Anomalies

Savage Hotel: Part 6

Almost free

We almost –almost-got to leave the Comfort Inn barely two months into our stay when a relative breezed into town.

To spare him possibly embarrassment, I will call him Uncle Eddy.

Eddy arrived on March 16^th, 2002, and stayed until March 20^th – the start of spring, incidentally- when he departed.

My diary reveals glimpses of that visit and events related to it:

2:27 P.M. Uncle [Eddy] is in town and he’s currently –at this moment- looking for an apartment for us, accompanied by mom. *

12:15 A.M. Well, just after four [yesterday], mom & [Eddy} returned to the hotel. No rent deal done yet, but one good candidate was found, as well as another one that was o.k. They’re going out to see three others later on this morning ... P.S. Almost forgot: [Eddy] got Lee & I job interview clothes plus Lee a pair of good shoes at the Burnsville Target yesterday. Need to look elsewhere for my size of shoes.**

2:31 A.M. The apartment is a go. It’s in Burnsville, and it’s actually a townhome.

5:03 P.M. Well, the townhome deal didn’t [gel] at the last minute, so we’ll be here for a bit more.

Looking for a job is an interesting experience. [Eddy] took me out first to the workforce center in Shakopee today, then [we] looked for a place that was hiring in Savage, found it, learned the guy to talk to had left for the day but applications might have been left out (we didn’t find any), then [we] went to a job fair at Knollwood Mall that we’d heard about at the workforce center.

[Eddy also] took Lee job hunting yesterday.

I remember that visit to the place hiring in Savage; I can still hear Eddy calling out “Hello?” as we walked in trying to find somebody and then met the man mentioned in my diary.

I appreciated the clothes (though we never go around to finding shoes that fit me size 15EEEE feet) but what I treasured the most was when he took us out to eat at The Cracker Barrel and Old Country Buffet; being able to taste hot food and drink soda pop was quite a treat after weeks of food shelf fare that kept you alive but tasted very bland.

I was sure sad not to be able to leave the hotel, though; I was so certain I’d even told the owner we’d soon be gone.

So Eddy’s plans of helping us out sputtered out like a damp fuse and we resumed our lonely journey through the last stages of homelessness.

Savage Hotel: Part 5

Pleasures -and problems- of television in close confinement

Once upon a time, I was a big TV watcher; after a semi-fallow time, I roared back one last time into couch potatoville.

That place was Comfort Inn, Savage, Minnesota.

Apart from seeking jobs, walking, and lounging by the swimming pool, TV was about all there was for us to do holed up in room 114. Its glow could frequently be glimpsed through the drawn blinds of that shoebox as it droned on and on being flicked from channel to channel day and night.

The pages of my diary reflect the positive side of all this time in front of the tube:

Last night I surprised mom by joining her for “Eastenders” and hugely enjoyed it … On Wednesday, we watched the last bit of [What Lies Beneath] and the second part of the remake of [Dial M For Muder; A Perfect Murder], Wednesday night I saw a bit of [The Great Gatsby] too. Early yesterday morning, I watched an episode of “Househunters” with mom.* … Now for the good news: last night it was “Eastenders[.]” Tonight it was Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Marvelous film! Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier –along with everyone else- were phenomenal. **.… On a lighter note, I watched an episode of “Dragonball Z” with Lee last night and virtually all of an episode of “Strong Medicine” with mom (and Lee too, who joined us after a shower) earlier this morning …*** Saw part of a “Dragonball” and another “Dragonball Z” episode [yesterday]. Lee & I even tried to watch Tora! Tora! Tora! on the Fox Movie channel but the TV Guide Channel must have botched the listing or the copy of Tora! Tora! Tora! to be shown busted and another film needed to be run ASAP in [its] place. [The movie Tony Rome was what was shown that night instead of Tora! ]… **** {Bite The Bullet] is om Turner Classioc movies at the moment. It’s a quiet moment in the picture so I have it on mute as I write. *****

Then references to movies and TV fade out of my diary as I watched a video store’s worth of movies and regularly watched several TV shows: “Six Feet Under”, “Sex And The City”, “Nero Wolfe”, “Eastenders”, and most favorite of all, “Northern Exposure.” Along with occasional episodes of other shows I felt comfortable sampling.

Not all was a bed of roses for me, however, thanks to my intense likes and dislikes about the medium.

