Hell Friday...

I was reminded of a trip the UIL Academic Team took to Regionals in 1996.

In those days Brenham did not have as many hotels as it does today and if you didn't book your room in September for the April trip, you had to scurry to find any room available in the area.

We wound up on staying in the Somerville Inn.

The " Inn" looked good on it's postcard. Clean, pool, old fashion style motel with the doors that open to the parking lot.

When we arrived, we knew we were in trouble. The lobby, which appeared to have blue tinted windows were in fact windows stained with years of tobacco smoke.

My roommate was the " World Famous Science Teacher " (WFTS)

Our room had two double beds with enough dust on them, you could have planted corn, our room had two TV sets. one that worked, which sat on top of the old TV set, which didn't. Our ashtrays were old cat food cans, and there were two bullet holes in our sink. One which had been plugged with what looked like JB Weld.

The WFST came out of the bathroom and yelled at me....saying, " don't you know how to flush a tolièt?" To which I replied, " I've not been in the bathroom yet."

One of the kid's rooms had a tolièt which would not stop running and when the manager came to see what the problem was, he told the occupant" all you need to do is stick you hand in the back of the tank and pull up on the chain...like this."

Luckily, I had brought a sleeping bag with me, and slept on top on the bedspread, as one of the sponsors on the trip got body lice. I don't know how they explained to their spouse how they got crabs on a school trip?

We told the students not to look under the bed, which of course made them look, yes, most had several months worth of used condoms under the bed.

We were sort of naive as to why different trucks and cars with stickers came and left the wing of the motel across the parking lot from us. All had a aTm sticker in the back window.

We snapped about 2am when we saw what we thought was one of our students in her " nightwear" playing frisbee with a some of our kids....she looked so much like one of the kids we had brought...but it wasn't her...it was just a young lady trying to " put herself through college."

The highlight of the trip was the discovery of the now out of business Country Inn #2. ( The restaurant closed due to a divorce arrangement. Damn lawyers...)

We checked rapidly out the next morning when the WFTS looked into the air conditioner vent and saw what looked like a baggie of crystal meth tied strategically to one of the control panels.

Oh, BTW- The Pool? It was a ditch behind the motel...