Those motels meant the WORLD to me! Growing up in a dysfunctional family, being on vacation and staying ANYWHERE but home was a wonderful and welcome escape.
In addition to postcards many hotels also included stationery, sheets of writing paper and envelopes with their logo. While visiting Niagara Falls with my sister I wrote a letter to my boyfriend. We married a year later and he still has that letter.😊
The memory is the reason I would have assumed they had these available, not to make people envious. As soon as he made this statement I lost all interest in this video.
I just dont understand why even send the postcard? lol unless your vacation last weeks. you''d probably get home before the post office delivered your postcard to your neighbor. Even today it takes 2 days for mail to go within the same state 😂
Most hotels/motels had phone books. In the rooms. I also remember cups and glasses were wrapped in paper bags. Toilets had strips of paper across the lids saying they were sanitized!
There's a great book that came out in the 80's called "Motel of the Mysteries", it's about archeologists way in the future excavating a motel. They think it's some kind of religious temple and the rooms are prayer cells, the bathrooms alters. There's a great drawing of the chief archeologists wife getting the "honor" of wearing the ceremonial headdress from the alter; she has the toilet ring around her neck, the lid behind her head and is wearing the sanitary paper strip like a headband across her forehead hold it all on. It's a riot.
I remember bottle openers mounted on the front of the bathroom sink counter to open glass soda and beer bottles. Motels like Travel Lodge sold novelty items of their mascot “Sleepy Bear”
I remember the bottle openers. When I was 9, we stayed at a motel which lacked the opener, so my dad showed me how to open a beer bottle on the bottom lip of the window frame.
@@grayrabbit2211 good old dad. How we didn’t grow up maimed or blind I’ll never know. Kids now a days never had the cool fun we did. I ran with scissors, I stepped on rusty tacks everything we were told not to do. We had so much freedom. Halloween we came home after the trick or treat bags got full. Such wonderful memories.
@@grayrabbit2211 so true and so sad. I don’t think our generation had much oversight. Our parents grew up with zero oversight. Adults were busy. We stayed underfoot we’d get assigned a task. Clever kids played until the street light came on. So much fun.
I took road trips with my parents in the mid 1960’s to upstate New York and Canada. Our favorite motels were the Howard Johnsons. I remember the orange roofs and the attached restaurants with great food, especially the ice cream. The motel rooms appeared to me to be super modern, with lights that hung from the ceiling. You turned them on by pulling down on them. At each stop we would send post cards of the motel because they were given away free and my parents were always on a budget. The Howard Johnsons are all gone now, as are my parents. Just memories.
Travel used to be a great adventure with varying standards of cleanliness in hotels and questionable food safety in some of the restaurants. My dad always made a point of stopping where he saw the truckers parked because they were a good indicator you would be well fed. Howard Johnson's did much to standardize travel with their chain of restaurants and hotels. Someone coming to St. Augustine Florida would expect, and be served, the same standardized ice cream cone they would get back home in New York.
These videos should not be just considered to remember ones childhood. It also give younger people insight as to how things used to be. thank you for your efforts
In recent years we found an old motel still in operation. Privately owned, but they have kept it up. It's really a treat to stay there and feel transported back in time.
In the late 80s my dad and I were on a road trip, and spent the night at a lesser lodging, which still had their magic fingers gadgets. Late at night, my dad got up to use the bathroom, and on his way past my bed dropped a quarter in. I miss the old prankster.
When I was growing up it was a super big tree to go on a business trip with my father to Lewiston Idaho and he would go out and work in the day and I would stay in the hotel alone there was a kidney-shaped pool there and the manager's name was Carol and she kept an eye on me was a big tree that got your walk over to the root beers restaurant across the street and have a hamburger and fries and a giant root beer and bring it back to the room and eat it by myself dad would come home after his work day and we would go to a nice restaurant and sometimes went to a Disney movie he always stayed in that same hotel in Lewiston Idaho all those years I think it was one of the first places I watched HBO
In the late 50’s and early 60’s my parents and us kids would drive from Chicago to Santa Monica for a vacation along Route 66. My dad would always make sure that we were checking into our room for the evening no later than 3 pm, so we kids could swim in the motel pool. How I loved those built in swimming pools, as never seeing one in Chicago. Eventually, in 1964, we moved to sunny California and my parents bought a house with a built in pool! I was in kid heaven! I was in that pool almost every single day and at 67 I still swim several times a week. The other thing I was amazed at in our California home was sliding glass doors, as I’d never seen them in Chicago. I could just sit in my living room and look out those doors at our pool! Good memories.
We stayed at motels rather than hotels in the 1960s and 1970s. Most were privately owed rather than corporate chains. The owners were the ones to check you in, and we often enjoyed visiting with them, befriending their pets, and some allowed us to have the owners pet in our room (we were missing our own pet which we left at home with a neighbour as we travelled). The personal touch of those owner/operators is certainly long gone.
There is a motel in Spencerport New York (not too far from Niagara Falls) that is still as personable. They visit with you. Their two little dogs are super friendly. The owners are really accommodating. They would look forward to our visit. When we’re visiting we will only stay with them. The Friendly Motel. It’s like stepping back in to time in a good way.
Yes, my Great Aunt and uncle use to own a motel in Piggot Arkansas. They lived in the small apartment that was attached to one end of the motel. It was located on the main thoroughfare through town and it was always busy. I'm sure it's probably long gone now.
In the 70's as a kid, we stayed in dozens of dozens of Motels across the states. One thing we always told Dad was we wanted a swimming pool wherever we stayed above anything else. Whilst most were disgusting, we would always get excited to swim in the pools no matter how dank they were. Also, there is a difference we knew of between a Motel and a Hotel. A motel was a motor lodge, where you drove right up to the rooms and had less amenities. The hotels were when Dad was feeling generous and rich! Such great memories of both. OH and don't forget to ask for a wake up call!
A few years ago, my wife and I drove my classic car from GA to CA. We pulled up to a motor lodge in Elk City, Oklahoma ran by a sweet elderly couple from India. The outside looked bland but the room was immaculate inside and freshly remodeled. I felt safer leaving my car parked out in front of the room than I would have leaving in in the lot of a Holiday Inn. I wish places like that would make a comeback. Felt bad that the hotels on the freeway were packed but this place only had 3 visitors, including us.
So true with my parents many years ago in 60s-70s taking myself & 2 younger brothers on summer vacations. We always went driving with their goal of getting to all 50 states!! I loved those memories as we got to 48 states! I ended up working for hotel designs architectural office in Hawai'i for 7 years, but the only state left is Alaska! Indeed this video & comments really bring back awesone memories, from the colour TV to a mandatory swimming pool, usually at Holiday Inns properties with family discounts+ Seems families now less likely experiencing as often now, just the Covid-19 years!
@@toddsubjent7142 I love your story! We would see people pulling campers and there was always someone with a lot of state stickers of where they have been. We hit a lot of them but no where close to 49! I sure hope you can make the big 50 in Alaska someday. I’m hoping for ya.😎
Some motels had a "lounge" with piano music and alcoholic drinks. I remember the attached restaurants, with a special kids menu. I still have one shaped like a folded train from holiday inn.
A fun memory is meeting family members for the holiday at an Embassy Suite with a piano bar. A cop on the beat would spend his breaks playing that piano.
Piano lounge/bar is still quite common, at least at big hotels. What is new is having a Happy Hour in the lounge, with decent free snacks, and some kind of game like Trivia.
There was always a notepad and a pen with the logo and name of hotel/motel printed on them. Also there was a binder or notebook that had info about the hotel, surrounding area, and tourist attractions. The toilet had a paper sash across it to indicate that it had been cleaned. The towels had the name and logo of the motel/hotel - many people took them home as souveniers and so that's why today we have plain towels, no logo. Did I forget anything? :)
I like having the little note pad and pen in hotels & motels that still provide them. It’s handy to have while traveling - writing down a meal selection for example. The pen is a nice little reminder of your stay as well. Also, I miss the binders that had not only the local attractions but also a selection of nearby restaurants with their menu and list of local services. Sure, we can look those up on our smartphones now, but having it all done for you in a neat binder is so nice after a day of traveling.
@@bobjacobson858 I really like those notebooks and pens. On a trip when you call someone or do a restaurant reservation by phone you can take notes in hand writing as obviously the cellphone is not available just at that moment. Unless you use them with loudspeaker on or even pointing them in front of your mouth as if they were a sandwich to bite into... The generation no longer using a cellphone like a phone. The engineers do everything to make a cellphone perform like telephone handset in calling mode - it's just the users now says don't know what a telephone handset is anymore...
True. A few years ago, I was shopping for a bed spread at a department store and the girl in the bedding department didn't know what a bedspread was. I told her it is the bedding you see in hotels and motels. She then understood. The store didn't have any and I purchased one online.
This brings back the fun of travel. Each room also had stationery and a couple of pens with the hotel/motel logo. Postcards were also available in the room (not just in the lobby). As a kid, the fun of a swimming pool and a color TV made the trip a lot of fun!
Made me remember a trip my family made with friends - must have been 1967 or 1968. Stayed at a Holiday Inn on a warm summer night and the pool was packed with teens and kids while the parents watched and drank or had a cigarette and talked. Nothing particularly special about it but something made it one of those memories that somehow seem magical. Thanks!
For some reason that memory brought tears to my eyes. I can totally see and feel the atmosphere around that Holiday Inn pool. It minds me of all the cross-country trips my family took in the late 60s and 70s from Southern Calfornia to Wisconsin and/or Pennsylvania to see relatives on both sides of the family (sometimes driving up the whole west coast into Canada and then across, other times straight across). The motels with their pools after a day's driving and, also, occasionally, a KOA campsite (which had pools too)!
I love reading through the comments on the videos on this channel. I grew up in very late 80/90s so i llove hearing stories n memories from commentors about the 60s n 70s n even before. Reminds me of my moms/gmoms stories. Gmom passed in 2009 n mom 2011. I would've loved to live in that era! I have an old soul.
In 1969, we went on a car trip from Ohio to Disneyland, hitting Yellowstone, Mt Rushmore, Grand Canyon and many more places. Most motels, campsites, and park visitor centers had car decals you could buy and put on your car windows to show all the places you had visited on your travels...our paneled station wagon had one of its back side windows covered with all the decals of our travel destinations.
My dad loved road trips. Holiday Inn was the top pick for a hotel because kids stayed free. Also they always had a pool for us kiddies. When the door opened to a new room, my brother and I would race to see who could get the most matchbooks out of the ashtrays. One on the desk, one on the night table and one on the table was the norm. I have not thought of that in years.
Back in the 1970's most of the hotel chains had catalogues so you could find another place to stay with that chain. Chains like Best Western, Comfort Inn, Ramada Inn, Holiday Inn, and Days Inn had these books which were great not only for finding other motels along your way but they also generally had a few pages of maps.
That was before the internet so those booklets were gold when you were on a long vacation. If you had one from each chain you could narrow down a few after lunch as you better figured out where you would tire out and have to stop. Great memory on those booklets i forgot all about those !! We are likely the last generation that is good at map reading and can function when the internet goes off.
Oh, wow, yes! I remember taking (you were welcome to them) the guide book for the Holiday Inn chain, in the late 80s. I learned that Lhasa, Tibet, had a Holiday Inn!
Also whatever motel you were staying at offered the free service of booking a reservation for you at another of that chain's properties, in whatever town you expected to be for the next night(s) of your road trip. It was done using some sort of company telex system. In the age before toll-free 800 numbers, this saved travellers the cost of a long-distance call to make a reservation.
