Every hotel or full service motel has its own distinct personality at night. The tone can be set by the night desk clerk as he or she mixes it up on a nightly basis with the regulars and the passers through. The Valley Inn Motel on Central Blvd. owned by the Valley Inn & Country Club was in full decay mode by the mid-sixties when Paul Sanders and I worked the front desk. The regulars knew what we weren't and the first-timers would soon be underwhelmed. My most frequent role as bellman was to move guests from one hot room to another. Entering the replacement room, I would quickly turn down the thermostat. Noise would be made as if cooling would soon occur. Eventually, guests would stop complaining and simply go to sleep.
Our regulars included Mr. Fried Chicken. An auditor thought that to be an odd name on the registry until it was explained. Twice a week he would come in with a different lady. At about 2 a.m. he would order two fried chicken dinners which I would have to pick up at Higgies, the only all night restaurant in Brownsville at the time.
Paul Sanders, the night desk clerk, was an Oregon State grad, the son of a Lutheran minister. He liked to talk philosophy and considered himself a citizen of the world. Paul had travelled extensively thoughout Mexico, had tired of a relationship with a profesora at the Universidad Nacional de Mexico and had taken the poorest paying, but most interesting job he found at the border. He collected $1.10 an hour for booking guests, checking up, answering the switchboard, pacifiying complainers and pontificating all night his world view. I claimed .80 per hour plus non-existent tips for putting two sofa cushions together in the manager's office and sleeping till morning. I would keep one ear open to the lobby conversation in case it interested me enough to join in. Of course, I was always on call. Typically, I would be repeating the room number to myself as I headed down the long hall, finally realiizing what my mission was after many steps. In the morning I would have to take over the switchboard as Paul would be seriously trying to balance the night's books. The switchboard connected all of the motel rooms and all of the country club phones. I would have to find a long distance operator for any long distance calls. For room to room, it was a simply matter of plugging a flexible cord into that room's slot. A mechanical timer reminded us to issue wake up calls if we remembered to set the timer.
Although the Valley Inn was run down, the Travel Lodge across the street was more so. Plus we had the connection with the country club. Dean Martin was supposed to own one of the units at the country club. His pending arrival was the occasional rumor that never materialized. My big celebrity guest was country singer Rusty Draper. I had to move him and his wife from a hot motel room to a suite at the country club. The large number of bags I loaded created visions of a five dollar tip in my head. Draper used his thumb to flip me a quarter from across the room. "Get yourself a beer kid."
Santiago Name, the classical guitarist with the fake last name pronounced "na.may" usually serenaded a girl in the parking lot after the club closed. Paul always gave the nonpaying guest a room not yet tidied up by the maids. Santiago also played at Michael's Pizza next to the Gibson store further down Central.
Pierre, the shrimper from Morgantown, LA would entertain us with stories. He was a 5'3" Cajun man of steel. He kept a wash cloth and an 8 penny nail in his pocket to demonstrate to anyone who would watch how he could drive a nail into a board with his palm.
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