If your travels take you to places that require steel toes and a hard hat, your hotel options can be limited.
That’s because such places tend not to reside in the ritzier parts of town.
Foundries, factories, railyards . . . these places don’t coexist with country clubs and Michelin three-star restaurants.
And that’s okay.
These are businesses where proud, honest people do unglamorous, often dirty, work to drive communities and economies forward.
They’ve survived through the years with a steadfastness that deserves our respect.
Even as we drive through the shittiest parts of town to visit their facilities.
As John Mellencamp observed in “Pink Houses”:
Oh, but ain’t that America--for you and me?
Ain’t that America--somethin’ to see, baby?
Indeed, it is.
Baby.
See, Mellencamp’s America doesn’t come with a wine list and high-thread-count sheets.
But it does often come with a bunch of fucking weirdos.
Like the ones I encountered the other week.
I’ll get to them in a minute.
First, I was visiting a steel fabrication business on the east side of Houston.
It was in one of the many industrial areas bordering the Port of Houston, where, according to my host, Howard Hughes had produced bomber components during World War II.
Several of the buildings nearby retained the appearance of aircraft hangars.
Which I thought was pretty damn cool.
Following a quick tour of a foundry housed within one of the old hangars, we headed for lunch.
There was a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the port where my host and his team were regulars.
“The best,” was all he’d say to describe it. “Just . . . the best.”
That was high praise considering the town had more Tex-Mex per capita than almost any other in the country.
As we were driving to the restaurant, we noticed a half dozen police cars speeding by in the opposite direction, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
Something must be up, we thought.
We got to the restaurant in a modest, generally well-kept neighborhood.
The parking lot was completely full, always a good sign.
And the food was, indeed, fantastic.
We finished lunch and headed back to the office, following the reverse of the same route we’d taken to get to the restaurant.
As we did, we passed by one of those payday check-cashing places.
The parking lot was empty, with yellow police tape running its entire perimeter.
There were police cars parked at various intervals, completely surrounding it.
“I wonder if those are the same cars we passed on the way to lunch,” my host said.
A moment later, a colleague who was riding with us looked out at the parking lot and asked, “Is that . . . a body?”
The rest of us turned to see a white sheet in the middle of the concrete with a red splotch in the center of it and two feet sticking out from the bottom edge.
Yup. It was a body.
Just like you’d see on some cop drama on TV.
We continued on in stunned silence.
Finally, my colleague offered, “Well, you don’t see that every day.”
Which was a true statement.
I’d been to countless business lunches. And none ever ended like that.
News of the event traveled fast.
Five minutes after arriving back at the office, someone had found the story online of the events leading up to the demise of the dude in the parking lot.
He was apparently one of three miscreants who had followed the owner of the check-cashing place to the local bank.
There, the owner had made a large cash withdrawal before heading back to his store.
Once back at the check-cashing place, two of the three guys that had followed him jumped the owner as he walked through the front door.
He was armed, it turned out, and came up shooting, killing one of the would-be robbers.
Then, upon hearing the commotion, an employee inside the building also came out shooting.
He killed the other guy, the one lying with his feet sticking out from under the sheet in the parking lot.
The third person, the getaway driver, disappeared.
A city-wide manhunt ensued, and the cops eventually found him.
Another day in Houston.
The hotel in which I was staying was less than ten miles from the check-cashing place, just off I-10.
It belonged to a reputable chain and was only a year or two old.
So, I safely—and correctly, as it happened—assumed there wouldn’t be any white sheets with feet sticking out from under them in the parking lot when I returned to the hotel that evening.
The next morning, I went down to the hotel gym.
It was about six o’clock.
I usually have the gym to myself at that time of day.
The majority of patrons are typically in their F-350s and on the way to the refinery by then.
This time, there was one other guy in the gym.
He had music blaring from headphones and was sweating and grunting his way through some kind of high-intensity interval workout.
Which wouldn’t have bothered me. Except the dude was doing all the sweating and grunting without a shirt on.
It seemed totally out of place.
First, this was a hotel gym, about the size of a two-car garage.
Not the open-air Muscle Beach of Venice, California, circa 1970.
When you’re in a confined space, you wear a frickin’ shirt.
It’s common courtesy.
Second, this guy had no business going shirtless anywhere.
He had flabby pecs and a protruding gut, hardly the physique one would want to showcase for fellow hotel gym-goers.
Or anyone.
I was annoyed at first, but then amused.
The shirtless dude finished his workout ten minutes after I arrived, and then I had the place to myself.
And all was once again right with the world.
I walked out of the gym around seven and took the stairs back up to the second floor, where my room was located halfway down the main hallway.
As I opened the door from the stairwell, I immediately heard shouting.
It was coming from a room a few doors down from mine.
“Say it! Say it!” a woman’s voice screamed. “You the bitch! You the bitch! Say it!”
The occupants’ morning was apparently off to an unpleasant start.
Intrigued, I paused at the door to my room to listen in.
“Nah, nah . . . don’t even give that bullshit,” the woman continued. “You the bitch!”
Between the woman’s outbursts, I could hear the muffled voice of a male in the room.
I assumed him to be the bitch in question.
His verbal assailant seemed to have him on the proverbial ropes.
“What!? What!?” asked the lady. “You gonna steal from yo work again? Is that what you gonna do?”
Another muffled response from the male followed.
Then the woman shot back, “Bullshit, bitch! Does yo momma know you steal from yo work? Does she? Well, maybe I just tell her then . . .”
Clearly, there were layers to this conflict.
It was complicated, apparently involving possible workplace theft and the prospect of an adult perpetrator’s misdeeds being reported to his mother.
And then there was the woman’s insistence, through it all, that the alleged thief accept the label bitch, which he was seemingly reluctant to do.
That’s a tough one.
I stepped into my room, showered up, and packed up my things.
As I did, I reflected upon the previous twenty-four hours.
Flight to Houston. Foundry visit. Top-notch Tex Mex for lunch. Dead dude in a parking lot. Sweaty, shirtless dude in the hotel gym. Shouting lady in the room down the hall.
Business travel at its finest.
I made my way down to the lobby to meet my colleague for a quick breakfast.
What did he think of the hotel and the events of the previous day? I asked.
“This place is great,” he said. “Check it out: they have banana chips for the oatmeal!”
It was finest selection of oatmeal toppings he’d ever encountered.
“I’ll totally be staying here again, for sure,” he concluded.
You know.
For the banana chips.