Motels here in Australia. Rooms had a tiny hatch door (about the size of a pet door) in the wall from outside leading into an internal cupboard at waist height. You’d order your breakfast the Night before on a card and drop at reception and next morning at the time you nominated they’d knock at this small hatch, open it and push the breakfast tray into the cupboard. You’d go over and take it out. That way you didn’t have to open the main door or dress. Loved it
I stayed at a hotel as a kid here in the states that did that. Continental breakfast was included ( blueberry muffins and coffee thermos ) and the interior hatch was in the wall right over the counter. You didn’t order since every room got the same thing.
@@historiclift27 here we could order toast, cereals, coffee tea milk OJ, sausages, eggs, beans, grilled tomato, steak (from memory). Of course you paid for it when leaving.
That's a great idea. There's absolutely no reason why that should be considered outdated right now. It would go over well here in the United States I think. Especially coupled with the idea, which a few motels have, for extended check outs, for a small fee.
The Apple Valley Inn (in Apple Valley, CA) was built right after WWII. At the time, it couldn't get telephones installed in the guest cabins due to a shortage of copper wiring, so it gave each cabin a carrier pigeon. Guests would write their order/request on a slip of paper that was inserted in a capsule on the bird's leg, and would let it fly back to the office (no long room service orders, evidently). Along with their order, they were brought a new carrier pigeon. This went on for a year or two until phones could be installed.
@@DeannaPiercy Given that this was about 75 years ago, I'm not surprised. It's no longer operating as a hotel as far as I know, but the last time I checked, the banquet facilities were still in use. The area sure went downhill when George AFB was closed. Even The Cocky Bull (if you remember it) has been torn down and replaced by a small strip mall.
I grew up in the 70's and my Dad was a traveling salesman. We always stayed at Holiday Inn and their majestic sign was a welcome site. The pool was the best, as a kid, and those plastic key rings bring back memories. Thanks for making me smile.
Those were the days, especially for kids. Going on a family vacation by automobile always resulted in a nice meal and a swim in the motel pool following the day's drive. An adventure most of us fortunate enough to have grown up during that unique moment in modern American life will never forget!
Worst vacation memory of my childhood: North Carolina mountains, in 1968 . . . the night all the nice motels with wonderful pools full of kids having fun had "NO VACANCY" and we had to stay at a run-down old motel with (gasp!) NO POOL! 😨 I was 10. I did not take it well.
I grew up with road trips to DIsney World, a drive of >thousand miles each way. Before taking an extended-family trip with my now-wife, who is from China and had no such tradition, I showed her the movie _National Lampoon's Family Vacation_ so she'd know what to expect.
When I was little I thought it was so exciting to stay at motels. We did once stay at a place that had the vibrating bed and it sure was fun. But the thing I always loved the most was the ice machines for some strange reason. I used to go back and forth filling and refilling that plastic bucket with fresh ice. There were always located outside, one at the end of each floor. My other favorite thing was taking those little tiny soaps when it was time to leave. Sometimes they even had little toothpaste tubes and little bottles of mouthwash. I thought they made the greatest souvenirs of your trip.
@@samanthab1923 yep. and I've seen people with huge matchbook collections also. which might be a little more interesting because they have more information on them about the places you've been.
Stayed at many hotels and motels growing up and recall the distinctive aroma (pleasant) when first entering the room. Also, the paper wrapped glasses and toilet seat bands put into place to show the bathroom had been cleaned.
Those analogue t.v.'s could sometimes pick up portable handset RF telephone conversations from other rooms or even other buildings next door and transmit them over the t.v.'s speaker.
Don't forget about the neon sign of the girl in the one-piece bathing suit diving to signify there is a pool! Haha! The matchbook shown towards the end for the Capri Motel in San Francisco - this place has been pretty much preserved to still look like it always has since it began!
There's also a small hotel in San Francisco called the "Seal rock Inn". My daughter and I stayed there 2 years ago.its a three story building that still has an old elevator that you have to manually close the door
The Starlite Motel at 2710 East Main Street, Mesa, Arizona restored the animated neon "diving girl" sign a few years ago. Don't know if the sign was originally from the Starlite or another motel in the area that's now gone missing. Was near there last week and she's still making that long dive down the vertical sign spelling out "MOTEL" to this day.
I remember ice machines that had a huge door. You could reach in and scoop out as much as you wanted. We always filled our cooler for the next leg of the trip.
Growing up in the 60's we didn't have an air conditioner at home. So, when our family went on a trip in the Summer and stayed at a motel or hotel, the first thing us kids would do is turn on the AC in the room and claim "dibs" on the bed that was closest to it. I remember well the first time I saw a bed with the "Magic Fingers" box and I pestered my dad relentlessly until he gave me a quarter for it. Then he made me wait until my two brothers got back from the swimming pool and then made them get on the bed with me, so he wouldn't have to give them each a quarter also. I didn't think they were ever going to leave that pool! LOL!
My kids called "dibs" way too often, so I entered "dibs" as a speed dial, and used handsfree in the car to get the voice to say "calling dibs..." What was even far more hysterical, was that after we had a good laugh, due to having entered a random number, all of a sudden the voice proclaims, "Incoming call, from dibs!"
Why not? Look what an AC costs today, but everyone has one now. It's more expensive now, I don't understand the whole concept. Wages are the same today. 90 % of people are now homeless, not back than .No one was.
@@ursulasmith6402 90%!!! Did it hurt when you pulled that number out of your assessment of the situation? AC is super cheap today compared to 50 years ago. And more necessary unfortunately.
I remember in the early 60's my parents would "inspect" the room for cleanliness before deciding to stay at a motel. Mom was a stickler about price too. Anything over 12 dollars per night was too expensive so we just moved on if the price was 13 dollars per night, imagine that!! Mom always said that triple A (AAA) motels were always too pricey so we never stopped at those motels. Of course, a pool was a very special treat.
My dad always did the room "inspections" during the 1960's. Us three kids waited in the backseat of the un-airconditioned Chevy Impala with mom up front, all of us sweating. I was the youngest and a total monster wanting a pool or someplace to play. I always wound up on a roll away bed for the night. Mom always pointed to AAA motels to look at first. Dad could squeeze a penny so tight that it made Lincoln scream and passed on many of them. Air conditioning? We didn't even have that at home. It was a treat.
Haha! One particular time sticks out in my mind. I remember dad and I waiting in the car at Nags Head, N.C. (small beach town in those days) while my mom went in to check the cleanliness of a motel room. I have a vivid memory of her coming back to the car and telling my dad, "It's clean, and it's $11.00." 😄
I remember how excited we got as kids when we would get to stay in a motel,it meant more channels of television to view because in the town we resided in only had one channel,then later on two.🤗👍📺❤
Everyday maid service, A managers party, Executive lounges, Hotel information guides in the room, and room service are all things that disappeared or were cut back after covid.
We certainly stayed at our fair share of Holiday Inns when I was a kid back in the '60s! We'd travel by car to Florida or through the New England states (depending on what time of the year it was) and stayed everywhere there was a pool, especially Holiday Inn. This video brings back some fantastic childhood road trip memories!
Same. Holiday Inns, Quality Inns, and HoJos. In season, my parents would always get one with a swimming pool for us. Miss diving boards. My sister and I were like hamsters on a wheel... dive, swim, out, dive, repeat...
I remember how we'd sometimes stay at a Howard Johnson's - that was always exciting to me because I was going to get those famous Howard Johnson's fried clams for dinner! Family road trips of the 60s and 70s provide some of the best memories of my youth. Stuckey's divinity fudge! Sky High Lemon Pie at other rest stops! Getting up early to hit the road and driving an hour or two before stopping at a roadside diner for pancakes or eggs, sausage and hash browns!
Holiday Inns were very family friendly with those great swimming pools. Indeed we 3 kids practically stayed in all day! Holiday Inns were a mainstay in our many summer family holidays, road trips across USA growing up. Dad wanted us to visit every state possible whilst growing up in late 60s & 70s. Alaska only one still 9n my bucket list to visit! I remember that big iconic motel arrow lighted motel sign at all their properties as so exciting!! I begged my Mom to make me a colored small construction paper sigh detailed like it! She used some note paper or bag the motel had printed logo sigh printed on it to match the proportions! These holiday trips/experiences influenced my entire life as became an Architect by desire in the Hotel Industry. My career focused on Hotel/Resort projects in USA & luckily Internationally and worked in several design firms & directly in Hyatt International to Mandarin Oriental hotel operators! All that started with that kids desire to have my own Holiday Inn sign if my own as a child! Awesome memories as those signs gone now as both our parents have passed on as well. Such great memories indeed!!
Remember Holidomes? They were Holiday Inns with huge atriums that featured an indoor pool, lounge areas, bars, etc. We had many a family reunion at Holidomes!
I stayed at a Holiday Inn with a Holidome in either Tulsa or Oklahoma City in 1989, during a business trip. Two odd things during that stay: * A spin-off for teenagers of the ladies' auxiliary of a fraternal lodge, "The International Order of the Daughters of Job," was having its induction ceremony on the same morning on which I was holding a training session in a hotel meeting room. So there were teenage girls in white robes walking around. Very surreal. * My room had a little hatch under the sink. Even though I knew it was just for checking the plumbing, I opened it up because I was really bored. There wasn't just a couple of shut-out valves in there. There was a access area that ran behind all of the bathrooms, going up to other floors and to the right and ahead! With little hatches into the other rooms! AND, balanced on the door frame of the little hatch, were two unopened bottles of cheap red wine!
I stayed at what must have been a Holidome once, in Kearney, NE, except by then it was a Ramada. Still had a giant indoor pool/courtyard with a massive "treehouse". The courtyard was rented out for big parties.
@@samanthab1923 It was a free-for-all back then that's for sure. Like I said in my comment the doctor would come Into the exam room smoking a cigarette.
I bought three boxes of vintage postcards when an antique store closed and most are from hotels and motels around the US. They are fun to look at and I looked up a few to see if they were still operating. Most were not.
I was born in’58, so all my vacations were at these kinds of places, in addition to nice campgrounds with pools. I started my own postcard collection when I was 10, which I still have. Then I went to “Europe on $10 a Day” as our book was called, at 17, and have that stack of postcards from 6 countries. Now I’m fortunate enough that my husband works all around the world and at 64 (I took a break to have 6 children!) have postcards from 35 additional countries. Now I collect vintage and antique postcards. It all began with my first postcard of the Betsy Ross House! (My husband came on that first trip with me, and we both caught the travel bug.)
I seem to remember seeing cigarette vending machines in hotel and restaurant lobbies when I was a kid back in the late 70s/early 80s. There were like 20 different knobs to pull depending on what brand you smoked.
1:30 Regarding postcards ... my (now departed dad), after having a stroke, was confined to a nursing home. A friend of mine was moving cross country, so I volunteered to drive across with her so she could keep her car in Florida. Every day, wherever we stopped, I'd get a post card, and send it to my dad in the nursing home. He got the pleasure of getting daily updates, plus had the cards to share with the other residents. Now that dad is gone, I'm so happy I did this little gesture to bring him a little happiness.
Hello, not sure if someone else pointed this out, but back in 60 and 70’s we had bed spreads NOT the comforters we use today. I remember my grandmother stating that comforters of the early 80s were for my generation (I am in my early sixties) because we grew up into a generation of young adults to “busy” to make a proper bed! 😂
There were some comforters in the 60s, but they were usually down-filled because fiber-fill was synthetic and not made then . Everyone had these much thinner "bedspreads" in their homes that always covered the pillows in order to protect them from dust. Shams weren't a thing yet. Some spreads were made of chenille or had a colonial stubble-patterned look called "Martha Washington." Being from Florida I still prefer them as they are less bulky, but finding them is hard. Matelassé is the closest you can get.
