Room 3, The Oakwood Motel

My Name is Frank Applegate. While growing up my family owned a small stand-alone motel just outside of town here in central Pennsylvania. The Oakwood Motel was one of those strip buildings built in the late fifties with 9 rooms on either side you could drive right up to. If it weren’t for the small motel office and apartment we lived in behind it, there could have been 20 rooms, but the office and the apartment behind took up the space of two of the rooms.

Who we rented to changed over the years. My Pa used to say how it was all families and couples in the early days during most of the 60’s, but that it changed when the Holiday Inns and the Ramada’s moved in with their swimming pools and attached restaurants and such. Then traveling sales representatives kept us alive during the seventies. Most of that business eventually went to the Motel 6’s and places like that in the 80’s. After that what my Pa called the “sin trade” filled us up so well we even raised our rates and life got easier. The sin trade was husbands and wives who rented a room for a day but only used it for a couple of hours. Of course they weren’t each other’s husbands and wives.

I worked around the motel all my life. I was about 12 when the salesmen were becoming few and far between, and the “sin trade” was steppin’ up. I was always warned by my Ma and Pa to forget anyone I ever saw at the hotel and never to say anything dumb while at school or in town like “It was nice seeing you at our motel the other day, Mr. Smith,” or “When ya’ comin’ back out to the Oakwood Mrs. Peterson.”

One day when I was about 15 years old my job for the day was to replace a vanity wall mirror that had broke in Unit 16.

Now, it’s important to understand that all the bathroom fixtures were arranged along the common back wall of the rooms so the plumbing could be shared with the room behind it on the other side of the strip building. In our most recent remodeling we put an extra sink and vanity on the outside of the bathrooms, but still along the shared back wall. This was so our not-married couples could have some privacy in the bathroom while the other person still had a sink to use. It was one of these outside-the-bathroom vanity mirrors I was replacing.

To save wallboard the remodeler inset the heavy 3’ by 4’ mirrors right against the studs with no wallboard behind them. I noticed when I was removing the glass shards still cemented to the studs that I could see through the reflective mirror backing into room 3 on the other side, especially with the room so bright as it was by natural light of the daytime while I was fixin’ it.

When I installed the new mirror I used only the edge frame clips and screws. I didn’t use any construction cement. It was such a pain to remove the glass shards I want wanted to be able to replace it quickly if it broke again. I also wanted to be able to remove it quickly.

After that, I tried to make sure there was something that needed to be fixed or cleaned in room 16 as often as possible to make it unavailable for rent. It was always the last one rented. When I had time of my own I would got to room 16 and have the mirror off the wall in about 30 seconds.

Sometimes the people in room 3 we old and fat. They usually turned off all the lights so I couldn’t see anything. Judging from the few like that that left the lights on it was probably a good idea for them turn them off. I didn’t mind that I couldn’t’ see those people so much, but I could still enjoy listening to the slapping and grunting.

Sometimes it was two younger people. Not younger than me, ya’ know. ALL these people were old to me. Occasionally it was an older women with younger men, but I gotta’ say it was as often as not a man with a woman that was maybe ten years younger than him. When that’s the way it was they usually left the lights on. Yeah!

A couple of times I saw teachers from school and I was constantly amazed how many of the folks I knew from church.

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