somewhat worn and tattered. There were cracked floor tiles, chipped paint and peeling wall paper. The grand hotel needed a little tender loving maintenance.

After having dinner with Bert at an open-air, garden-court restaurant at one of Algiers’ landmark establishments, I ended up spending most of my first night in the bathroom, down the hallway from my room, with stomach issues. My room did not have a toilet and my stomach’s character was failing the test administered by the local cuisine. This uncomfortable sickness would set the stage for me, my colleagues and visiting engineers coming to the project over the next three years.

During our weekend in Algiers, Bert and I walked the downtown streets with spirited inquiry and boyish keenness. The streets were crowded with rattletrap buses. Giant, overloaded trucks spewed dense clouds of black exhaust as they slowly ambled along potholed roads. The air was foul with an unhealthy bluish tinge. There were unrecognizable lettering on signs and store fronts. Bearded, dour-looking men wearing turbans and flowing robes sat at outdoor coffee shops drinking strong, black coffee from thimble-sized cups and holding hands with their male companions

We visited several historical sites including the Casbah, a confusing labyrinth of rank, subterranean walkways and narrow, partially covered, sometimes dead-ended alleyways, which in 1975 served as an underground market place. It was where numerous mosques had been built during the 17th century, but now seemed to be locked in a perpetual 1950. Women, covered head to foot in dark-colored Burkas and tired-looking old men were selling fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, bread and dry goods from dirt-floored hovels made of tin. The walls and walkways were wet and cool and the dark and dingy, narrow, smelly pathways were crowded with shoppers. Everything you touched brought the clear possibility of disease. It certainly did not live up to its romantic image from the movies and novels of the 1940s.

After two days and nights we left the crowded streets of Algiers going eastward along National Route No. 5, the main east-west highway that connects Algiers with Constantine. With Muhammad at the wheel, we traveled through the brown, rolling hills of the open countryside. We passed through many small villages where turban-headed men were huddled in doorways and boys tended small herds of sheep and goats. The women and girls were not to be seen. The haphazard arrangement of some of the houses looked as if they had been dumped along the route from a great height. Some houses were like miniature compounds surrounded by short, adobe-like walls, while others had no yards nor fences, nothing separating them from the surrounding arid landscape.

National Route No. 5 was a two-lane roadway that was full of potholes and poorly patched pavement. Often there were no pavement stripes marking the lanes and the shoulders were narrow or non-existent. All manner of vehicles were about, horse-drawn carts, donkeys, haul trucks, buses, push-carts and a few private cars. Small herds of goats and sheep meandered along the road’s edge. Travel was slow and tedious. With our average speed of 40 MPH, it would take us five hours to make the 200-mile journey to Setif, the center of our project area.

Bert sat in the back and I in the suicide seat up front as Muhammad piloted the Land Rover through the maze of roadway obstacles. Bert was leading a team of seven Bechtel geologists conducting the design exploration of four water-supply/irrigation dams in the Setif region. I was the first team member to arrive; the others would come a few days later. Our mission was to conduct the foundation studies at four proposed dam sites, at places called Ain Zada, Fermatou, Dra Diss and El Fataha. Eventually, only Ain Zada Dam would be built and today it impounds water of the Oued Bou Sellam River.

About half-way to our destination we stopped at a makeshift roadside stand near the village of El Adjiba where a boy of about 14 was selling figs and dates that were grown in a small orchard along the highway. As Bert and I got out of the Land Rover and approached him, we noticed the startled look on his face. We may have been the first Westerners that he had ever seen up close. Muhammad said something to him in Arabic and the boy laughed and seemed to relax. We each bought a small bag of dates and figs and gave him more Dinars than he was asking. This seemed to please him and as we drove back onto the highway, he smiled at us and waved goodbye. As we continued along, Muhammad said that nearly all Algerians living in small villages were basically friendly people but were suspicious of strangers, particularly non-Arabs.

Setif is 90 miles from the northern edge of the great Sahara Desert and 40 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. With a population of about 15,000 it was the central hub of the old travel routes used by the Kabyle tribes from the Atlas Mountains to the north, the Arab tribes from the surrounding high plains and the Saharan people from the southern desert. The town has always played an important role in North African history. During Roman times it was the capital of the province of Mauritania Sitifensis, but at some time in the past it was partially destroyed by an earthquake. The walls and column remnants from those days have long vanished, but the town has remained a central market and meeting place for the local farmers.

After the bone-jarring, five-hour ride from Algiers, we arrived in Setif in the middle of the afternoon. The town lacked any sign of prosperity. The main street was lined with drab, dreary buildings the color of faded terra-cotta, some with chunks of plaster missing as if the war for independence had just ended and the scars of war were still evident. Almost every building needed a good coat of paint.

The streets were crowded with men milling about, some holding hands as is customary in some Muslim countries. Most were bearded and sullen looking and it didn’t appear to me that they were the type of men that most women would want to spend a lot of time with. It was the first time that I saw men kissing. Not romantically kissing, just that double-cheeked kiss when they were greeting each other. A few women, fully covered in the traditional dark Burka, were shuffling along the sidewalks as if their shoelaces were tied together. The crowd on the main street resembled a chaotic scene in a Godzilla movie after the news got out that the monster was on his way to town. It was noisy and frantic. Pedestrians were forever dodging the oncoming cars whose drivers had no intention of slowing down or stopping to allow a safe street crossing. If you were handicapped or feeble in any way it would be risky to cross the street in the middle of the day.