I remember without fondness one night during the early days that, just after we’d gotten back from someplace, I’d just settled down on my bed assuming mom wouldn’t turn on the TV … when she went and picked up the remote and on came an image of a white dude and a black dude sitting on a couch … with one of those shite laugh tracks booming out during one of those contrived “pauses” actors on those laughter-addled shows have to do! The ersatz mirth stabbed my ears and stung my intelligence; Mom! You know I don’t like this stuff! rang the horrified thought across my mind as I fled for someplace quieter in the hotel.

Man did I wish to be out of there before the Oscars (which I think really should be called the "Phonyscers", but I digress.) God how I didn't want to have to contend with for even a minute such a loud, shallow, program chock full of everything from tasteless comedy to sanctimonious grandstanding. We almost got out before then (a story for part six) but, alas, we did not and I barely scraped through Oscar night thanks to a combination of time at the pool and time showering afterward, but I did ignite a fight when I switched the TV from ABC to the TV Guide Channel, which left a poison cloud over our screening of the Oscar-winner Giant late that night.

Later in the stay, each night after I got back at 11 P.M. from the pool I stood a chance of running into a goddam “Brit com” better called “To The Loud Laughter Born” that had tormented me in my childhood whenever it used to blare on the dining room TV. Worst of all was the time we were watching something else and mom made me flick over to that dumbass TV preacher (in my opinion) Kenneth Copeland, and lucky me I got a taste of his religious stand-up comedy yapping about something to do about his kids not being ready for church (boy, if you ask me, that kind of crap is really about God. STFU you aggrogant buffoon!) It was so aggravating it made me duck into the bathroom until that goddam travesty of a show about God was flicked away from; even worse was the late summer night I kept getting asked to flip over to PBS’ “Stage On Screen: The Women” as I tried to watch the History Channel’s “History’s Mysteries” episode about the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment.” God I hated that one asshole who kept bellowing with laughter like a laugh track in the snoot-fulls I kept getting of that flipping play until at long last I said to myself “Enough” and left, igniting another fight when I returned, but hell, that was par for the course by that point in our cerebral extended stay.

And if you liked that little brawl over the telly, then you’re gonna love this: I remember without fondness one early Sunday morning in June or July when I kept trying to turn the TV off after we’d watched several movies, always to the ire of mom, who wanted to stay up and watch religious programming like the show run by another dumbass (in my opinion) preacher: Creflo Dollar (forgive me God, but I hope he and Copeland one day wind up as busted and broke as Jim Baker over some malfeasance or sex scandal; how I hated having their religious crap hanging over my head thanks to their stupid TV shows!)

Religious shows? Ugh! I’d thought that night, then gave her the remove and left, mad as hell. She wanted to see them, bit I was not going back to the bad days at our old home where Christianity-related television got crammed down my throat despite how it’s irrelevant “made for TV” tone and feel only ticked me off and gave me an intense dislike for organized religion.

I remember well how I walked around the playground of the Marion W. Savage Elementary School as dawn broke cursing out in silence (and maybe even under my breath; can’t recall for sure) all and sundry of that long, drawn-out stay and all the threats stalking my peace of mind via television each and every day and night trapped down there due to my sharp hearing and sensitivity to brain-dead crap.

When I got back that morning, mom grumbled “Who is it? Oh, the emperor is back.” as I entered Room 114 as it lay in darkness at last with everyone in bed falling into what passed for “sleep” in those cerebral days. Still steamed, I changed and got into bed, feeling very unhappy inside.

TV aggravated me to the point that I couldn’t relax in front of it unless I had the remote control in my hand, thus displaying a trait of the male species that I later learned about from John Tesh on his radio program (which, on a lighter note, reminded me a lot about the show John Corbett’s character Chris Stevens did on “Northern Exposure.”) I hated it when the ads for crap shows like the laugh track-addled, brain-dead piece of junk “Street Smarts” would blare the night we watched a Sherlock Holmes movie on a local channel and mom had the remote (if you ask me, if those two slovenly “stars” of that crappy show got mowed down during taping one day, I’d say it would be a cause for celebration, the sleazy bastards …)

I swear to God, if it weren’t for my time spent poolside and out walking, I would have gone out of my mind. Being in close confinement with an always-yapping idiot box preyed so hard on my mind that I felt mild anxiety recently while taking notes about it during a stop at the Savage Public Library recently on a memory refresher trip into Savage.

Damn it all, but the TV was more a fault line than an escape vehicle for me during that long damn stay in that cramped room in that small hotel away down in the Minnesota River Valley.

