We were going south on I-15, near Fallbrook, California. Not too far from where I graduated from highschool in Oceanside. Off to my right I spotted an old motel that somehow caught my eye.

I asked my son to turn off at the next exit and drive back on the frontage road to the motel. As we drove up I could see I was right about the memory it brought back.

Years ago, Angie and I had stopped there to spend the night before I went to a highschool class reunion. We were young, we had hired a baby sitter for the week-end (Angie’s Mom) back in San Francisco, and it was, back then, a very romantic looking place. There was a circular courtyard with a fountain in the center with Koi fish and lily pads and each unit had a small patio surrounded by Avocado trees and lush flower beds with plants I knew little about, even though I was from the area.

Not surprisingly there were a number of couples our age and a little older taking advantage of the pretty, somewhat out of the way, atmosphere. Judging from the rested happy faces we encountered in the morning at the little restaurant before checking out none of us were disappointed.

But it was sad, because now a vacancy sign rattled in the wind, only one side of it attached by a rusty chain. Where once the fountain brimmed with clean water, Koi fish and lily pads, there was only algae stains and cracked cement. The room we had occupied was missing the door and dust blew across the rickety porch and onto its floor where shards of rotted carpet struggled to survive. There was no sliding door in the back and the remnants of the plush patio were reduced to twigs and weeds and more discolored, cracked cement. I could think of only one thing, the last stanza of Hotel California, by the Eagles:

The Last thing I remember, I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back To the place I was before

‘relax,’ said the night man, we are programmed to receive.

You can check out anytime you like, But you can never leave.