Now that you mention it, as a kid in the 70's and early 80's, we had Bed Spreads which were kinda knit or chenille as described before. They often had a lot of fringe or "braids" and I loved to play with that as a kid. They kinda resembled the Throws you can buy nowadays, but were fitted to the bed shape so they weren't flat. They were always in those 70's colors of gold etc. We always heard about Down Comforters but I had no experience of them. In the middle and late 80's there became an abundance of trendy fiber filled comforters and also those thick plush "Mexican" blankets.
My mom, when she was young, took a trip with three of her girl friends. Their names were, seriously, I swear, Doris Day, Helen Hayes, and Elizabeth Taylor.....when they went to sign the.guest register, they nearly got tossed out, because nobody believed those were their real names until they produced their drivers licenses!
@@kellymarsh3956 This may sound odd, but I have a background in pest control in agriculture and general household... I spray our luggage down with ProFlex the night before we leave, and put used clothes in trashbags sealed up. When we get home I spray the bags outside again with ProFlex and put the laundry into hot water wash. ProFlex has a couple of insect growth regulators in it and is labeled for resturant use. It's hard to trust anywhere and a dollar of ProFlex gives me piece of mind!
My grandparents traveled a lot in the 50's and 60's. I remember their medicine cabinets filled with all kinds of those little soaps that motels always had in the bathrooms and their desk in the livingroom holding lots of matchbooks advertising places they stayed or ate at.
The first time I stayed at a motel was after we had watched the movie "Psycho" on the TV. I was with mom and dad and my brother but I was still a bit nervous. My brother is 5 years older than me so naturally he messed with me the whole trip in every motel room. Ah, good times.
We would always stay at a Howard Johnson's when my family traveled in the 70's-80's. I thought it was so cool to have the restaurant connected to the hotel.
I remember we always drove straight through to our vacation rental, but one year it was late and rainy so we stopped at a motel. All six of us in one room. Mom and dad in the bed, little brother on a cot the other 3 of us in sleeping bags on the floor😂
That TV wire was called "300-Ohm twin lead" and was pretty much the standard for fixed antenna hook-ups back then. Thank you so much for the summer vacation memories!
That twin lead was a natural for connecting the di-pole antenna to the set. The picture is clearer because the interference gets cancelled out. Nowadays, everything is unbalanced, 75-Ohm coax, and you need a balun transformer to match the antenna to the line. The old TVs had baluns, too, but they were built into the tuner and not attached to the antenna.
@@dougbrowning82 The twin lead (not co-ax or twisted) did *not* cancel interference. The spacing apart, sometimes even a "ladder" style so there's more air than plastic, was to lower the capacitance of the wires.
Taking turns with the room ice container to fill up your ice cooler, even though the sign on the ice machine said "NOT FOR COOLERS". And the ice machine made enough noise that it could be heard 2 blocks away.
Travelling with my grandparents in the 70s, staying at a motel with a pool mattered. After having young me antsy in the car all day, a pool let me blow off steam. Grandpa would sit at a table near the pool, keeping an eye on me while looking at his maps and writing down tomorrow's driving. My grandpa was a good dude. I have fond memories of those trips.
Ah yes the maps! It was always Dad who was busy looking at the "route for tomorrow". Kids these days don't understand that because they pop an address in their phone and do what the voice tells them. We had to map out every route. "Drive 50 miles on Hwy H till you get to mile marker 255 then make a left hand turn into route 50 then 12 miles till you see the MOTEL sign.
Back when parents/grandparents actually felt an obligation to supervise their kids, instead of offloading them at the pool and checking out the night scene in town until the pool closed at 11...or 11:30...? Midnight...? Your grandpa was indeed a good dude.
I got that wooden room with a CRT TV with room antenna last year in a Motel in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. They even still had a wired telephone with Rotary dial.
You can still find quite a few motels of this type if you travel Route 66. Many have even furnished the rooms in the styles shown here, with vintage-looking phones that are push-button operated like modern phones. One even had a record player in the room! Another had console radios but no TVs, because that was the style when the place originally opened. Typically, though, the swimming pools have been replaced by patios. Towns like Tucumcari, NM and Seligman, AZ have multiple lodgings of this type.
You missed talking about balconies. A lot of motels had in room balconies which have disappeared alloSt completely. Also pools had a deep end with a diving board. Thanks for a great video!!
I only remember shoe shine stands at large hotels in the city, but mostly at train and bus stations. I think they disappeared not because people have more shoes, but because actual leather dress shoes become rare. Now everyone wears sneakers.
I had my shoes shined so regularly at O'Hare waiting on my connection, the shine guy would call out the name of my hometown as I walked down the terminal. He didn't know my name, and I can't remember his, but he knew where I was from, that it was far enough away that the odds of someone else thinking he was trying to get their attention were slim, and that I tipped well enough to be remembered. He could tell if I was on my way out, or headed back home by the condition of the shine on my shoes. That stand was busy all the time too. I don't think you can find a shoe shine stand anywhere anymore.
Even those who still dress formal today sometimes wear sneakers in the city. And then carry the good shoes in their bag along side stuff like the laptop. They get to the office and change shoes. so when they meet a client they look good but when rushing down the stairs to the subway they are in shoes meant for moving rather than ones designed for getting million dollar contracts.
Some aspects of hotels and motels are better today such as an in-room coffee maker. This does not apply to motels but what I remember most fondly of city hotels is ordering room service and having the meal delivered on a table with wheels and covered with a white tablecloth. And coffee served in a 'hottle' -- I have a few that I found in thrift stores over the years.
This was fun to watch and brought back many memories. My dad was in the hotel business in the 1960s & 1970s working for an East Coast hotel chain. We used to travel in the summer for vacation to many of the chain's locations. I used to have a scrap book with the post cards featuring the photos of the motels we stayed at.
“Free local calls” .. I remember when my family travelled and “free local calls” was a must, because my father always insisted we could save money by calling restaurants and ask about prices for dinner. My Mom would say “we still have these tuna fish sandwiches that we need to eat!”. Mom… made a dozen tuna fish sandwiches from 1 can of tuna… and pack them with onions and pickles to stretch out that one can of tuna. Us three kids would say “NOOOO!!! Find free local calls… PLEASE!!!”
Ah, the ubiquitous BAG-O-SANDWICHES that Mom always packed. We thought it was corny as we were leaving for a trip but at about noon time they sure tasted good.
@@kellymarsh3956 -My Mom would put those tuna fish sandwiches inside a Coleman water container. Probably 2 gallon, green on the bottom half and white on the top half, with about a 6” hole in the top with a screw on lid. That was “to keep them fresh”. After two days the sandwiches (finally!) got tossed, then water put into the Coleman. Drank water from the Coleman in 6 oz. Dixie cups. Water tasted like…. wait for it…. FREAKING TUNA FISH! My Mom is 96 years old now, and I talk to her every night, and tonight we talked about this experience. She laughed and said “I’m SO sorry you had such a traumatic childhood”. I’m glad she still has a great sense of humor. Bottom line is… the whole damn trip was tainted by tuna fish. I’d take bologna or cheese any day over that FREAKING tuna fish!
@@enigmawyoming5201 oh God I feel for ya. I might have ya beat though. A lot of times when we went on trips (especially camping) mom packed all the essentials for the trip. When she asked my dad to help he would walk to the kitchen, grap one item. Something he thought we could NEVER live without. 1 bag of raw potatoes. To dad, that's all we needed to survive. He would even take it with us on road trips, "just in case". 🤣 In case what? The apocalypse? Where were we gonna cook them, on the exhaust pipe? 🤦 When as kids we would beg my dad to take us out to eat (we were dirt poor) but Dad had a better idea. Off to the store!! He would come back with a box of crackers, and yes my favorite bologna, and a huge box of government supplied cheese logs. No need for fancy smancy restaurants when you got government cheese, bologna and crackers. GOOD TiMES, GOOD TIMES! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 P.s. I bet you don't even let tuna fish inside your house anymore, much less fix it and eat it! Lol
One significant omission: drinking glasses made out of real glass. These would be found wither on the desk/dresser next to the plastic ice bucket or on a shelf over the sink in the bathroom. (My sister and I always got into a fight over who was going to get to unwrap the most glasses.). While motels "back in the day" didn't offer body wash, shampoo, or conditioner, there were, of course, the miniature bars of soap (another popular souvenir item), and, frequently, a one-use, do-it-yourself shoe polisher/buffer (a treated piece of paper or cloth) , and a one-use shower cap (my mother appreciated those!).. And Yes, the signs featuring the strong selling points: air-conditioned rooms! free TV! swimming pool! (Oh, I can remember one mom-and-pop motel in North Carolina which offered free home-perked coffee and doughnuts in the lobby, for a couple of hours in the morning.) Thanks so much for posting this: it sure brings back a lot of happy memories.
I use to love looking at the phonebooks in the hotel rooms....I could always tell how big the city was and all the stuff it had to offer by how thick the phonebook(s) were and the info in them.
Thanks so much for taking the time to make these videos. I just love them. 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 It takes me back to the 60's and 70's when life was great. 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼
Wow I remember all of this! I even had a collection of postcards... Mailed one and kept the other! And the keys....oh my! Thank you for great memories!!
I collected the postcards too - still have them. I came across them a while back and they brought back some happy memories. I also collected the hotel stationery.
We stayed in one motel that did not have an antenna they had an early version of cable tv. Also at one time you could charge your room and meals to your gasoline credit card, like Gulf, Monil, etc. Holiday Inns had a marketing tie in with Gulf Oil & I would stay there. I seem to recall that I was also able to stay at Howard Johnsons in the same way. Back in the 1960's and 19070's the oil companies ran their own credit card systems and cards were easy to get. I have a very early cardboard Gulf oil credit card from 1942 as part of my petrolia collection. I also collect Sinclair because I loved their Dino the Dinosaur mascot. I have 3 different sizes of Dino plushes across from me as I type this.
As our family traveled by station wagon in the 1960’s, we stayed in many roadside motels, most good, a few disappointments. Most of these were on state highways. As the interstate grew across America, some of the mom and pop motels lost business to the growing chains like Howard Johnson’s and Holiday Inns. My parents preferred the Holiday Inn, they were very consistent in the quality of rooms. All had air conditioning, good color TV’s and most had a swimming pool.The attached restaurants were usually decent enough as well. They were pretty clean, you knew what to expect with the Holiday Inns. Kind of the McDonald’s of the Motel business.
In the 1960s our family road trips were traveled in a VW bus. I remember my. mom hanging wet washcloths from the ceiling with the windows partially open to get somewhat of a cool breeze going in that vehicle when we drove through the desert during the day at the height of summer.
We usually stayed in the mom and pop types until I was a teenager Then it was Motel 6, Super 8, or Best Westerns. My parents thought Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons were too pricey, lol!
Many of the motels I stay in back then had ice machines. These big ice makers were centrally located and you had to walk out of your room to find them. The ice cubes were small and were in a big bin with a metal lid. Inside, there was a big scooper to use for taking the ice. And there was always a small plastic ice bucket in your room which you could use to carry the ice cubes.
You got me thinking about road trips and reminded me of one our family took when moving from Houston to Seattle. Dad had a 1964 black fleetwood cadillac and we were driving through Arizona and it was hot; like over 100° hot. We had been driving for hours and we're looking for a motel. Over the last hour of driving, all of us-mom dad and my older brother kept hearing what sounded like rifle shots. The thing was; that these shots only occurred once about every 10- 15 miles spaced apart. Maybe as many as 10 or 12 "shots" over that last hour+ before we pulled in to a motel. It didn't make sense that somebody shooting would be "following" us. When we went to get the luggage from the trunk to take to the motel room; we got the answer. My dads golf balls inside his golf bag had exploded from the heat. I'm not a golfer(then or now) but apparently these particular golf balls had a liquid core and when it got hot enough inside the trunk of that black Cadillac-the liquid expanded enough to burst the vinyl cover of the ball and the rubber band material that made up the surrounding of the liquid core was all over the trunk like spaghetti. The balls had been inside a pocket of the vinyl golf bag and exploded so hard that they tore through the bag and all over the trunk! I'd love to hear the travel stories of others. I know you did a video on 1960's road trips; but how about one that focuses on all the funny (and bizarre) mom and pop roadside attractions around the country. You know- those people that live on their state's equivalent of Route 66 and since they have a constant stream of travelers, they create their own roadside "museum", or the biggest ball of string, or the reptile farm. I think in one of the central northern states there was a 30' tall Paul Bunyan and a matching giant "Babe" blue ox. In California there was the tree you could drive through in the Redwood forest. In New Mexico(I think) there was the Carlsbad Caverns where thousands of bats would fly in and out each day in a swarm and tourists could walk the switchbacks down deep in to these enormous caves( and then ride an elevator back to the surface). Let's have a Recollection Road of "Roadside Attractions of the 50's,60's,and70's"!