Not ever again, I swear to God …

However, I am happy to repor that my mom now is very respectful of my TV likes and dislikes, and that in return, she no longer needs to worry about me hogging the remote, because, except for "Dexter", the only stuff I watch now is on YouTube.

Savage Hotel: Part 4

Sagas of the homeless

As our stay at Savage extended into its second month, I began to learn more about my fellow long-term stays.

As I scribbled in my diary late one night in early February, 2002:

1:49 A.M. The girl who’s family also was evicted is named Tristin, I think. I may have got her name wrong last time. Her mom doesn’t work here, but at Walmart.

Tristin’s dad is in the hospital brain dead from a car injury suffered in 1990, so her mom is the sole support of the family.

They were run out of their apartment around Thanksgiving. Unfairly run out, too.

Stars above. One always thinks they’ve got it the worst … only to meet another person who has it even worse than they do.

May God bless Tristin and her family with abundance beyond measure!*

Speaking of lost homes, one night early in our stay going south from the charity in Wayzata that was keeping us housed bound for Savage, we made a little detour:

“…. last night we swung through our old neighborhood and up Croftview around 8:30 P.M. Saw new cabinets in the kitchen area, as well as a glimpse into my old bedroom –couldn’t tell what was in it or what it was being used for, tho[ugh].**

I must have felt a deep longing inside as we drove by our old house, whose walls we had last lived within during those dark days in May, 2001, when the man I call Clyde Krebbs (i.e. “dad”) got us kicked out of it on purpose. God how I must have yearned to be back in my old bedroom and not shoehorned into a hotel room numbered 114 away down south in the Minnesota river valley within sight of grain elevators currently idled by winter and the freezing of the river.

Man, how I prayed hard for abundance and clung to dreams of it even amidst the ruins of my life, as I wrote once in my diary that February:

1:58 A.M. Soon the last [vestiges] of this nightmare Dad created will be long gone. Long gone. Soon we shall be in 18625 Minnetonka Blvd., Deephaven, Minnesota [here I even put in the zip code of this house we were daydreaming about north of the river.]

We may have jumped through man’s hoops, and are about to jump through some more, yes, but we three –nay all of us, know what really will be!

All in God’s hands. All of it. Every bit of it.

We’re almost done cleaning up the last big mess Dad made in our lives.

Little did I know I was over-optimistic when I wrote that last sentence quoted above, nor that just how long our extended stay would last … and that the Supreme Being would will we got no easy way out such as, say, a massive amount of money suddenly appearing inside that cracker box-sized hotel room.

The way out would be tough, tougher, even, than that Trista and her family faced.

Savage Hotel: Part 3

Weirder and weirder

In a fitting irony, I ran into somebody else in the same boat I was one night down by the hotel pool during what turned out to be only phase one of our extended stay at Comfort Inn, Savage, as my mom, my brother, and I struggled out of homelessness.

My diary tells the story better than my memory can:

“… and then I had the darndest conversation: a chat with a 16 year-old gal [whose] family is also homeless and living at the hotel –where her mom works – with their stuff in storage and out of reach due to no bongo bucks to pay it like ours [is.] [And] whom, to top it off, claimed to me she’d seen UFOs (and thinks she even may have been abducted[,] by gosh!) and other weird things! Why, she said there was a UFO over Burnsville in 1998 that she and some others saw. She said there were even two helicopters following the thing!

Somebody call J. Allen Hynek. Oops, sorry. The great UFOlogist is with us no more.

Seriously, I listened to it all with polite attention and saying things like “Good lord” (a la Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove [when Group Captain Mandrake is listening to General Ripper expound about the Communist plans to fluoridate water around the world]) as she talked animatedly about her experiences.

Now, the poor lass has some brain problems, so perhaps she is prone to see things, the poor girl, but it still was fascinating ‘cause I have not ever met someone who claimed to be a possible UFO abductee.*

Incidentally, towards the end of our long stay, I talked with an old fart out on the vest-pocket poolside patio who was full of crap about conspiracy theories and whatnot. But such weirdness was a fact of life for men ten years ago at that hotel.

Savage Hotel: Part 2

Continuing this series

It is amazing how you can get used to deprivation so much, you’d rather lie in the mud than be helped out of it even when opportunity comes. And damn is it sad how, when your life is out of control, you can do damn little to try to prevent the agonies you know will ensue thanks to that lack of control.

Both emotions burned inside me during the first phase of our stay at Comfort Inn, Savage, from Jaunary 22^nd to January 30^th, 2002.

