Hotels: The Bottom of The Barrel

I spent three years as a business road warrior in the Southeast and have done more than my fair share of recreational travel. The two worst hotels I have experienced are:

1. The Good Night Motel, in Birmingham, AL
2. The Howard Johnson's in Salisbury, NC

Both were equally nasty and appeared to have been constructed in the late 1950's, during a strike of skilled construction workers. Both nearly resulted in my untimely death.

The Good Night Motel was the scene of my nearly having been shot in a gang-related theft of a tractor trailer. The details are too bizarre to even attempt to recreate here. The only two things that saved my life were: a) I had a valid driver's license and b) The cops finally showed up. It was one of the strangest nights of my life.

The Ho-Jo in North Carolina was overrun by 30 construction workers, all very drunk and all very Mexican. This was at the beginning of the Mexican-American population explosion. These guys felt like they needed to prove that they were authentic Latin Badasses. I nearly ended up in a fist fight just trying to find the Coke machine.

I left both establishments around 2:00 in the morning. Door wide open and the key in the lock. I figured there was no way someone could break into those rooms and make them any worse.