I remember the giant Paul Bunyan statue (think there might have been multiples of these in different locations but maybe I'm just remembering the one you're thinking of), also the redwood you could drive through, and also signs advertising "The Thing" (several of them spaced apart to keep reminding you that you were getting nearer - somewhere in the west I think but don't really remember) and, also, those rest stop Stuckey's!
If your dad's golf balls exploded then he was a prankster. I've never heard of a playable golf ball ever being produced with a liquid center that could burst when heated. More than a few have been made that will explode on impact. Some used talc to make a showy puff of white powder. Others were a little less benign.
@@scottsatterthwaite4073 I'm sure if you do some research you will find that there were golf balls made with liquid cores in the mid '60's. I can assure you that it wasn't a prank or some kind of "gag" golf balls. They had a liquid (encased) core. That was surrounded by this rubber band material, which was surrounded by the covering made of whatever golf ball coverings are made of. Update:this from Wikipedia; Liquid cores were commonly used in golf balls as early as 1917. The liquid cores in many of the early balls contained a caustic liquid, typically an alkali, causing eye injuries to children who happened to dissect a golf ball out of curiosity. By the 1920s, golf ball manufacturers had stopped using caustic liquids, but into the 1970s and 1980s golf balls were still at times exploding when dissected and were causing injuries due to the presence of crushed crystalline material present in the liquid cores.
When I lived in Phoenix, my spare tire in the trunk, exploded. Golf balls are a lot smaller. I enjoyed the trip through your remembrances of your trips across country. My dad was Navy. We traveled across country several times on different routes. Remember Buerma Shave signs?
Postcards in the lobby? I remember when rooms had postcards, paper, envelopes, and pens in the desk. I recently stayed at 2 Disney resorts in Florida. No postcards or pens but they do still have Gideon Bibles!
Sadly, just after Covid, pens and paper all disappeared from Motel rooms. We have to ask for them now at the front desk. I stayed at The Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, NM many times. I got to know the dear old Lady who got the motel as a gift from her husband (RIP) in the late 40's. She ran that motel when she was into her eighties! Each room had an attached garage which I LOVED! I was back recently, the attached garages have been blocked up but the rooms are still the same. However, even though updated, they still have the same 'nostelgic' feeling. The interesting history is showcasted in the office. Well worth the visit!
Bellhops. These were young men were featured mainly in large hotels, in big cities. They wore bright red uniforms with a round hat so you can easily pick them out in a crowd. After checking in, the desk clerk would ring the bell at the desk and the bellhop would take your bags and key and escorted you to your room. He would open the door, point out all of room amenities. You would then, give a tip. Bellhops would also deliver messages to patrons. Say you were in the lobby or in the restaurant and were waiting for a phone call ( days before cellphones ). The bellhop would enter the room and call out, "Paging Mr. ( insert name here)" he would keep doing this until you replied then escort you to the phone.
One thing I noticed is that the hotel pools were in different and to me, prettier, shapes than the swimming pools you see today. Most pools seem to look like squares or rectangles, not those flowing shapes that matched the land. Great memories, Thanks so much again!
Ice machines where you scooped the ice out with a big scooper or used the ice bucket, sometimes people would place their drinks in the ice machine. Also, while there are still many, the outside door to the parking space has been dying out in favor of a central corridor. The ones with direct access to one's car are typically older ones.
In city hotels, I remember my father leaving his shoes outside the door and they would get shined overnight. A few places had doors within the room door to hang suits and dresses to be cleaned and pressed. I also remember some hotels would have keys large enough that you would basically be forced to leave the key in at the desk, unless you wanted to carry a 2 pound key in your pocket.
Here in Australia...they had a plastic laundry bag you put all your dirty clothes in and left outside your door...they couldn't offer that service today...your clothes would get nicked for sure
In Nigeria, my colleague put his shoes outside to be cleaned. He was rather annoyed in the morning to find that they were just as left, uncleaned. So he called the steward and asked why the shoes had not been cleaned, "Ah" said the steward, "You put them outside for clean, I though you put them outside for smell!"
@@23yearsand76 Some hotels still offer laundry service, but often you either have a bag in your room or you ask one at reception and you bring it to reception. Then either they will bring it to your room the next day when they clean it or you pick it up at reception. When I'm in Indonesia I always use this service a couple of days before I go back home so I can fit all my nicely folded clothes easier into my bag and I don't have to do my laundry at home. It's probably cheaper to get it done there too.
What a fun “journey back”! From Dallas, Texas, to 25 miles north of Spokane, Washington, every Summer our parents and we five siblings would drive for three and a half days in the family’s 1960 Chevrolet station wagon until reaching Loon Lake where we rented a large cabin for one month. Along the way we stayed in many a motel like these. Sweet memories! ❤
We took road trips often! The ice machine was a life saver!! We stayed only at the holiday inn, or the travel lodge, or ramada inn. Never a disappointment. They were the top of the line back in those days.
How about the "arcade" that was inside of the hotel? Playing pinball or Pong . I remember standing in my bathing suit, wrapped in a towel, playing pinball at a Holiday Inn.
My family took a week long vacation every year. No where fancy like Disney Land, just a road trip to Lake Superior, or Wyoming, or Kansas. Mostly to visit a WWII buddy of my fathers. We stayed at some pretty crap hotels, but usually got to stay at least one night at a hotel with a pool. AND we only ate out once during the trip, almost always at an A&W. . Usually we had Kitchenettes and so mom cooked for us, or we stopped at road side parks to use the B-Bque. But then there were usually at least 6 of us. We were so poor that I have no idea how they paid for this! But to this day, those trips are the best memories of my childhood.
You had that backwards. You had to request a NON-smoking room. They used to be all smoking rooms. Then they cleaned a few up to be non-smoking. Until now, where they're all non-smoking. I'm still a smoker and remember this fondly. Altho, a fresh smelling room is nice to sleep in. I don't mind going outside too much.
Thanks!
Best thing about staying in places back then is that they had a view not blocked by other buildings.
Those motels meant the WORLD to me! Growing up in a dysfunctional family, being on vacation and staying ANYWHERE but home was a wonderful and welcome escape.
I hope brighter days have found you.
Yeah God bless you❤
In addition to postcards many hotels also included stationery, sheets of writing paper and envelopes with their logo. While visiting Niagara Falls with my sister I wrote a letter to my boyfriend. We married a year later and he still has that letter.😊
Nice that he still keeps it!
The memory is the reason I would have assumed they had these available, not to make people envious. As soon as he made this statement I lost all interest in this video.
I just dont understand why even send the postcard? lol unless your vacation last weeks. you''d probably get home before the post office delivered your postcard to your neighbor. Even today it takes 2 days for mail to go within the same state 😂
Most hotels/motels had phone books. In the rooms. I also remember cups and glasses were wrapped in paper bags. Toilets had strips of paper across the lids saying they were sanitized!
Sanitized for your protection.
Funny but when I saw this video the cups and sanitized strip were the first things that popped into my head! Simpler times.
We still have some of these features in Central NY.💝
There's a great book that came out in the 80's called "Motel of the Mysteries", it's about archeologists way in the future excavating a motel. They think it's some kind of religious temple and the rooms are prayer cells, the bathrooms alters. There's a great drawing of the chief archeologists wife getting the "honor" of wearing the ceremonial headdress from the alter; she has the toilet ring around her neck, the lid behind her head and is wearing the sanitary paper strip like a headband across her forehead hold it all on. It's a riot.
Some are still there. Including posh hotels.
I remember bottle openers mounted on the front of the bathroom sink counter to open glass soda and beer bottles. Motels like Travel Lodge sold novelty items of their mascot “Sleepy Bear”
I remember the bottle openers. When I was 9, we stayed at a motel which lacked the opener, so my dad showed me how to open a beer bottle on the bottom lip of the window frame.
@@grayrabbit2211 good old dad. How we didn’t grow up maimed or blind I’ll never know. Kids now a days never had the cool fun we did. I ran with scissors, I stepped on rusty tacks everything we were told not to do. We had so much freedom. Halloween we came home after the trick or treat bags got full. Such wonderful memories.
@@lesliemergenthal75 we *lived* life. Sadly today's kids are too fragile to enjoy such freedoms.
@@grayrabbit2211 so true and so sad. I don’t think our generation had much oversight. Our parents grew up with zero oversight. Adults were busy. We stayed underfoot we’d get assigned a task. Clever kids played until the street light came on. So much fun.
I miss the sleepy bear
It was a treat as a kid and I remember how cool it was because you didn't do often. Some good childhood memories for sure.
I took road trips with my parents in the mid 1960’s to upstate New York and Canada. Our favorite motels were the Howard Johnsons. I remember the orange roofs and the attached restaurants with great food, especially the ice cream. The motel rooms appeared to me to be super modern, with lights that hung from the ceiling. You turned them on by pulling down on them. At each stop we would send post cards of the motel because they were given away free and my parents were always on a budget. The Howard Johnsons are all gone now, as are my parents. Just memories.
Travel used to be a great adventure with varying standards of cleanliness in hotels and questionable food safety in some of the restaurants. My dad always made a point of stopping where he saw the truckers parked because they were a good indicator you would be well fed. Howard Johnson's did much to standardize travel with their chain of restaurants and hotels. Someone coming to St. Augustine Florida would expect, and be served, the same standardized ice cream cone they would get back home in New York.
What part of upstate New York? My relatives were from Herkimer.
God bless their souls 🌷🌼 Glad you have good memories of them.
The Howard Johnsons Restaurants are (sadly) gone forever but Wyndham still operates over 100 Howard Johnsons Motor Lodges.
What were those fried seafood things they served at Howard Johnson’s?
These videos should not be just considered to remember ones childhood. It also give younger people insight as to how things used to be. thank you for your efforts
In recent years we found an old motel still in operation. Privately owned, but they have kept it up. It's really a treat to stay there and feel transported back in time.
In the late 80s my dad and I were on a road trip, and spent the night at a lesser lodging, which still had their magic fingers gadgets. Late at night, my dad got up to use the bathroom, and on his way past my bed dropped a quarter in. I miss the old prankster.
Great memory!
😂
😂😂😂
I love this!
When I was growing up it was a super big tree to go on a business trip with my father to Lewiston Idaho and he would go out and work in the day and I would stay in the hotel alone there was a kidney-shaped pool there and the manager's name was Carol and she kept an eye on me was a big tree that got your walk over to the root beers restaurant across the street and have a hamburger and fries and a giant root beer and bring it back to the room and eat it by myself dad would come home after his work day and we would go to a nice restaurant and sometimes went to a Disney movie he always stayed in that same hotel in Lewiston Idaho all those years I think it was one of the first places I watched HBO
In the late 50’s and early 60’s my parents and us kids would drive from Chicago to Santa Monica for a vacation along Route 66. My dad would always make sure that we were checking into our room for the evening no later than 3 pm, so we kids could swim in the motel pool. How I loved those built in swimming pools, as never seeing one in Chicago. Eventually, in 1964, we moved to sunny California and my parents bought a house with a built in pool! I was in kid heaven! I was in that pool almost every single day and at 67 I still swim several times a week. The other thing I was amazed at in our California home was sliding glass doors, as I’d never seen them in Chicago. I could just sit in my living room and look out those doors at our pool! Good memories.
