Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Cruising Route
66
“Come aboard;
we’re inspecting you…”
-
Paraphrasing
a line from the Love Boat theme
Foreign-owned
bulk carriers of humans have permitted a number of those humans to come to
grief the last few years, tragedies which apparently seldom interrupt the
clinking of the coins in the counting-houses of the owners.
Neither
do those appointed to protect American interests and lives seem much interested
in the seaworthiness of flag-of-convenience ships; in this they are not unlike
their fellow civil servants who pretend to oversee slaughterhouses in the
middle west. The democratically-elected
government of the United States is no more concerned with lives than was the
board of directors of the White Star Line.
Until
the MV Lyubov Orlova phase of cruising
is over, vacationers might want to reconsider the Great American Highway, the
ownership of which has not yet been surrendered to our masters in China. To advance the cause of stayin’ alive by
stayin’ in the USA, a few conspirators recently gathered around a battered
table in a dank cellar illuminated only by a dripping candle and drew up a
manifesto on why a motel room along Route 66 is far superior to a
prettily-decorated cell lost somewhere along a confusing corridor of identical
cubes on Deck 14C:
1.
A
motel never needs lifeboats.
2.
Motel
toilets not only flush, they flush into a functioning waste disposal system,
not into the hallways.
3.
There
is no possibility of a motel sinking at sea.
4.
Motel
guests don’t all suffer the same sickness at the same time.
5.
Beneath
the motel there are no hot, noisy caves of Nibelungs toiling anonymously.
6.
Raw
sewage isn’t likely to flood the motel, but if it does you can step outside and
walk away from it.
7.
Pirates
don’t hijack motels.
8.
“My
Pancreas Must Go On” – no one ever inflicted onto the world an insta-emo song
about the persistence of body parts after the destruction of a motel.
9.
The
night manager cannot possibly run the motel onto rocks.
10. No one ever fell off the porch of a
motel and drowned in an asphalt parking lot.
11. Motion sickness is not a problem in a
motel.
12. The desk clerk doesn’t search through
all your stuff and confiscate your beverages, your snacks, your Swiss Army
Knife, and your dignity.
13. No buffets of food fermenting at room
temperature.
14. No tipping the caretakers.
15. Your motel room does not sit atop 700,000
gallons of fuel.
16. Finally, there is no seaman on watch
atop the roof of a motel along a desert highway crying down to the office
“Iceberg! Dead ahead!”
“Ice machine! Dead ahead!”
Now that’s much better.
-30-
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