I had an extremely satisfying day on the Odyssey today (which
we’ll get to in a moment), and thinking that absolutely nothing could be worse
than last night’s hotel room which had the pube on the soap, I was a little lax
in deciding where to stay tonight. I
did call a few chain hotels in the area (Essex County, outside of West Orange),
but they seemed ridiculously overpriced.
So, in a moment of brain damage, I would up at the Pine Lodge Motor Inn
on Route 46.
I knew I was in for a quality experience when the
manager/owner/desk dude handed me this:
Still, it was a well-lit place and there didn’t seem to be any
shady people lurking in the parking lot, so I figured it wasn’t dangerous or
anything.
The room itself is very small, but that’s fine—I don’t need acres
of room to brush my teeth and sleep. After
being assaulted by a combination of smells resulting from what I believe to be
feet, mold, and bleach, I saw this:
However, this was overshadowed by the temperature, which rivaled
that of the surface of Mercury. I looked
around for the heater/cooler/climate control thingie, and discovered that I was
unable to reach the thermostat dials because they were too far researched under
the TV…uh…nook:
This is fine, though, because it doesn’t even turn on. Well, okay, I’d crack a window. This is when I discovered that the windows
weren’t only painted shut, they were painted
over, probably to hide the cracks:
I decided to call the front desk and ask how I could turn the
temperature down, since my skin was starting to boil off. The front panel had been taken off the phone,
and you can clearly see its innards:
However, the innards are apparently only for show, since there is
no dial tone. I pressed some
buttons—nothing. Clearly, it’s only
there for stage dressing.
Of course I didn’t expect the TV to work, and I wasn’t
disappointed. It turns on (with a remote
that’s held together with Scotch tape), but there are only two channels, which
are both a sickly shade of cyan, and there’s no sound at all.
The floor is disturbingly lumpy—like there’s something buried
underneath it. There’s no clock, fridge,
microwave, hair dryer, iron, or
hangers. There’s not even a
Gideon Bible, for crying out loud.
There’s only one light in the entire room, and that’s a long
fluorescent bar over the mirror, bathing the room in an unearthly and unnatural
glow. There’s nowhere in the room to see
the TV without the glare of the bulb reflected in it.
I set my bags down on the dresser and chair (no desk—I’m sitting
on the bed typing this), and turned back the covers. The sheets have blood on them. Do you want to see? Of course you do. You’re as big a glutton for punishment as I
am:
The sheets stink like Clorox and chlorine, so I imagine they’re
sanitary (maybe), but I’m still not enthused about getting undressed and
sleeping in them. I’m especially wary
because the batteries for the smoke alarm don’t seem to have been changed for
seven years:
Not that this matters, because if there’s a fire I can’t call for
help from the broken phone and I can’t get out of the painted-shut window. I suppose I could throw the non-working TV through the window, since they
obviously know how crappy it is and didn’t even bother bolting it down.
But enough about that.
Let’s get to today’s weirdness!
I’m extremely excited because I got a lot of bonus weirdness
today. Things started off a bit slowly this morning when I went to visit the
Cry Baby Bridge on Cooper Road in Middletown.
The story here is relatively simply—you’re supposedly able to hear a
baby crying on the bridge, and for some reason if you turn off your car, it
won’t turn on again. The legend is that
years ago (because that’s when everything cool happens), a nun was forced to
throw her illegitimate baby (supposedly fathered by a priest) off the bridge.
Once again, Ed had to wave me in while looking at a satellite
view—everything I was seeing from the ground looked the same. I feel bad about bothering him today because
he’s deathly ill with some mucous-related sickness, but he takes his position
as Flight Director very seriously, and was able to navigate me right to the
bridge. It isn’t much of a bridge (it’s
actually just a guard rail), but it does have a lovely view on either side:
I stood on the bridge, silently, waiting.
ED: Do you hear anything?
ME: No.
ED: “Wah. Wah.
Wah.”
ME: Oh, stop it.
Just as I was about to proclaim Cry Baby Bridge a failure, I
turned around and saw…this!
It looks just like a person!
And I never would have been able to see it from the first angle I was
coming from, so it turned out to be a good thing I needed Ed’s eagle-eye. I was relieved not to have to declare Cry
Baby Bridge a total wash, took some more pictures, and headed off.
There are six cemeteries on my itinerary (including the pet cemetery), and I managed to knock
out three of them today. First up was
the grave of Ray Tse, laid to rest in the Linden Park Cemetery, who allegedly
has a life-sized Mercedes Benz as his tombstone. The story behind it is actually kind of
tragic. Ray, who was only 15 when he
died in 1981, had dreamed his entire short life of owning a Mercedes, and when
he sadly passed away before he was even old enough to have a driver’s license,
his older brother commissioned a granite replica of Ray’s dream car.
I figured something like that wouldn’t be too hard to find, and I
was right. Here it is, prominently
displayed in the Asian section of the cemetery:
Ray’s actual remains are in the family mausoleum, to the left of
the car:
The car weighs 36 tons, and was carved out of a single 66-ton
block of granite in Vermont. It’s
accurate down to the last detail, except for the side-view mirrors and hood
ornament. You can read more about it
here.
Also in this cemetery is a woman who apparently really liked the Washington Monument,
as well as a man who insisted on a block-long monument and life-sized statue of
the Virgin Mary:
Pressing on! I charted a course for the second cemetery of the day,
which is supposedly the final resting place of a man named James Bechtold, who
was apparently so enamored with the Three Stooges that he requested they be put
on his tombstone. The cemetery is
located in Hillside, but is so far off the beaten path that I passed it the
first time and had to turn around at a train trestle. Once again, this proved to be a fruitful
diversion because as I was backing out, I saw this:
Look at that thing! Look at
the size of it compared to the house!
Why? Why on earth would anyone
want that? The only way that could
possibly be more awesome is if it had a mailbox in its butt.
And, conveniently, only two blocks down from Rhino Woman was the
cemetery, and right at the front gate is Mr. Bechtold’s grave. The stone is a little smaller than I thought
it would be, but wow, is it cool:
I love how the Stooges seem to be erupting out of the gravestone.
Here’s a closeup of their heads:
By now I was feeling really cocky. I set out to Evergreen Cemetery to find the
Shrine of Singin’ Sam Stevens. Singin’
Sam (and his wife Mary) was a lifetime residents of Hillside and amateur
musician, and evidently recorded several songs that were never very big
hits.
While meandering around the cemetery looking for Singin’ Sam, I
came across this grave as well:
At first glance, I thought it just said “Big and Lovable Rose,”
which made me wonder how Rose felt about being called corpulent after she had
clearly shuffled off her mortal coil.
When I read it a second time and determined that it was “Big G and
Lovable Rose” it made a bit more sense (his name appears to have been George),
but it’s still sort of an overwhelming monument.
I managed to find Singin’ Sam with only fifteen minutes until
closing, and actually had to shoo away an old man who was sitting on a nearby
bench in order to take a picture. On the
left is a replica of a vinyl record which lists the songs he recorded, and to
the left is a rendering of his favorite guitar:
Tomorrow, I’m headed for Bergen and Passaic Counties, which are
(according to The Guidebook) just
chock-full of weirdness…provided I don’t Legionnaire’s Disease, or a staph
infection or Ebola from this motel room.
Fingers crossed!
Odyssey out.
No comments:
Post a Comment