We stayed at motels rather than hotels in the 1960s and 1970s. Most were privately owed rather than corporate chains. The owners were the ones to check you in, and we often enjoyed visiting with them, befriending their pets, and some allowed us to have the owners pet in our room (we were missing our own pet which we left at home with a neighbour as we travelled). The personal touch of those owner/operators is certainly long gone.
There is a motel in Spencerport New York (not too far from Niagara Falls) that is still as personable. They visit with you. Their two little dogs are super friendly. The owners are really accommodating. They would look forward to our visit. When we’re visiting we will only stay with them. The Friendly Motel. It’s like stepping back in to time in a good way.
Yes, my Great Aunt and uncle use to own a motel in Piggot Arkansas. They lived in the small apartment that was attached to one end of the motel. It was located on the main thoroughfare through town and it was always busy. I'm sure it's probably long gone now.
Wish would come back
There are still locally-owned motels in the Hampton Beach, NH/Salisbury Beach, MA area.
Corporate chains have Rapped everything in sight !
In the 70's as a kid, we stayed in dozens of dozens of Motels across the states. One thing we always told Dad was we wanted a swimming pool wherever we stayed above anything else. Whilst most were disgusting, we would always get excited to swim in the pools no matter how dank they were. Also, there is a difference we knew of between a Motel and a Hotel. A motel was a motor lodge, where you drove right up to the rooms and had less amenities. The hotels were when Dad was feeling generous and rich! Such great memories of both. OH and don't forget to ask for a wake up call!
Yup me too and I remember all of this stuff in this video, including the gaudy colours of the rooms, carpet and bedding! 🤮😂
A few years ago, my wife and I drove my classic car from GA to CA. We pulled up to a motor lodge in Elk City, Oklahoma ran by a sweet elderly couple from India. The outside looked bland but the room was immaculate inside and freshly remodeled. I felt safer leaving my car parked out in front of the room than I would have leaving in in the lot of a Holiday Inn. I wish places like that would make a comeback. Felt bad that the hotels on the freeway were packed but this place only had 3 visitors, including us.
So true with my parents many years ago in 60s-70s taking myself & 2 younger brothers on summer vacations. We always went driving with their goal of getting to all 50 states!! I loved those memories as we got to 48 states! I ended up working for hotel designs architectural office in Hawai'i for 7 years, but the only state left is Alaska!
Indeed this video & comments really bring back awesone memories, from the colour TV to a mandatory swimming pool, usually at Holiday Inns properties with family discounts+ Seems families now less likely experiencing as often now, just the Covid-19 years!
@@toddsubjent7142 I love your story! We would see people pulling campers and there was always someone with a lot of state stickers of where they have been. We hit a lot of them but no where close to 49! I sure hope you can make the big 50 in Alaska someday. I’m hoping for ya.😎
You stayed at 144 hotels as a kid?
Some motels had a "lounge" with piano music and alcoholic drinks. I remember the attached restaurants, with a special kids menu. I still have one shaped like a folded train from holiday inn.
Fancy!
A fun memory is meeting family members for the holiday at an Embassy Suite with a piano bar. A cop on the beat would spend his breaks playing that piano.
@@RichardinNC1 reminds me
Of rhe holiday inn in my hometown that had the “Fancy bar” that was packed on Valentine’s Day and NYE
Hotels like that now cost an arm and leg
Piano lounge/bar is still quite common, at least at big hotels. What is new is having a Happy Hour in the lounge, with decent free snacks, and some kind of game like Trivia.
There was always a notepad and a pen with the logo and name of hotel/motel printed on them. Also there was a binder or notebook that had info about the hotel, surrounding area, and tourist attractions. The toilet had a paper sash across it to indicate that it had been cleaned. The towels had the name and logo of the motel/hotel - many people took them home as souveniers and so that's why today we have plain towels, no logo. Did I forget anything? :)
I like having the little note pad and pen in hotels & motels that still provide them. It’s handy to have while traveling - writing down a meal selection for example. The pen is a nice little reminder of your stay as well.
Also, I miss the binders that had not only the local attractions but also a selection of nearby restaurants with their menu and list of local services. Sure, we can look those up on our smartphones now, but having it all done for you in a neat binder is so nice after a day of traveling.
Most hotels I've stayed at recently have all of this. That said, they generally charge you if you take the towels or bathrobes.
That still exists in good hotels. Notebook with tearable sheets and a pen with the hotel logo.
Many of them still have the notepad and pen, as well as the information-filled binder.
@@bobjacobson858 I really like those notebooks and pens. On a trip when you call someone or do a restaurant reservation by phone you can take notes in hand writing as obviously the cellphone is not available just at that moment.
Unless you use them with loudspeaker on or even pointing them in front of your mouth as if they were a sandwich to bite into... The generation no longer using a cellphone like a phone. The engineers do everything to make a cellphone perform like telephone handset in calling mode - it's just the users now says don't know what a telephone handset is anymore...
We didn't have comforters back then they were bedspreads
now duvets
my grandmother made us Afgans that were super warm and comfy...and always very colorful with cool patterns....I miss her ❤️
So true. I remember my first comforter and my bed was so much easier to make. Those bedspreads showed every rumple!
True. A few years ago, I was shopping for a bed spread at a department store and the girl in the bedding department didn't know what a bedspread was. I told her it is the bedding you see in hotels and motels. She then understood.
The store didn't have any and I purchased one online.
Yep, not comforters in those photos. Bedspreads.
This brings back the fun of travel. Each room also had stationery and a couple of pens with the hotel/motel logo. Postcards were also available in the room (not just in the lobby). As a kid, the fun of a swimming pool and a color TV made the trip a lot of fun!
Made me remember a trip my family made with friends - must have been 1967 or 1968. Stayed at a Holiday Inn on a warm summer night and the pool was packed with teens and kids while the parents watched and drank or had a cigarette and talked. Nothing particularly special about it but something made it one of those memories that somehow seem magical.
Thanks!
I couldn't imagine living in the sixties! But I can appreciate the simplicity.
Those days are gone 😢
For some reason that memory brought tears to my eyes. I can totally see and feel the atmosphere around that Holiday Inn pool. It minds me of all the cross-country trips my family took in the late 60s and 70s from Southern Calfornia to Wisconsin and/or Pennsylvania to see relatives on both sides of the family (sometimes driving up the whole west coast into Canada and then across, other times straight across). The motels with their pools after a day's driving and, also, occasionally, a KOA campsite (which had pools too)!
I love reading through the comments on the videos on this channel. I grew up in very late 80/90s so i llove hearing stories n memories from commentors about the 60s n 70s n even before. Reminds me of my moms/gmoms stories. Gmom passed in 2009 n mom 2011. I would've loved to live in that era! I have an old soul.
Those were awesome days & times!
In 1969, we went on a car trip from Ohio to Disneyland, hitting Yellowstone, Mt Rushmore, Grand Canyon and many more places. Most motels, campsites, and park visitor centers had car decals you could buy and put on your car windows to show all the places you had visited on your travels...our paneled station wagon had one of its back side windows covered with all the decals of our travel destinations.
Now we have Facebook
Bumper stickers are still a thing
My dad loved road trips. Holiday Inn was the top pick for a hotel because kids stayed free. Also they always had a pool for us kiddies. When the door opened to a new room, my brother and I would race to see who could get the most matchbooks out of the ashtrays. One on the desk, one on the night table and one on the table was the norm. I have not thought of that in years.
Back in the 1970's most of the hotel chains had catalogues so you could find another place to stay with that chain. Chains like Best Western, Comfort Inn, Ramada Inn, Holiday Inn, and Days Inn had these books which were great not only for finding other motels along your way but they also generally had a few pages of maps.
That was before the internet so those booklets were gold when you were on a long vacation. If you had one from each chain you could narrow down a few after lunch as you better figured out where you would tire out and have to stop. Great memory on those booklets i forgot all about those !! We are likely the last generation that is good at map reading and can function when the internet goes off.
Oh, wow, yes! I remember taking (you were welcome to them) the guide book for the Holiday Inn chain, in the late 80s. I learned that Lhasa, Tibet, had a Holiday Inn!
Also whatever motel you were staying at offered the free service of booking a reservation for you at another of that chain's properties, in whatever town you expected to be for the next night(s) of your road trip. It was done using some sort of company telex system. In the age before toll-free 800 numbers, this saved travellers the cost of a long-distance call to make a reservation.
Oh yes, I remember those catalogues! I loved motels as a kid! Still do!
Yes! Us kids were always harping at our parents from the backseat about wanting to stay in a Best Western.
Motels here in Australia. Rooms had a tiny hatch door (about the size of a pet door) in the wall from outside leading into an internal cupboard at waist height.
You’d order your breakfast the Night before on a card and drop at reception and next morning at the time you nominated they’d knock at this small hatch, open it and push the breakfast tray into the cupboard. You’d go over and take it out. That way you didn’t have to open the main door or dress. Loved it
I stayed at a hotel as a kid here in the states that did that. Continental breakfast was included ( blueberry muffins and coffee thermos ) and the interior hatch was in the wall right over the counter. You didn’t order since every room got the same thing.
@@historiclift27 here we could order toast, cereals, coffee tea milk OJ, sausages, eggs, beans, grilled tomato, steak (from memory). Of course you paid for it when leaving.
That's a great idea. There's absolutely no reason why that should be considered outdated right now. It would go over well here in the United States I think. Especially coupled with the idea, which a few motels have, for extended check outs, for a small fee.
Damn - I forgot about the meal flaps. Thanks for reminding!!
That’s really interesting, thank you for sharing!
The Apple Valley Inn (in Apple Valley, CA) was built right after WWII. At the time, it couldn't get telephones installed in the guest cabins due to a shortage of copper wiring, so it gave each cabin a carrier pigeon. Guests would write their order/request on a slip of paper that was inserted in a capsule on the bird's leg, and would let it fly back to the office (no long room service orders, evidently). Along with their order, they were brought a new carrier pigeon. This went on for a year or two until phones could be installed.
thats is wicked history! Ive grown up in the PNW my whole life, learned all about apple valley and that is literally one of the coolest things ever
I grew up in Victorville/Apple Valley. I never heard this. Cool!
@@DeannaPiercy Given that this was about 75 years ago, I'm not surprised.
It's no longer operating as a hotel as far as I know, but the last time I checked, the banquet facilities were still in use. The area sure went downhill when George AFB was closed. Even The Cocky Bull (if you remember it) has been torn down and replaced by a small strip mall.
I would have loved that.
The carrier pigeon method is very interesting. And very cool.
In the Sixties, air conditioning in the rooms was a plus.
I grew up in the 70's and my Dad was a traveling salesman. We always stayed at Holiday Inn and their majestic sign was a welcome site. The pool was the best, as a kid, and those plastic key rings bring back memories. Thanks for making me smile.
Those were the days, especially for kids. Going on a family vacation by automobile always resulted in a nice meal and a swim in the motel pool following the day's drive. An adventure most of us fortunate enough to have grown up during that unique moment in modern American life will never forget!
Worst vacation memory of my childhood: North Carolina mountains, in 1968 . . . the night all the nice motels with wonderful pools full of kids having fun had "NO VACANCY" and we had to stay at a run-down old motel with (gasp!) NO POOL! 😨
I was 10. I did not take it well.
@@Lunafalls I remember that kind of unfortunate experience from our late 60's/early 70s cross country road trips!
I grew up with road trips to DIsney World, a drive of >thousand miles each way.
