‘Throwback Thursday’ – Living in a Motel (1995)

It’s a Thursday, so why not a ‘Throwback Thursday’ story. I’m running out of them, but I wanted to do this one where it has some relevance today. Maybe I was naive, maybe it was safer 20 years ago to be a weekly resident at an inexpensive motel? Here are my thoughts if you read on.

When I first moved to Maine almost 20 years ago, I lived at the Village Green motel on Wilson Street in Brewer and after a few weeks moved across the street to the Brewer Motor Inn where I could cook and have a guest or two over. Both places served their purpose at the time, and I lived there for about six months. Did that make me statistically homeless? I’m not sure.

It was kind of nice in a way to live there, for $80-$100 a week, I had cable, a clean bed, heat, power and housekeeping all included. Why did I stay so long at those two motels? They were next door to my jobs, a radio gig on Acme and The Big Apple store on Wilson St.

How does this relate today?

Almost everyday there is a drug bust in a cheaper motel. Today in Biddeford/Saco, a few days ago there was one in Lewiston and one Brewer a day or two before that.

Never once did it ever cross my mind that anyone in the motel would be dealing drugs, maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t but I never felt scared or like there was anything like that going on.

Along with thrifty travelers, the motel had a number of weekly residents, there were a few who I felt may have been alcoholics as neighbors and the only reason I thought that was by selling buying beer constantly at the convenience store I was working for at the time.

It’s sad, because today I think twice about where I stay now even when traveling, and I’m not sure I would do the weekly thing anymore at a motel. It has gotten scary just in this past year.

Anyway, that life was a few months shy of 20 years ago and so distant in the rear view mirror that it seems like a different lifetime but I felt safe. So yes, I think the world is in some ways getting scarier.