We passed the local bus station where a crowd of people were pressed together urgently trying to board an old, rattle-trap bus. They appeared frenzied, with the person with the sharpest elbows and aggressive nature gaining ground toward the bus’ door. The few who were waiting patiently away from the door were at risk of being left behind.

There was a large round-about in the center of town and the vehicles would careen around the circle as though they were trying to qualify for the Indy 500. In the center of the weed-infested round-about was a small concrete obelisk with a rusty metal plaque that announced those who had died fighting for Algeria’s independence. The weeds were engulfing the steel fence that surrounded the monument. The gate was hanging from its hinges and the fence was begging for a coat of paint.

As we slowly made our way through town, a turban-headed man was casually pushing a large broom along the curb in a half-hearted attempt at street cleaning. I looked down a side street where several goats were eating at a pile of garbage stacked along the side of a building and a couple of kids were kicking a tin can along the cracked pavement. The other streets were equally colorless and immediately forgettable. Most were only wide enough for one car and they all sported narrow sidewalks where garbage had been carelessly tossed out of doors and windows. Some streets looked as though they had recently held a litter festival, either that or a ticker-tape parade had just passed by. It appeared that the local inhabitants may have taken a few moments off from their coffee-drinking to add plastic bags, cigarette boxes and a wide assortment of trash to the bland street scene. It was immediately apparent to me that Setif was never going to be assembling a delegation to win the bid for the next summer Olympics.

I asked Muhammad about the crowds of idle men and he said that the unemployment rate was above 40% and steadily going up. Houari Boumedienné was president and presiding over a socialistic, authoritative government that was hopelessly bureaucratic and corrupt. Jobs were scarce and salaries were low.

In addition to the crowded sidewalks and bus station, we saw 25 or 30 people waiting in line at a Sonatrach petrol station along the main route through town. Each person held an empty gas can or plastic jug. I asked about the mass of people and Muhammad said that they were waiting to buy fuel oil for cooking and heating. Bert, with many years of foreign travel experience, and noting the onset of the cold weather that comes to the high plains during winter, said, John, those people waiting in line for heating oil, they aren’t going to put up with that for very long. When you see all these people waiting in line like that, you are looking at the seeds of revolution. In the years ahead, he predicted, many of the Algerian people would be fighting the corrupt government in order to gain a better life.

Muhammad agreed, saying that the local people were unhappy with the government in Algiers. He said that the men of Setif and the surrounding region were known for fierce fighting during the eight-year Algerian War of Independence. I politely pretended to believe him, although watching that day, the men aimlessly walking arm-in-arm along the overcrowded streets or sitting at the sidewalk cafes drinking coffee, it was hard to imagine that they would take up a fierce fight over anything.

Tensions between the Algerians and the French colonists began immediately following World War II, when in May of 1945, during the celebration of the end of the war, clashes broke out between the local celebrants and the French police. During the five-day uprising, as many as 45,000 Muslims were reported to have been killed by the French Army. The Setif outbreak was a turning point in Algeria’s relationship with France and eventually led to their fight for independence that ended with the signing of the Evian Accords in 1962.

Muhammad, who was about 50, was in his late 30s at the time of the fighting. He was of medium height, well-built with big forearms and fat, strong fingers. He had olive skin and jet-black hair and a thick, heavy-duty mustache. He told us that he and his father and uncles did not like being controlled by the French and that they were part of the unrest that developed around Setif. He was stern-looking and he didn’t smile very often, but Bert and I liked him and I think he liked us. He was a good, careful and considerate driver. He was one of the few drivers that would stop and allow pedestrians to cross the street in front of him, unlike other drivers who seemed intent on mowing down pedestrians and animals alike. In fact, they seemed to achieve a perverse satisfaction watching people scatter like chickens as they scrambled out of the way of an onrushing car or truck. Coming from California, where pedestrians had the right-of-way, I was shocked to see people running for their lives when crossing the street.

While searching for a permanent place to live, we spent a few weeks at the National Hotel in the heart of town. The four-story hotel’s best days were several decades past. The old, rickety elevator was manually operated and it clanked and clattered as it traveled between the floors. We were afraid of getting trapped in it, so taking Bert’s advice, we always used the stairs.

My room was the sort of place that made Alfred Hitchcock’s Bates Motel look sophisticated and well appointed. The first time I opened the door, a stale, musty odor hit me square in the face. It had cold tile floors and the furnishings were battered and bare. There was a small wooden table and a single 30-watt light bulb hung naked from the ceiling. In one corner a chipped and rusty sink was accompanied by a thin, dirty hand towel. The bed, judging by its fragrance and shape, had only recently been vacated by a horse. It sagged so severely that it was like sleeping in the bottom of a dugout canoe. The room had no heat and at night it was so cold you could see your breath. A small, dark gray, rigor mortis-infused sparrow was firmly attached to the iron bars outside my window. There was no bathroom. The toilet was a hole in the floor of a small, smelly, dimly lit room down the hall. The National Hotel wasn’t going to make the Conde’ Nast list of famous hotels.

The hotel’s restaurant was on the second floor in a ballroom-sized room that looked as if it had been decorated by the French at considerable expense in 1950. Thick, heavy draperies hung ceiling to floor across the windows permitting little sunlight. It was furnished with heavy, dark tables and hard, uncomfortable chairs. The place was always nearly empty and so we usually ate breakfast alone or with an occasional, solitary diner at the evening meal. The food was heartily mediocre and the service was usually provided by a mute, surly, unsmiling waiter wearing a wrinkled white shirt and stained black pants. His slowness taxed our patience and often our sanity. The menu was limited, particularly for breakfast when we had cold toast with over-cooked scrambled eggs. The orange juice