Naming a motor lodge.

I first fell in love with these old one level motor lodges while living in the mountains. Generally speaking, they're unattractive gray-white concrete block buildings with concrete terraces where no roses grow. The rooms smell empty and scrubbed even of air. They are cold and the sign indicates this with the promise of "air-conditioned rooms." Conditioned air. Skinner would be so proud. The ice buckets are covered in a paper that resembles brown wood, and the paper peels with age around the bottom. The Gideon's bible is faithfully tucked into a bedside drawer. And they are motor lodges, not hotels or motels. Motor lodges. I see, in my mind, a wood-panelled station wagon parked outside room number eight. Father leans against the bumper, a pipe hanging from his mouth, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on a pamphlet for Crystal Caverns or Stone Mountain. Billy and Susie chase Scamp, the little tan and white terrier. Mother is unpacking ham and cheese sandwiches on white Wonder bread.

What I love about these old lodges are the names. Take away the signs - hand-painted or simple neon - and any concrete heap could be any other. But the signs are so hopeful. I love "Whispering Pines." That one's up near Cherokee. The three neon green pines are bent just at the tips, one whispering to the next what the wind just whispered to her. Then there's "The Rose Bud." Or "The Indian Maiden." Of course, that one has a lovely shining squaw, thin with black hair that blows in the same direction that the pines bend. "Thunderbirds" are ubiquitous with their red and orange native symbology painted or glowing on the sign, whether you're driving along Rte. 66 through the southwest or Hwy. 95 through the southeast. And the clever "Dewdrop Inn" would feel out of place in any but the most rural areas where that sort of joke can still hold its own. Anywhere else and it would be crushed by the cynical with their eyes like steamrollers.

There is something light-hearted and whimsical about these remnants. They nestle into wooded areas with farmer's markets and crafts stores. They don't concern themselves with terror alert levels. Or free coffee. Or doughnuts. All they offer are cold, empty rooms. But those rooms are the closest thing, in my mind, to a cloister or a monk's cell. You enter and the conditioned air freezes off your worries like warts. Plink. They fall to the ground. Beyond the door, beyond the state forests full of whispering pines and crystal caverns, there are problems. But within the concrete walls of the motor lodge, you are as safe as any fifties child in a nuclear fallout shelter.

And they also remind me of Lolita and Humbert Humbert. And that can't be a bad thing.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Vladmir Nabakov

Without a doubt, one of the greatest paragraphs in literary history.