Before taking an extended-family trip with my now-wife, who is from China and had no such tradition, I showed her the movie _National Lampoon's Family Vacation_ so she'd know what to expect.
When you recall and smile over the topics covered, you know you’re old. I remember almost all of this.
When I was little I thought it was so exciting to stay at motels. We did once stay at a place that had the vibrating bed and it sure was fun. But the thing I always loved the most was the ice machines for some strange reason. I used to go back and forth filling and refilling that plastic bucket with fresh ice. There were always located outside, one at the end of each floor. My other favorite thing was taking those little tiny soaps when it was time to leave. Sometimes they even had little toothpaste tubes and little bottles of mouthwash. I thought they made the greatest souvenirs of your trip.
At my uncles beach house he had a big apothecary jar w/all the tiny soaps from every hotel he stayed in over the years.
Thief!!
@@samanthab1923 yep. and I've seen people with huge matchbook collections also. which might be a little more interesting because they have more information on them about the places you've been.
@@kingclover1395 He probably had those as well. Big smoker.
That's the only thing I remember about staying in hotels on our way to Disneyland was the tiny soaps and their scent.
Stayed at many hotels and motels growing up and recall the distinctive aroma (pleasant) when first entering the room. Also, the paper wrapped glasses and toilet seat bands put into place to show the bathroom had been cleaned.
Ahhhh, those were the days. Dearly missed
Thanks for the look back
Those analogue t.v.'s could sometimes pick up portable handset RF telephone conversations from other rooms or even other buildings next door and transmit them over the t.v.'s speaker.
Don't forget about the neon sign of the girl in the one-piece bathing suit diving to signify there is a pool! Haha! The matchbook shown towards the end for the Capri Motel in San Francisco - this place has been pretty much preserved to still look like it always has since it began!
There's also a small hotel in San Francisco called the "Seal rock Inn". My daughter and I stayed there 2 years ago.its a three story building that still has an old elevator that you have to manually close the door
The Starlite Motel at 2710 East Main Street, Mesa, Arizona restored the animated neon "diving girl" sign a few years ago. Don't know if the sign was originally from the Starlite or another motel in the area that's now gone missing. Was near there last week and she's still making that long dive down the vertical sign spelling out "MOTEL" to this day.
I remember ice machines that had a huge door. You could reach in and scoop out as much as you wanted. We always filled our cooler for the next leg of the trip.
Growing up in the 60's we didn't have an air conditioner at home. So, when our family went on a trip in the Summer and stayed at a motel or hotel, the first thing us kids would do is turn on the AC in the room and claim "dibs" on the bed that was closest to it. I remember well the first time I saw a bed with the "Magic Fingers" box and I pestered my dad relentlessly until he gave me a quarter for it. Then he made me wait until my two brothers got back from the swimming pool and then made them get on the bed with me, so he wouldn't have to give them each a quarter also. I didn't think they were ever going to leave that pool! LOL!
My kids called "dibs" way too often, so I entered "dibs" as a speed dial, and used handsfree in the car to get the voice to say "calling dibs..."
What was even far more hysterical, was that after we had a good laugh, due to having entered a random number, all of a sudden the voice proclaims, "Incoming call, from dibs!"
Greed, things were cheap back then, this nonsense makes e cringe.
Why not? Look what an AC costs today, but everyone has one now. It's more expensive now, I don't understand the whole concept. Wages are the same today. 90 % of people are now homeless, not back than .No one was.
@@ursulasmith6402
90%!!! Did it hurt when you pulled that number out of your assessment of the situation? AC is super cheap today compared to 50 years ago. And more necessary unfortunately.
Yes I remember Magic Fingers....OMG. My folks never budged. We never knew the wonders of it.
I remember in the early 60's my parents would "inspect" the room for cleanliness before deciding to stay at a motel. Mom was a stickler about price too. Anything over 12 dollars per night was too expensive so we just moved on if the price was 13 dollars per night, imagine that!! Mom always said that triple A (AAA) motels were always too pricey so we never stopped at those motels. Of course, a pool was a very special treat.
Interesting, my dad said the same things about AAA motels, when he saw the AAA on them he would not bother to stop and look.
My dad always did the room "inspections" during the 1960's. Us three kids waited in the backseat of the un-airconditioned Chevy Impala with mom up front, all of us sweating. I was the youngest and a total monster wanting a pool or someplace to play. I always wound up on a roll away bed for the night.
Mom always pointed to AAA motels to look at first. Dad could squeeze a penny so tight that it made Lincoln scream and passed on many of them.
Air conditioning? We didn't even have that at home. It was a treat.
Haha! One particular time sticks out in my mind. I remember dad and I waiting in the car at Nags Head, N.C. (small beach town in those days) while my mom went in to check the cleanliness of a motel room. I have a vivid memory of her coming back to the car and telling my dad, "It's clean, and it's $11.00." 😄
It's time to move on from that BS. If it looks like a place you're going to be a victim of crime, you probably will be
In the 70's we would only stay at AAA motels to get the AAA discount.
I remember how excited we got as kids when we would get to stay in a motel,it meant more channels of television to view because in the town we resided in only had one channel,then later on two.🤗👍📺❤
That and the pool. For me, the motel was the best part of the vacation.
Everyday maid service, A managers party, Executive lounges, Hotel information guides in the room, and room service are all things that disappeared or were cut back after covid.
We certainly stayed at our fair share of Holiday Inns when I was a kid back in the '60s! We'd travel by car to Florida or through the New England states (depending on what time of the year it was) and stayed everywhere there was a pool, especially Holiday Inn. This video brings back some fantastic childhood road trip memories!
Ah yes ... And Holiday Inn had the huge neon sign with the arrow!
Same. Holiday Inns, Quality Inns, and HoJos. In season, my parents would always get one with a swimming pool for us. Miss diving boards. My sister and I were like hamsters on a wheel... dive, swim, out, dive, repeat...
I remember how we'd sometimes stay at a Howard Johnson's - that was always exciting to me because I was going to get those famous Howard Johnson's fried clams for dinner! Family road trips of the 60s and 70s provide some of the best memories of my youth. Stuckey's divinity fudge! Sky High Lemon Pie at other rest stops! Getting up early to hit the road and driving an hour or two before stopping at a roadside diner for pancakes or eggs, sausage and hash browns!
@@betsyj59 I remember stopping at a Stuckey's *once* and it was the worst food ever.
Holiday Inns were very family friendly with those great swimming pools. Indeed we 3 kids practically stayed in all day! Holiday Inns were a mainstay in our many summer family holidays, road trips across USA growing up.
Dad wanted us to visit every state possible whilst growing up in late 60s & 70s. Alaska only one still 9n my bucket list to visit!
I remember that big iconic motel arrow lighted motel sign at all their properties as so exciting!! I begged my Mom to make me a colored small construction paper sigh detailed like it! She used some note paper or bag the motel had printed logo sigh printed on it to match the proportions!
These holiday trips/experiences influenced my entire life as became an Architect by desire in the Hotel Industry. My career focused on Hotel/Resort projects in USA & luckily Internationally and worked in several design firms & directly in Hyatt International to Mandarin Oriental hotel operators! All that started with that kids desire to have my own Holiday Inn sign if my own as a child!
Awesome memories as those signs gone now as both our parents have passed on as well. Such great memories indeed!!
Remember Holidomes? They were Holiday Inns with huge atriums that featured an indoor pool, lounge areas, bars, etc. We had many a family reunion at Holidomes!
I stayed at a Holiday Inn with a Holidome in either Tulsa or Oklahoma City in 1989, during a business trip. Two odd things during that stay:
* A spin-off for teenagers of the ladies' auxiliary of a fraternal lodge, "The International Order of the Daughters of Job," was having its induction ceremony on the same morning on which I was holding a training session in a hotel meeting room. So there were teenage girls in white robes walking around. Very surreal.
* My room had a little hatch under the sink. Even though I knew it was just for checking the plumbing, I opened it up because I was really bored. There wasn't just a couple of shut-out valves in there. There was a access area that ran behind all of the bathrooms, going up to other floors and to the right and ahead! With little hatches into the other rooms!
AND, balanced on the door frame of the little hatch, were two unopened bottles of cheap red wine!
I believe I stayed in Holidome in Kansas City Missouri parents had a conference there
I stayed at what must have been a Holidome once, in Kearney, NE, except by then it was a Ramada. Still had a giant indoor pool/courtyard with a massive "treehouse". The courtyard was rented out for big parties.
There is one near the Orlando Airport. It was once a Holidome, as the dome is still there.
Back in the 70s I remember that you had to ask for a non smoking room because people smoked everywhere, even your doctor at exams
Now you can select smoking or non smoking where you will stay after you die. 😇 or 👹
Hotels still have smoking and non-smoking rooms
I think they were all smoking. Every room had ashtrays with matches in them w/the hotel logo.
@@thenightporter You're missing the point
@@samanthab1923 It was a free-for-all back then that's for sure. Like I said in my comment the doctor would come Into the exam room smoking a cigarette.
Nice restaurants either in the lobby or right next door is one of my memories of childhood road trips.
I bought three boxes of vintage postcards when an antique store closed and most are from hotels and motels around the US. They are fun to look at and I looked up a few to see if they were still operating. Most were not.
i'd be curious, if you look across those postcards and compare the sky/clouds, how many of them match?
I was born in’58, so all my vacations were at these kinds of places, in addition to nice campgrounds with pools. I started my own postcard collection when I was 10, which I still have. Then I went to “Europe on $10 a Day” as our book was called, at 17, and have that stack of postcards from 6 countries. Now I’m fortunate enough that my husband works all around the world and at 64 (I took a break to have 6 children!) have postcards from 35 additional countries. Now I collect vintage and antique postcards. It all began with my first postcard of the Betsy Ross House! (My husband came on that first trip with me, and we both caught the travel bug.)
I always used to send my friends postcards from vacations or "long weekend trips." I carried postcard stamps, too.
I seem to remember seeing cigarette vending machines in hotel and restaurant lobbies when I was a kid back in the late 70s/early 80s. There were like 20 different knobs to pull depending on what brand you smoked.
in many European countries they are (unfortunately) still very common
In the UK I think they became a lot less common in about the 1990s. Probably coincided with changes like hotels having smoking and non-smoking rooms.
Still have them in Germany and smoking rooms in Germany too
Bowling alleys had them too!
Dennys had these also, even in the early 90's.
1:30 Regarding postcards ... my (now departed dad), after having a stroke, was confined to a nursing home. A friend of mine was moving cross country, so I volunteered to drive across with her so she could keep her car in Florida.
Every day, wherever we stopped, I'd get a post card, and send it to my dad in the nursing home.
He got the pleasure of getting daily updates, plus had the cards to share with the other residents.
Now that dad is gone, I'm so happy I did this little gesture to bring him a little happiness.
I always liked the heat lamps with the timer switch in the bathrooms. I guess that never went away.
I haven't seen it in a long time and the big box home improvement stores don't sell heat lamps either.
I stay regularly at a Best Western, which judging from the architecture was originally a Howard Johnson still has heat lamps.
Hello, not sure if someone else pointed this out, but back in 60 and 70’s we had bed spreads NOT the comforters we use today. I remember my grandmother stating that comforters of the early 80s were for my generation (I am in my early sixties) because we grew up into a generation of young adults to “busy” to make a proper bed! 😂
True, very true!!
To this day I absolutely,hate bedspreads!!!!
