Different Arthur, Different Avalon, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #127

May 11, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 6 Comments

Dear Art,
Our records show that you stayed in our fine hotel this week.  I hope you enjoyed your stay.  Is there anything we could have done to make your stay more enjoyable?
The Management, Avalon Inn Warren, Ohio

Sir or Madam,
Your hotel was really hysterical.  That probably isn’t a piece of feedback you get very often.  Allow me to explain.  I stayed in your hotel along with my parents.  We had two rooms that were supposedly the same.  They were across the hall from each other.  Their room was dramatically better than mine.  I get that you aren’t a big chain or anything but if you decide your rooms are going to have microwaves in them don’t cheap out and stop one room short.  I also didn’t get a lock on my door or a do not disturb sign.  If I didn’t know any better I would think my room was the one you kept available to shoot horror movies in.  And no box of tissues?  I had to blow my nose into toilet paper like an animal.

I will say something kind about your hotel.  It isn’t in Detroit.  I know most people have heard about Detroit’s struggles in the news or as the punch line to any of a million jokes.  None of that accurately simulates the experience of seeing it for oneself.  It was amazingly sad.  Stunning that something like that had happened to a major American city.  A city that had previously existed in my brain as, “that place that’s struggling but at least still has teams in all four major sports.”  Sacramento might lose the Kings but they’ll still be a far sight better off than Detroit.  So, yeah, thanks Avalon Inn for being a four-hour drive away from Detroit.

I suppose I should qualify this by saying I was predisposed to dislike this experience.  I was there to scatter my grandfather’s ashes.  The happy part of the trip had come and gone.  Yes, Detroit was part of the happy part of the trip (we went to the very fun, not at all depressing, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village).  It was a stressful and sad two nights we spent staying in your hotel.  Perhaps it was worth something just to have us all laugh at something simple.  Something like a son’s combination of disbelief and annoyance as he discovers a feature his room is missing with each trip to his parents’ room.  That might have been worth the whole thing.  But really, get some nicer equipment in your fitness center.  Or at leas take down the posters of the machines you took out.  That was just cruel.