Lyn Lifshin
The Man Who Collected Postcards of Holiday
Inns
Based on a Washington Post article
June 28, 1998
hundreds of them, in plastic sleeves -
aerial shots,
parking lots, some with people like
mannequins
around a pool. A lady with a mink
stole draped
over her chair in a Holiday Inn in
Memphis.
He pours thru them after a long day of
legal work,
alone in his office, smiles for the first
time all day
remembers an L shaped building off a
highway.
“It was the greatest trip of my
life.” Sidney Ohio,
July 1967. The sun low as the mint
green 1966
Plymouth Fury rolls out the gravel
driveway at
7:23, a sea of corn and wheat flashes by.
A man
in shirt sleeves with a woman in a
flowered blouse
sitting beside him, who will ration out
the baloney
sandwiches on buttered Wonder Bread.
The
Plymouth makes a turn and thru the
windshield,
a stretch of asphalt that reaches out
forever.
Thursday, the 20th of July, the summer
when
America had nearly half a million soldiers
in
Vietnam. Race riots like brush
fires. In a small
town: “Vacation Time Ladies slacks
for 2.99.”
The car smells of hot vinyl. No one
has air
conditioning. The car swerves thru
Kentucky
and Tennessee into Georgia as the sun
falls
behind them. He remembers his mother
saying no
to a small motel and wrinkling her nose
and then,
up ahead, deep green emerald and white
letters,
the curving yellow arrow: The Holiday Inn.
He
remembers pushing the door open and the
heat
disappearing. His lungs full of a
mist that tasted
like snow flakes, remembers running
barefoot
in the hall with an ice bucket to a huge
machine
where he flips up the lid and his head
jerks back
a couple of inches in surprise. A
field of diamonds,
that’s what it looked like.
Ice cubes clear as glass.
He watches his parents lounging in patio
chairs,
drinking gin and tonics, his father
lighting a Pall Mall,
his pale ankles in the moon light.
In the dark the 45
foot high Holiday Inn sign flickers to
light. 836 feet
of neon. Now, 30 years later,
Marriott, Hyatts,
Hiltons and even Holiday Inns blur, just a
shower
and a bed. Half the names in his address
book are
crossed out. He goes back to a box
of photographs,
500 faded old motels: “delightful
dining enjoyment
awaiting you at Holiday Inn of Worcester
in the
Persian Room restaurant.” It
was just before his
father walked out. He hasn’t seen
him for 18 years,
doesn’t know if he’s alive.
Like his father, he
works a lot, drinks his 4th Dewars that
the waitress
keeps refilling. He’s thinking
about that first Holiday
Inn. Smiles about jumping off the
diving board, having
fried chicken. His face lights up
thinking how his
father, who never said much, cheered when
he jumped.
If the motel is still there, it’s
what he’d love to get back to