There were some comforters in the 60s, but they were usually down-filled because fiber-fill was synthetic and not made then . Everyone had these much thinner "bedspreads" in their homes that always covered the pillows in order to protect them from dust. Shams weren't a thing yet. Some spreads were made of chenille or had a colonial stubble-patterned look called "Martha Washington." Being from Florida I still prefer them as they are less bulky, but finding them is hard. Matelassé is the closest you can get.
hotels use covers called duvets
Now that you mention it, as a kid in the 70's and early 80's, we had Bed Spreads which were kinda knit or chenille as described before. They often had a lot of fringe or "braids" and I loved to play with that as a kid. They kinda resembled the Throws you can buy nowadays, but were fitted to the bed shape so they weren't flat. They were always in those 70's colors of gold etc. We always heard about Down Comforters but I had no experience of them. In the middle and late 80's there became an abundance of trendy fiber filled comforters and also those thick plush "Mexican" blankets.
My mom, when she was young, took a trip with three of her girl friends. Their names were, seriously, I swear, Doris Day, Helen Hayes, and Elizabeth Taylor.....when they went to sign the.guest register, they nearly got tossed out, because nobody believed those were their real names until they produced their drivers licenses!
Haha! My sister should’ve gone with them. Her maiden name was Debbie Reynolds!😂
@kkerr1953 that's hilarious! Yeah, they'd have made a great girl group!
Lol, We went to school with a kid named Paul Newman and his sister was named Joanne
Yeah, cool story. Don’t give up your creative writing class
A friend of mine from school could have gone too; Nancy Sinatra
My favorite was the heat lamp in the bathroom ceiling. I don't know why they aren't more common.
The dark faux wood paneling, the lime green carpeting, the orange curtains were all mandatory it seemed!
One thing stands out more than anything else to me: the mini one-time use bars of national brand soap, such as Lux and Cashmere Bouquet
I remember when bed bugs weren't a thing at hotels!
Oh yah!!That's for sure huh!!
YES!! what's up with that? We're motel owners just a lot cleaner or did bed bugs not exist? 🤷
@@kellymarsh3956
This may sound odd, but I have a background in pest control in agriculture and general household...
I spray our luggage down with ProFlex the night before we leave, and put used clothes in trashbags sealed up. When we get home I spray the bags outside again with ProFlex and put the laundry into hot water wash.
ProFlex has a couple of insect growth regulators in it and is labeled for resturant use.
It's hard to trust anywhere and a dollar of ProFlex gives me piece of mind!
@@kellymarsh3956 it’s not the motel owners. It’s the guests. They were a lot cleaner.
THEY STILL ARE
My grandparents traveled a lot in the 50's and 60's. I remember their medicine cabinets filled with all kinds of those little soaps that motels always had in the bathrooms and their desk in the livingroom holding lots of matchbooks advertising places they stayed or ate at.
The first time I stayed at a motel was after we had watched the movie "Psycho" on the TV. I was with mom and dad and my brother but I was still a bit nervous. My brother is 5 years older than me so naturally he messed with me the whole trip in every motel room.
Ah, good times.
I watched The Exorcist 2 what a disaster but I remember I felt so adult staying up watching up on my dad fell asleep
Thank you! This brought back a lot of great memories when my parents and I would go on vacation.❤
We would always stay at a Howard Johnson's when my family traveled in the 70's-80's. I thought it was so cool to have the restaurant connected to the hotel.
That's the only way I travel today, with a hotel and a full in house restaurant.
Howard Johnson’s had great ice cream. Make mine blueberry.
With 5 kids in my family, we never stayed at a hotel or motel. But we did do a lot of camping.
I love the photos you shared!
I remember we always drove straight through to our vacation rental, but one year it was late and rainy so we stopped at a motel. All six of us in one room. Mom and dad in the bed, little brother on a cot the other 3 of us in sleeping bags on the floor😂
That TV wire was called "300-Ohm twin lead" and was pretty much the standard for fixed antenna hook-ups back then. Thank you so much for the summer vacation memories!
That twin lead was a natural for connecting the di-pole antenna to the set. The picture is clearer because the interference gets cancelled out. Nowadays, everything is unbalanced, 75-Ohm coax, and you need a balun transformer to match the antenna to the line. The old TVs had baluns, too, but they were built into the tuner and not attached to the antenna.
@@dougbrowning82 The twin lead (not co-ax or twisted) did *not* cancel interference. The spacing apart, sometimes even a "ladder" style so there's more air than plastic, was to lower the capacitance of the wires.
Taking turns with the room ice container to fill up your ice cooler, even though the sign on the ice machine said "NOT FOR COOLERS". And the ice machine made enough noise that it could be heard 2 blocks away.
Travelling with my grandparents in the 70s, staying at a motel with a pool mattered. After having young me antsy in the car all day, a pool let me blow off steam. Grandpa would sit at a table near the pool, keeping an eye on me while looking at his maps and writing down tomorrow's driving. My grandpa was a good dude. I have fond memories of those trips.
Kids/young 'adults' nowadays couldn't read a map, if they even know what one is!
Ah yes the maps! It was always Dad who was busy looking at the "route for tomorrow". Kids these days don't understand that because they pop an address in their phone and do what the voice tells them. We had to map out every route. "Drive 50 miles on Hwy H till you get to mile marker 255 then make a left hand turn into route 50 then 12 miles till you see the MOTEL sign.
@@kellymarsh3956 Same here with Dad and the maps, only he was always wrong, and when Mom finally spoke up, she was always right about the directions!
Back when parents/grandparents actually felt an obligation to supervise their kids, instead of offloading them at the pool and checking out the night scene in town until the pool closed at 11...or 11:30...? Midnight...? Your grandpa was indeed a good dude.
@@22ergie Did he listen to her?
I got that wooden room with a CRT TV with room antenna last year in a Motel in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. They even still had a wired telephone with Rotary dial.
Staying with my Mom and Dad in a Motel was always a treat. I spent my adult life in Hotels for my job, Hated it!
"it was always fun to check for the Gideon bible".... What a fabulously exciting childhood 😂😂😂
The motel swimming pool was always a treat in the summer for us kids.
Don't forget, back in the day, there was almost always a restaurant and a bar with the hotel, or even motel. Remember Holiday Inn? Always had those.
You can still find quite a few motels of this type if you travel Route 66. Many have even furnished the rooms in the styles shown here, with vintage-looking phones that are push-button operated like modern phones. One even had a record player in the room! Another had console radios but no TVs, because that was the style when the place originally opened. Typically, though, the swimming pools have been replaced by patios. Towns like Tucumcari, NM and Seligman, AZ have multiple lodgings of this type.
There's a few in Missouri too ...I think it's ozora or something like that.
Adding these to my bucket list!!!!
@@lucsmith2092 "Route" magazine often has ads or articles on motels like that.
@@jimpern You can still find ad lighters with the name of these hotels on vintage lighters on eBay across route 66.
@@kellymarsh3956 Like the Blue Swallow in Lebanon.
You missed talking about balconies. A lot of motels had in room balconies which have disappeared alloSt completely. Also pools had a deep end with a diving board. Thanks for a great video!!
I only remember shoe shine stands at large hotels in the city, but mostly at train and bus stations. I think they disappeared not because people have more shoes, but because actual leather dress shoes become rare. Now everyone wears sneakers.
I had my shoes shined so regularly at O'Hare waiting on my connection, the shine guy would call out the name of my hometown as I walked down the terminal. He didn't know my name, and I can't remember his, but he knew where I was from, that it was far enough away that the odds of someone else thinking he was trying to get their attention were slim, and that I tipped well enough to be remembered. He could tell if I was on my way out, or headed back home by the condition of the shine on my shoes. That stand was busy all the time too. I don't think you can find a shoe shine stand anywhere anymore.
Or flip flops
The shoe shine stands lasted well into the 1990s.
Even those who still dress formal today sometimes wear sneakers in the city. And then carry the good shoes in their bag along side stuff like the laptop. They get to the office and change shoes. so when they meet a client they look good but when rushing down the stairs to the subway they are in shoes meant for moving rather than ones designed for getting million dollar contracts.
We always requested an extra "roll away" bed for our room, as we had more kids than beds. It was a folded up matress and box springs on wheels.
I love this channel! Always looking forward to what’s next!
All the videos on Recollection Road are great! Thank you for letting me relive my childhood!
Some aspects of hotels and motels are better today such as an in-room coffee maker. This does not apply to motels but what I remember most fondly of city hotels is ordering room service and having the meal delivered on a table with wheels and covered with a white tablecloth. And coffee served in a 'hottle' -- I have a few that I found in thrift stores over the years.
This was fun to watch and brought back many memories. My dad was in the hotel business in the 1960s & 1970s working for an East Coast hotel chain. We used to travel in the summer for vacation to many of the chain's locations. I used to have a scrap book with the post cards featuring the photos of the motels we stayed at.
“Free local calls” .. I remember when my family travelled and “free local calls” was a must, because my father always insisted we could save money by calling restaurants and ask about prices for dinner. My Mom would say “we still have these tuna fish sandwiches that we need to eat!”. Mom… made a dozen tuna fish sandwiches from 1 can of tuna… and pack them with onions and pickles to stretch out that one can of tuna. Us three kids would say “NOOOO!!! Find free local calls… PLEASE!!!”
😂🤭
Ah, the ubiquitous BAG-O-SANDWICHES that Mom always packed. We thought it was corny as we were leaving for a trip but at about noon time they sure tasted good.
Ahh yes...the sandwiches. Ours was usually bologna or plain cheese sandwiches....... 😫 UGG!!!
@@kellymarsh3956 -My Mom would put those tuna fish sandwiches inside a Coleman water container. Probably 2 gallon, green on the bottom half and white on the top half, with about a 6” hole in the top with a screw on lid. That was “to keep them fresh”. After two days the sandwiches (finally!) got tossed, then water put into the Coleman. Drank water from the Coleman in 6 oz. Dixie cups. Water tasted like…. wait for it…. FREAKING TUNA FISH! My Mom is 96 years old now, and I talk to her every night, and tonight we talked about this experience. She laughed and said “I’m SO sorry you had such a traumatic childhood”. I’m glad she still has a great sense of humor. Bottom line is… the whole damn trip was tainted by tuna fish. I’d take bologna or cheese any day over that FREAKING tuna fish!
@@enigmawyoming5201 oh God I feel for ya.
I might have ya beat though. A lot of times when we went on trips (especially camping) mom packed all the essentials for the trip. When she asked my dad to help he would walk to the kitchen, grap one item. Something he thought we could NEVER live without. 1 bag of raw potatoes. To dad, that's all we needed to survive. He would even take it with us on road trips, "just in case". 🤣 In case what? The apocalypse? Where were we gonna cook them, on the exhaust pipe? 🤦
When as kids we would beg my dad to take us out to eat (we were dirt poor) but Dad had a better idea. Off to the store!! He would come back with a box of crackers, and yes my favorite bologna, and a huge box of government supplied cheese logs.
No need for fancy smancy restaurants when you got government cheese, bologna and crackers. GOOD TiMES, GOOD TIMES! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
P.s. I bet you don't even let tuna fish inside your house anymore, much less fix it and eat it! Lol
Some motels/hotels I stayed at included a sewing kit with their amenities. A few tiny spools of thread, needles, and buttons.
You missed the paper toilet seat (Sanitized for you), or whatever they put on the label. Also, heat lamps in the bathrooms were a nice touch.
And plastic wrap stretched over the glasses in the bathroom and with the ice bucket to indicate that they were clean and unused…😊
Thanks evoking that memory,l forgot all about that!!😊👍👍
@@jeffhands7097 l remember the little bags they would wrap the glass tumblers in too!!Aaah the good old days!!🙂❤❤
Those were big in FLA. My aunt & uncle went down so much from NY that they installed one in their new bathroom back then.
'Sanitized for your protection!'
