Wednesday, February 22, 2023

An Attractive Attractive Nuisance

Much as I intellectually dislike American car culture, and the sprawl and generica it has led to, I have a soft spot for the old Howard Johnson's motels with their orange roofs:

Honestly, I'm not really sure I saw that many of them in person while they were still being used during their original run. Or if I did, it may have been ones that didn't have this triangular lobby building. I remember at least one of the more horizontal buildings, like you can see in the background of this ad.

In a town near where I grew up there was a car dealership that had a building similar to this triangle and glass kind of building, though. The roof was blue. One day when I was pretty young and Daughter Number Four was two years even younger, we went to look at cars there with our dad. 

I remember DN4 climbed up onto one of the concrete blocks that was at the base of the roof, then kept crawling up onto the roof itself. There was a major freak-out among the staff as they coaxed her down.

I wonder how often that happened with the HoJos roofs. Look at that corner. How many kids climbed up that roof?


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