The hotel garage
Which they advertise as 'uptodate, quick service, low rates'.
They darn well ought to be low
(Although they ain't)
BeCAUSE the place is an old barn and so overcrowded THAT
Somebody smashes into you and dents your fender
AND
When you kick, the garridge attendant,
A lowbrow who likes bathing--in grease,
Says you done it before you came in and
Demands halfadollar,
May he have hives on the scaffold!
Bell-boys!
They whistle as they carry your bag and look at how shabby it is and snicker and point it out to their fellow imps
AND
Hit your shins with it in the elevator
AND
When they have opened your window, on winter days, and slammed it shut in August, and put their dirty paws on your towels, they just stand there and
IF
You give them less than a quarter they sniff and bang the door.
Waiters
They either give you warm drinking-water or a CHUNK
Of ice so big in the glass your lips can never,
Can never, never, never get around it.
They bring you also warm butter BUT
You can count on them for cold coffee.
If they bring you eggs they forget the salt,
If they bring you flapjacks they forget the syrup,
If they bring you ginger-ale they forget to open it,
If they bring you meat they forget the knife
And the fork
And the gravy
And the salt
And the pepper
And sometimes the meat!
Hotel beds!
They either slope down to the sides,
So that you roll out all night long,
Or down to the middle so that all night,
You dream
You are an ant,
A little ant,
An unhappy little, little whimpering ant,
Who's trying,
All night long, to climb
Out of a pit of sand, and
The mattresses are stuffed with bricks,
Cement,
Old iron,
And rocks,
And smell, they smell of rags, old ancient rags
Lying a long time in a dark, damp place.
And all the hotel chow tastes all alike,
Clam chowder tastes like beef, and beef like pie,
The while the pie tastes--if you will excuse--
It tastes--it tastes like H-E-Double L.
And then next morning:
The elevator-runner says, 'I hope
You slept well,' and the bell-boys, with their hands
Outstretched in loving greeting, say, 'We hope,
Each miserable urchin of us hopes,
You slept like billy-oh.'
The beaming clerk he hopes you slept; he hopes,
'You have enjoyed your stay with us, old top,'
The while he murders slumber with the bill,
The monstrous inconceivably big bill.
Hotels!
Henceforward I shall sleep in ditches soft,
In barns, in owl-nests, or in piggies' pens,
Dine on the dew and sup the evening star,
Anything to avoid these blank hotels!
When he had recovered from what he conceived to be justified fury, Myron composed his first and last poem. He sent it to the Hotel Era, and during the next five years it was reprinted in seventeen hotel journals from New York to Cape Town:
Guests!
As an hotel-keeper I like guests pretty well--
I've got to.
I like them the way a prize-fighter likes getting socked in the jaw--
He gets paid for it.
Guests!
They steal the towels, the ash-trays, the blankets, the electric light bulbs, the small rugs, the stationery, the pens, the pin-cushions, the table-ware, the Hotel Red Book.
They never leave their keys, and rarely send them back.
They tell the hotel dick the girl is their cousin.
They want you to cash big cheques without identification,
AND
They say they'll never come back if you don't.
Thank the Lord for that, anyway!
Guests!
They burn cigarette holes in the bedspread, the carpets, the chair-arms.
They leave the water, the costly hot water, running in the bowl
For hours.
They sit on edges of beds and ruin the mattresses.
They cut the towels with safety-razor blades.
They use the towels to clean mud off their shoes.
They use same to wipe off mascaro when they are females of the species.
Guests!
The timid ones are scared of fire, burglars, earthquakes.
The gally ones try to borrow the manager's Tuxedo for banquets.
All of them complain that the clerks, the bell-hops, the porters, the chambermaids, the telephone-girls, and practically everybody except the Governor of the State,
Was rude.
Maybe so.
And maybe the guest was rude first.
Guests!
They want strawberries out of season
(And free, on the club breakfast) but
They sniff at strawberries in season,
Great, big, beautiful strawberries in season, and then
They want,
They whine that they 'just can't understand why they can't get',
Imported Norwegian herrings
And Mount Hybla honey
And plovers' eggs
And squab on toast
And all
On the eighty-cent club breakfast.
They want a special steak broiled in five minutes.
And then they kick
Because the steak is rare.
And then they kick
Because the coffee they left standing there
Ten minutes has got cold.