One significant omission: drinking glasses made out of real glass. These would be found wither on the desk/dresser next to the plastic ice bucket or on a shelf over the sink in the bathroom. (My sister and I always got into a fight over who was going to get to unwrap the most glasses.). While motels "back in the day" didn't offer body wash, shampoo, or conditioner, there were, of course, the miniature bars of soap (another popular souvenir item), and, frequently, a one-use, do-it-yourself shoe polisher/buffer (a treated piece of paper or cloth) , and a one-use shower cap (my mother appreciated those!).. And Yes, the signs featuring the strong selling points: air-conditioned rooms! free TV! swimming pool! (Oh, I can remember one mom-and-pop motel in North Carolina which offered free home-perked coffee and doughnuts in the lobby, for a couple of hours in the morning.) Thanks so much for posting this: it sure brings back a lot of happy memories.
Jimmy Buffett had a song in the 1970's titled "This Hotel Room" it talks about the features of the time.
Great episode as always.
I use to love looking at the phonebooks in the hotel rooms....I could always tell how big the city was and all the stuff it had to offer by how thick the phonebook(s) were and the info in them.
Thanks so much for taking the time to make these videos. I just love them. 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 It takes me back to the 60's and 70's when life was great. 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼
I miss the stationery you used to find in hotel rooms-nice to jot a note to friends from your destination.
Wow I remember all of this! I even had a collection of postcards... Mailed one and kept the other! And the keys....oh my! Thank you for great memories!!
Used to collect them as kids!🙂👍👍
I collected the postcards too - still have them. I came across them a while back and they brought back some happy memories. I also collected the hotel stationery.
We stayed in one motel that did not have an antenna they had an early version of cable tv.
Also at one time you could charge your room and meals to your gasoline credit card, like Gulf, Monil, etc.
Holiday Inns had a marketing tie in with Gulf Oil & I would stay there.
I seem to recall that I was also able to stay at Howard Johnsons in the same way.
Back in the 1960's and 19070's the oil companies ran their own credit card systems and cards were easy to get.
I have a very early cardboard Gulf oil credit card from 1942 as part of my petrolia collection.
I also collect Sinclair because I loved their Dino the Dinosaur mascot.
I have 3 different sizes of Dino plushes across from me as I type this.
As our family traveled by station wagon in the 1960’s, we stayed in many roadside motels, most good, a few disappointments. Most of these were on state highways. As the interstate grew across America, some of the mom and pop motels lost business to the growing chains like Howard Johnson’s and Holiday Inns. My parents preferred the Holiday Inn, they were very consistent in the quality of rooms. All had air conditioning, good color TV’s and most had a swimming pool.The attached restaurants were usually decent enough as well. They were pretty clean, you knew what to expect with the Holiday Inns. Kind of the McDonald’s of the Motel business.
Howard Johnson's had grilled hot dogs with a toasted split-top bun! When I was older I loved their fried clams.
In the 1960s our family road trips were traveled in a VW bus. I remember my. mom hanging wet washcloths from the ceiling with the windows partially open to get somewhat of a cool breeze going in that vehicle when we drove through the desert during the day at the height of summer.
We usually stayed in the mom and pop types until I was a teenager
Then it was Motel 6, Super 8, or Best Westerns. My parents thought Holiday Inns and Howard Johnsons were too pricey, lol!
Many of the motels I stay in back then had ice machines. These big ice makers were centrally located and you had to walk out of your room to find them. The ice cubes were small and were in a big bin with a metal lid. Inside, there was a big scooper to use for taking the ice. And there was always a small plastic ice bucket in your room which you could use to carry the ice cubes.
Another awesome video. Never knew about the "skippers". Thanks.
You got me thinking about road trips and reminded me of one our family took when moving from Houston to Seattle. Dad had a 1964 black fleetwood cadillac and we were driving through Arizona and it was hot; like over 100° hot. We had been driving for hours and we're looking for a motel. Over the last hour of driving, all of us-mom dad and my older brother kept hearing what sounded like rifle shots. The thing was; that these shots only occurred once about every 10- 15 miles spaced apart. Maybe as many as 10 or 12 "shots" over that last hour+ before we pulled in to a motel. It didn't make sense that somebody shooting would be "following" us. When we went to get the luggage from the trunk to take to the motel room; we got the answer. My dads golf balls inside his golf bag had exploded from the heat. I'm not a golfer(then or now) but apparently these particular golf balls had a liquid core and when it got hot enough inside the trunk of that black Cadillac-the liquid expanded enough to burst the vinyl cover of the ball and the rubber band material that made up the surrounding of the liquid core was all over the trunk like spaghetti. The balls had been inside a pocket of the vinyl golf bag and exploded so hard that they tore through the bag and all over the trunk! I'd love to hear the travel stories of others. I know you did a video on 1960's road trips; but how about one that focuses on all the funny (and bizarre) mom and pop roadside attractions around the country. You know- those people that live on their state's equivalent of Route 66 and since they have a constant stream of travelers, they create their own roadside "museum", or the biggest ball of string, or the reptile farm. I think in one of the central northern states there was a 30' tall Paul Bunyan and a matching giant "Babe" blue ox. In California there was the tree you could drive through in the Redwood forest. In New Mexico(I think) there was the Carlsbad Caverns where thousands of bats would fly in and out each day in a swarm and tourists could walk the switchbacks down deep in to these enormous caves( and then ride an elevator back to the surface). Let's have a Recollection Road of "Roadside Attractions of the 50's,60's,and70's"!
I remember the giant Paul Bunyan statue (think there might have been multiples of these in different locations but maybe I'm just remembering the one you're thinking of), also the redwood you could drive through, and also signs advertising "The Thing" (several of them spaced apart to keep reminding you that you were getting nearer - somewhere in the west I think but don't really remember) and, also, those rest stop Stuckey's!
I have had many cars, but my most favorite was a 1966 Cadillac Sedan Deville.
If your dad's golf balls exploded then he was a prankster. I've never heard of a playable golf ball ever being produced with a liquid center that could burst when heated. More than a few have been made that will explode on impact. Some used talc to make a showy puff of white powder. Others were a little less benign.
@@scottsatterthwaite4073 I'm sure if you do some research you will find that there were golf balls made with liquid cores in the mid '60's. I can assure you that it wasn't a prank or some kind of "gag" golf balls. They had a liquid (encased) core. That was surrounded by this rubber band material, which was surrounded by the covering made of whatever golf ball coverings are made of.
Update:this from Wikipedia;
Liquid cores were commonly used in golf balls as early as 1917. The liquid cores in many of the early balls contained a caustic liquid, typically an alkali, causing eye injuries to children who happened to dissect a golf ball out of curiosity. By the 1920s, golf ball manufacturers had stopped using caustic liquids, but into the 1970s and 1980s golf balls were still at times exploding when dissected and were causing injuries due to the presence of crushed crystalline material present in the liquid cores.
When I lived in Phoenix, my spare tire in the trunk, exploded. Golf balls are a lot smaller.
I enjoyed the trip through your remembrances of your trips across country. My dad was Navy. We traveled across country several times on different routes. Remember Buerma Shave signs?
Postcards in the lobby? I remember when rooms had postcards, paper, envelopes, and pens in the desk. I recently stayed at 2 Disney resorts in Florida. No postcards or pens but they do still have Gideon Bibles!
Sadly, just after Covid, pens and paper all disappeared from Motel rooms. We have to ask for them now at the front desk. I stayed at The Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, NM many times. I got to know the dear old Lady who got the motel as a gift from her husband (RIP) in the late 40's. She ran that motel when she was into her eighties! Each room had an attached garage which I LOVED! I was back recently, the attached garages have been blocked up but the rooms are still the same. However, even though updated, they still have the same 'nostelgic' feeling. The interesting history is showcasted in the office. Well worth the visit!
I'm always so happy when I see that you've posted a video! 😊
Bellhops. These were young men were featured mainly in large hotels, in big cities. They wore bright red uniforms with a round hat so you can easily pick them out in a crowd. After checking in, the desk clerk would ring the bell at the desk and the bellhop would take your bags and key and escorted you to your room. He would open the door, point out all of room amenities. You would then, give a tip. Bellhops would also deliver messages to patrons. Say you were in the lobby or in the restaurant and were waiting for a phone call ( days before cellphones ). The bellhop would enter the room and call out, "Paging Mr. ( insert name here)" he would keep doing this until you replied then escort you to the phone.
One thing I noticed is that the hotel pools were in different and to me, prettier, shapes than the swimming pools you see today. Most pools seem to look like squares or rectangles, not those flowing shapes that matched the land. Great memories, Thanks so much again!
Kidney shaped.
Ice machines where you scooped the ice out with a big scooper or used the ice bucket, sometimes people would place their drinks in the ice machine. Also, while there are still many, the outside door to the parking space has been dying out in favor of a central corridor. The ones with direct access to one's car are typically older ones.
In city hotels, I remember my father leaving his shoes outside the door and they would get shined overnight. A few places had doors within the room door to hang suits and dresses to be cleaned and pressed. I also remember some hotels would have keys large enough that you would basically be forced to leave the key in at the desk, unless you wanted to carry a 2 pound key in your pocket.
Here in Australia...they had a plastic laundry bag you put all your dirty clothes in and left outside your door...they couldn't offer that service today...your clothes would get nicked for sure
In Nigeria, my colleague put his shoes outside to be cleaned. He was rather annoyed in the morning to find that they were just as left, uncleaned. So he called the steward and asked why the shoes had not been cleaned, "Ah" said the steward, "You put them outside for clean, I though you put them outside for smell!"
@@sandyneedham6499 ROTFL That is hilarious. 🤣 Thanks for making my morning
@@23yearsand76 Some hotels still offer laundry service, but often you either have a bag in your room or you ask one at reception and you bring it to reception. Then either they will bring it to your room the next day when they clean it or you pick it up at reception. When I'm in Indonesia I always use this service a couple of days before I go back home so I can fit all my nicely folded clothes easier into my bag and I don't have to do my laundry at home. It's probably cheaper to get it done there too.
What a fun “journey back”! From Dallas, Texas, to 25 miles north of Spokane, Washington, every Summer our parents and we five siblings would drive for three and a half days in the family’s 1960 Chevrolet station wagon until reaching Loon Lake where we rented a large cabin for one month. Along the way we stayed in many a motel like these. Sweet memories! ❤
What a great way to escape the summer heat in Texas.
We took road trips often! The ice machine was a life saver!! We stayed only at the holiday inn, or the travel lodge, or ramada inn. Never a disappointment. They were the top of the line back in those days.
Too bad most hotels are eliminating vending machines. Today snacks & sodas are sold in hotel "convenience stores."
Just don't get stuck in a room near the ice machine!
How about the "arcade" that was inside of the hotel? Playing pinball or Pong . I remember standing in my bathing suit, wrapped in a towel, playing pinball at a Holiday Inn.
In the 80's, some hotels had Centipede, Donkey Kong, Galactica, Pac Man arcade games in the hotel lobby.
I really liked some of the themed motels. The thunderbird chain had an Indian theme.
My family took a week long vacation every year. No where fancy like Disney Land, just a road trip to Lake Superior, or Wyoming, or Kansas. Mostly to visit a WWII buddy of my fathers. We stayed at some pretty crap hotels, but usually got to stay at least one night at a hotel with a pool. AND we only ate out once during the trip, almost always at an A&W. . Usually we had Kitchenettes and so mom cooked for us, or we stopped at road side parks to use the B-Bque. But then there were usually at least 6 of us. We were so poor that I have no idea how they paid for this! But to this day, those trips are the best memories of my childhood.
You had that backwards. You had to request a NON-smoking room. They used to be all smoking rooms. Then they cleaned a few up to be non-smoking. Until now, where they're all non-smoking. I'm still a smoker and remember this fondly. Altho, a fresh smelling room is nice to sleep in. I don't mind going outside too much.
Exactly! Essentially there was no such thing as a non-smoking room...just a bit aired out with ashtrays removed.
It was only non smoking while you stay. They always smelled like smoke and had a brown glass ashtray.