a motel above a slow river and a highway

Budget Inn – Canajoharie, New York

March, 2020 

My brother and I had been driving all around Upstate New York for days. It was just a few weeks before COVID-19 really reared its ugly head, but there was a sense amongst most people that something was up. We were looking for houses to buy, all of them in the range of 50 to 75 thousand dollars. This was also just a few weeks before the housing market skyrocketed, so you could still buy a house Upstate for very little money. We ended up closing on one not long after, but it’s important to know we didn’t know the market was going to do what it did, we just had good timing. Some might even say we were lucky. We’d pulled into a run-down motel I found online, and I was sitting in the parking lot thinking about the road map of my entire life, watching a striped grey cat lounge in the sun below the bumper of our rental car.

My brother, Christian, was in the lobby booking our room. The man who owned the place was a big guy who looked to be middle-aged and, like thousands of motel owners in the U.S., was born in India. He stood and talked and held himself like the businessman he was, wearing slacks, a collared shirt, and a tie. There was a photo of him shaking hands with our former President, Barack Obama, on the wall behind his desk. He saw me eyeing it and gave me a look, but didn’t explain. I didn’t inquire, but wish now that I would have. Him and my brother talked politics while I eyed an assortment of candies in a jar on the counter. I thought about taking one but then considered how long they may have been there and decided against it. The owner’s elderly mother sat on a couch and said nothing the entire time, but looked and listened intently to us. She was wearing all white with some flashy jewelry and seemed sweet and gentle-hearted. A television in the corner of the room was blasting ABC News.

The owner talked to us about how the prices of things there were still set from back in the 80’s. He said we could buy property cheap and sell it for a lot more money down the line. I wondered if that was his plan. This place was run-down, but the view of the Catskills and the river was probably worth a pretty penny.

“Things were better before the Beach-Nut Packing Company shut down,” he said, “But they gave the school district a big endowment, so now the schools are richer than the people.”

I got the sense this town, like so many others in the country, had been largely forgotten, left to a slow economic and social decline. One where young people moved away for better jobs, better education, a better sense of culture. Too, I wondered how motels like this stay in business and though it probably has to do with the people who live in them as permanent residents keeping them afloat. 

Our room number was 108 and it was “new”. It had two double beds and by no means gave the appearance or scent of being new. In fact, it smelled like the door had been kept closed for years while people chain-smoked cigarettes in it day in and out. It had its own sort of motel charm that way. There was a television blocking the mirror and a microwave on top of a mini-fridge, which I unplugged because it sounded horrible. A small, round table was shoved into a corner back by the bathroom where it seemed unlikely someone would want to sit. There wasn’t a chair in sight though, so I guess sitting really wasn’t a concern. Christian said something about the toilet bowl, and I peered through the door and saw it was sort of dirty. The ceiling in the bathroom had a slight leak, but it wasn’t raining and there wasn’t a unit above ours, so where the water was coming from was a mystery. I didn’t ask any questions. 

Despite some of the interior’s shortcomings, the exterior of the place had a great look. It included some of my favorite features of old motels. Single-story, rambling. Bad paint and cheap decorations. America! It had bright yellow trim and orange doors and sat high above the Mohawk River. A highway could be seen and heard a bit further into the distance.

I stepped back outside after settling in and wrote this from the stoop outside our room that separated it from the parking lot, the cat still sunbathing behind our car. My heart felt warm for the first time in a while. It was warm outside, too. I was comfortable in my jeans and a blouse. Spring was coming. I remember thinking an ice cold bottle of beer would have been the perfect addition to the moment. And, as I had this thought, a white two-door Ford F-150, maybe 1993, pulled up and whoever was in it handed a pack of beer to a woman who I believed lived a few doors down from ours. This was the kind of motel where people live, which was fine by me. It was part of the charm.

The water moved down in the river in no particular hurry. A freight train rolled by, blowing its horn. 

“Love you dad,” the beer woman said to the man in the F-150.

A dog barked and time moved at about the same pace as the water down in the river. Days could have passed there and I’m not sure I would have noticed the difference. There was a lawnmower in the parking lot. Not a lawn in sight. I wondered if someone used it to get around in place of a vehicle. I’d seen it done before. Two shopping carts sat in the parking lot, too. Not a store in sight. 

I wished the cat would come over so I could pet it, but the cat was completely indifferent to me, which I understood. 

“There’s a cat,” said Christian as he sat down next to me, lighting a cigarette. 

“I know,” I said. “It’s cute.”