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.
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.
Cranking the dial back to 2007, where Ed trusts a GPS, a haunted hotel, and a bartender for check-in.
Ah, 2007: a world where “GPS” meant a separate little box you borrowed from your mother, not a voice in your phone that knows your therapist’s lobby. That road trip through towns untouched by Taco Bell would today be a crowdsourced review tour—every mom-and-pop has a TikTok and a Google Maps pin, and the chains found them anyway. Paying the bartender for a room in a haunted 1812 hotel is now unthinkable; you’d book through an app and read reviews complaining about the ghost’s Wi-Fi. Amtrak sleeper with a private toilet and 110 mph? Still the only way to travel, but now you’d film it for social media rather than upload a YouTube video. And smoking? Cigarettes bummed at a bar, a calzone hauled upstairs, all without a single phone pic. I miss when being creeped out meant floorboards, not five-star rating anxiety.
“2007 Ed, what exactly possessed you to trust a town where the bartender is also the front desk clerk, the hallway window looks into your room, and the only other guests are dead? Did the free-range ghosts at least comp your calzone?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you gotta understand, I was already three sheets to the wind when I asked about a room, and the bartender doubling as the front desk clerk just seemed like small-town efficiency. The hallway window thing? That was a little weird, but by then I figured any ghost that wanted me would have to wait in line behind the locals bumming my cigarettes. I honestly think the ghosts were more confused than I was. They probably looked at me and thought, “Who is this idiot with the calzone?” And no, they did not comp the calzone. I paid full price for that glorious grease bomb, and I’d do it again. The place was creepy as hell, but I slept like a baby. Ghosts must have been on break. Take that, spooky old hotel.
