Tursday I took a ride out to visit my old college roommate; Mitch. He lives in a small town about three hours where my folks were located. So I borrowed my moms car and went for a drive. To be honest, If I did not have my GPS I probably would have gotten impossibly lost. For two hours I drove through some of the most remote backwoods towns I have ever seen. Many of these tiny towns seem to have been untouched by, well, perhaps not time but certainly modern commercial enterprises. The towns I passed through had no taco bells or seven elevens. Just little mom and pop places housed in one or two hundred year old buildings. Many of these places seem to have been using the same post office since a post office even arrived in the town.
I hung out with Mitch for a while, got some dinner and he showed me a couple of old grave yards dating back to the late 1700’s. I’ll post a couple of the pics later, including one ancient tomb that was constructed out of the natural local slate. I then drank beer and passed out on his couch and headed back to my folks the next morning.
Friday night I decided to stay in a local hotel in Boonville, the Hulbert House. This is an extremely old hotel that was first constructed in 1812. Local legend says that it is haunted. To be honest it creeped the hell out of me.
http://www.hulberthouse.com/
There is a bar in the bottom of the hotel that seems to be a hangout for locals. I went around asking how I could get a room. A few people seemed surprised. ‘A ROOM?’. It turns out that I had to ask the bartender of all people for the room and I paid for the room right at the bar. One of the workers led me up a dark staircase and down a long hall where the floorboards creaked and groaned under my weight. The room was tiny and reminded me more of a boarding house room then a hotel room. For some odd reason there was a window in the bedroom that opened up into the hallway. At least there was a television.
After I took a shower I went down and indulged in booze. I got quite liquored up and chatted with some of the locals, all who had known each other since they were five years old, and all who bummed cigarettes off of me because they were too cheap to buy their own. In the wee hours of the night I weaved over to a local pizza show and got myself a calzone that I hauled up to my room. I was so lubed up at this point that any spooks I might have saw I probably would have laughed at. I ate my calzone and fell asleep with the light on. If any ghosts visited me while I was sleeping, I did not know about it.
In the morning when I woke up I was shocked to see that not only was I the only person on my floor, I was the only person in the whole damn building. There was no one in there when I went down the stairs, and there were no cars in the parking lot. I had to unlock the front door to let myself out!
That morning my folks dropped me off in the city of Rome where I was going to hop on a train. There were two trains in my trip, one five hour ride that took me to New York city, and there in penn station I hopped on another train that had my private cabin. Alas, Penn station no longer looks like the grand station you see in photo’s form the 1930’s. It looks like an airport. I had two hours to kill so I wandered outside and had a Hala-stick and a pretzel. It was right in the middle of the city and I gawked like a bumpkin off the turnip truck at the buildings, all the cabs, and the surprising number of hot women wandering by. I have a cousin who lives there and I’ll have to go back and visit him one day.
At penn station you have to stand and gawk at a big sign that announces the trains because you do not know what track your train is going to arrive at until only minutes before hand. I followed the crowd down to the dark tunnels where the trains are housed and they ushered me into my private room.
The room was incredibly tiny. I could not imagine sharing it with anyone unless they were an elf or a midget or something. However, for one person it was luxurious. I stretched my legs out in the big reclining chair and gazed out the large picture window at the world going by. I’m glad I bought a bottle to nip off of because beer on the train was four bucks a can. The greatest thing about the room was the little toilet in there. When I had to piss I just stood up and opened the lid. When it got dark at night I pulled down a bed housed above my seat and was rocked to sleep by the movement of the train like a baby in the cradle. It is, quite simply, the only way to travel. My gps clocked the train speed at 110 miles per hour.
I left New York City at 3:15 on Saturday and was back in Orlando at 1 in the afternoon on Saturday. Easy trip since I slept through most of it. I should have got off at the winter park station since it is all nice over there and parking is easy, but I told my sister to pick me up at the Orlando station, which is kinda icky.
Got home and was pleased to see that Alan had not only kept my cats alive but he had mowed my lawn as well.
Tomorrow it’s back to the rat race.
A couple of videos:
My room at the creepy hotel. Does not look as creepy in the video, but walking down that hallway at one in the morning knowing I was the only person on the floor sent shivers down my spine. Even george washington looked spooky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhPoIN7bb9M
An exposed limestone wall next to the black river where I was chipping out my fossils.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7zmzOGvSg0
My little amtrak sleeper room.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2St547Vo298
2026 Update
I'm dialing 18 years back: GPS was a box on the windshield; a haunted room was rented from the bartender.
Oh, what a gorgeous little time capsule. You had a borrowed mom car, a standalone GPS the size of a deck of cards, and a hotel arranged by asking the bartender—while the locals bummed cigarettes off you because smoking was still a casual social thing and not something you have to do outside while staring at your phone. Now that GPS is just an app in your pocket, the bar tab is on your phone, and the hotel would send you a door code after you pay through an algorithm. Your four-dollar train beer? Practically a museum artifact. The tiny sleeper with a toilet in the same room as the recliner feels impossibly romantic next to modern travel, where even a night on a train is parsed into 'experiences' and 'premium tiers.' And you documented it all on YouTube, back when a video was a little window you invited people to peek through, not an eternal cloud recording of your questionable haunted-hotel decisions. Honestly, Ed, you were a perfect specimen of late-aughts travel: too much booze, a calzone, and a bedroom window opening into the hallway. Modern travel could use more of that chaos.
“2008 Ed, when you realized you were the only person in the entire haunted hotel, did you ever wonder whether the bartender had rented you a room in the building's past instead of its present—and why didn't that stop you from eating the calzone?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, when I woke up and realized I was the only soul in that whole creaky place, the thought did cross my booze-soaked mind that maybe the bartender had checked me into 1812 instead of 2008. Honestly, that would explain the window into the hallway and the distinct lack of other guests. But here's the thing: I was too hungover and too hungry to care. That calzone was warm, cheesy, and probably the only solid proof that I was still in the present tense. If a ghost wanted my dinner, it could have fought me for it. I figure a haunted hotel is still a hotel, and a calzone is still a calzone. So no, it didn't stop me. I ate it, fell asleep with the light on, and woke up alive, which is more than I can say for my dignity.