A passage from my diary illustrates that fractured state of mind I had then:

And why have I wanted to get back on the road? Because I think it would help me decompress from all this angst. I sure hope it would, even if we’re sitting in a rest area [to sleep at.] *

So there I was, craving sleeping in our Chevy Suburban in a rest area instead of a bed even if it were in a hotel.

We eventually left, only to discover a local non-profit charity more than willing to put us up at … Comfort In,, Savage.

Back to Savage? No! I thought the day it happened (January 31^st, 2002). But yes, back we were going.

God how I agonized inside as we headed south across the causeway on Gray’s Bay between Wayzata and Minnetonka passing near –but not through- the house that by rights I should have been bound for to enjoy a nice, safe, storybook life, not bound to be crammed into a hotel room numbered 114 in the goddam Minnesota River valley!

I still can’t believe this even happened to me, looking back from the perspective of ten years later. I also confess a part of me still beats with resentment over the whole, sorry affair.

What is more, every fiber of my being knows that that hotel stay was the climax of the event that forever will be the line drawn across my life that divides all that was before it … and all that was to come.

Savage Hotel

Part One

In an article for Feo, I discussed being homeless and living in a Motel 6 at one point. * At the end of it I wrote:

“I ached to get the hell out of that place after our fight, and the next day we did just that … only wind up at another hotel I hated in another suburb; a continuation of our ugly situation which I will devote time to in this blog at a future date.”

However, looking over the story of this hotel stay, I realized A. it was worthy of a series of whole blog posts and B. it was not only an ugly time in my life, it is a story chock full of anomalies, because our situation was far from the norm considered acceptable by today’s society.

That said, I shall begin with a description of this hotel as if we were standing there looking at it and its surroundings:

The Culver’s across the street on Natchez Avenue has been remodeled, fancy three story apartments complete with underground parking and outdoor patios now stands on the south side of 123^rd Street west across from the hotel stand on what was once vacant property, and the hotel itself is painted tan and white now with the sign itself painted green proudly proclaiming the hostelry is a “Quality Inn.” To me, however, it still is what the front desk clerk called it ten years ago whenever he ‘d answer the phone: “Comfort Inn, Savage.”

The building itself is architecturally functional but sterile; you check in at a vest-pocket-sized lobby right next to the postage stamp-sized pool and spa area complete with an equally tiny outdoor sun deck surrounded by a wooden fence to prevent prying eyes from spying on male or female flesh as bathing suit-clad guests soak up some rays.

Behind the pool and lobby areas the hotel bumps up from two stories to finally three, each level topped with an gently sloping triangular-shaped roof which is punctuated with tiny exhaust popes.

Outside the lobby entrance Old Glory flaps whenever wind caresses the bluffs of the Minnesota River valley and all that has been built by humans in it. Finishing up the décor, plants both potted and in the ground flank the hotel on all sides like sentries guarding an army’s camp.

Across Lynn Avenue behind the hotel is an area virtually unchanged a decade after this anomalous, ugly time in my life spent in this Twin City suburb; there stands Dan Patch Liquors, A BP gas station, and the red and grey-painted L-shaped “Plaza West” strip mall which boasts –if you tally things up from left to right when facing it from the west- the Super USA Smokeshop, Speed-C-Mat Coin Laundry, two vacancies, Award Video, Jim’s Hair House, Pizza Man, and Ming Dragon.

They as much as the hotel marks this as the spot I was trapped in from late January to early August of 2002. This place which became the epicenter of the final phase of the worst time in my life, one which makes my life’s story an anomaly for many people: homelessness.

Our sad little traveling show first arrived here on Tuesday, January 22^nd, 2002, right after departing the Motel 6 in Richfield, flitting from one cheap hotel to another that at least had a pool and hot tub. God almighty, but I would have preferred sleeping in our Chevy Suburban instead; I knew damn good and well the friction that would result from being shoehorned into a single hotel room with a blaring television on half the time. God did I ever! But noooo, into that damned situation I had to go get again. Man oh man…

Beneath all the optimistic talk I infused my diary with, frequently my true feelings came bubbling up such as in this entry I made on Saturday, January 26^th:

I have become an expert on hostelries, yes, but gosh am I tired of them! I have lost being used to a home and benumbed into a living out of a suitcase life. Ugh! Ick! Ugh!

Not ever again will I have to go through this. Not ever again. **

Little did I know just how long the last sprint would be before I finally could fulfill that vow.