DUNCAN HINES SLEPT HERE

Mr. and Mrs. Amos Hargrove of Birch Spring, N.Y. (Mr. Hargrove is in feed-and-seed), took a winter vacation last year and came to Arizona. It was their first first trip west. First winter vacation, too, for that matter. But business, as Mr. Hargrove was wont to say, with his habitual caution, had been "holding up pretty fair." Besides, Mrs. Hargrove needed a change. She'd looked peaked lately.

They were rather uncertain, when they left, just what kind of tourist facilities they would choose when they got here. As it turned out, the Hargroves spent their entire vacation in luxurious motels and had the time of their lives.

Mr. Hargrove scarcely had the heart to suggest that they start home. He could see the color flowing back into Mrs. Hargrove's cheeks as they stretched out in the sun on motel lawns from Benson to Yuma. And they were continually meeting nice people at one motel or another, like the couple from Milwaukee who had relatives in Birch Spring and played real fine canasta.

When the Hargroves got back to Birch Spring and reported that they had spent their vacation in motels, their friends were perplexed and, if the truth must be told, a trifle shocked. "You mean little tourist cabins?" they said.

The details of the Hargroves' vigorous rejoinder need not be spread herewith upon the record. For the institution of the Mighty Motel, as we know it in Arizona and the Southwest, can stand very well on its own feet. It has been doing just that for a good many years, and growing rapidly all the while, until now, by official statistical pronouncement, it ranks as the "largest segment of Arizona's third largest industry." Meaning, of course, tourists.

To continue for a moment in the statistical vein: Arizona has something over 1,000 motels with more than 16,000 units capable of sleeping approximately 40,000 people on any given star-dusted Arizona night. Motels accommodate four of every five travelers coming to or going through our state. The industry represents an investment of some $100,000,000 paying about $1,000,000 a year in property taxes. And Arizona is one of seven states in which the bulk of the nation's motel business is concentrated. (All the others are likewise in the West save Florida, which we don't talk about.) But statistics do not begin to tell the story of the Mighty Motel. The story itself is told in the seemingly endless procession of motels squatting wall-to-wall along Phoenix' Van Buren Street and Tucson's "Miracle Mile," and at the threshold of every Arizona town of any dimension. It's told also in the half-million-dollar, double-deluxe motor courts with swimming pools, TV lounges, refrigeration, baby rooms, coffee shops and suites lavish enough for a Vanderbilt or an Aly Khan.

From one end of Tucson to the other you can count 150 motels. And across the Valley of the Sun, from Wickenburg through Phoenix to Chandler, you can tick off 350 and be assured of a selection as varied as that of a fiveand-dime.

But if it's something kind of fancy that you want, there's a motel in Arizona which serves its guests breakfast in bed. Another has an 18-hole miniature golf course. Several have putting greens and barbecue pits for outdoor parties. Nearly every motel worth its salt has a sundeck or patio. And one (the Canary Court in Phoenix) has an aviary of 400 tropical birds to divert the guests. The feathered population includes or did until recently-a loquacious parrot named Sally, possessed of a vocabulary of about 25 words. Among the less censorable of Sally's sallies were: "Come here," "whatcha doin'?" and "stop! Canary Court!"

Almost anywhere in Arizona that you choose to park the family and the family bus for the night, you're likely to find an interesting motel and interesting people running it.

East of Tempe, on U.S. Highway 60-70, there's the Wigwam Lodge, with each unit a wigwam-living room and kitchen downstairs, bedroom upstairs. At the east edge of Kingman, on U.S. 66, the White Rock Court has an ancient strong box mounted conspicuously on the front lawn. It's a memento of one of Arizona's early-day theywent-thataway episodes, having figured in a stagecoach robbery and murder. And at Flagstaff, should you put in at the trim and tidy Vandevier Lodge, you could collect some lively reminiscences of the old West from a bona fide two-gun sheriff. That would be the proprietor himself, Arthur Vandevier, now retired to the more sedentary life of an innkeeper by the side of the road. Arizona's motel industry is, in fact, rather generously overlaid with Western color, as well it should be. You'll find it in Phoenix' Western Village and Stagecoach Motor Hotel, in Benson's Quarter Horse Motel and in the Apache Land Lodge at Globe. And if it's size you're looking for, there's the new Desert Inn in Phoenix with 80 units, the Palomine in the same city with 66 and Phoenix' Sea Breeze and Flagstaff's Nackard Inn with 50 apiece.

As for rates, they'll vary with the season. (This is tourist In the Phoenix area there are motor courts to please every taste of the traveler. Prices and accommodations vary. In Phoenix alone there are 133 courts offering fine service. country, remember, and motel operators are only human.) In season you can pay $4 or $5 for a nice-but-not-gaudy bedroom-and-bath or $12 for a suite elegant enough to make the Waldorf look to its knitting. Or you can level off somewhere in between. Out of season, figure about half to twothirds of the in-season scale. (There is a lamentable though logical tendency among some motel proprietors, when business is slack, to cut each other's throats until the blood runs as red as the neon. The traveler who shops a little can benefit thereby.)

Treson Biltmor MOTOR HOTEL: SWIMMING POOL RESTAURANT

Whence came the Mighty Motel? It came, of course, with the automobile, although historical exactitude might suggest that the very first motel was an Arizona cliff dwelling. Actually the modern motel isn't much more than 15 years old. Before that it was a disreputable and poorly lighted cluster of shacks lurking behind a sign that read "Tourist Cabins." The traveler had his choice of putting in there (and he might better have his own bedding along) or pushing on an extra 100 miles to get to a decent hotel. Today, as a New York Times travel writer noted recently after a swing through the Southwest, the "third and secondclass hotel is doomed. And the first-class hotel is going to have a run for its money in a terrifically competitive field." The motel industry has been so busy growing up and reaching out that it hasn't even been able to agree on what to call itself. "Motel" is the generic term most commonly used, but many operators prefer "motor hotel," "motor court," "motor lodge" or some such. They are a trifle sensitive about "motel," holding that this suggests a stigma of which the industry has been assiduously trying to divest itself, and is, to a very large extent, succeeding. The stigma derived from the fact that quite a few motels functioned mainly as to use the trade's own expressive term "hot pillow joints." One veteran Arizona operator, grimacing a little, recalls that "telling people you were in the motel business not so many years ago was like saying you had leprosy or your first cousin was Jesse James." But now motels have attained to all the dignity of hotels and cater to the most fastidious of travelers. Among them are celebrities seeking to get-away-from-it-all and millionaires who could stay at any $50-a-day desert resort and pay for it out of their pin money. The proprietor of one of the nicer Phoenix motels recalls that he played mine host to a Texas oil man traveling in a Cadillac and accompanied by five automobiles-with-trailers and several Germanmade motorcycles. His entourage also included an airplane that landed at the nearest airport whenever he stopped for the night.

Some of the motels operate as semi-resorts. Guests put in for a month or two, or possibly for the entire season, and make their reservations a year ahead. So proud of their new dignity are the motel operators that when a Los Angeles judge a few months ago referred publicly to “quickie motels,” they jumped all over him and demanded that he put up or shut up.

To various recommending agencies like the AAA and to that omnipresent and omniscient traveler, Duncan Hines, goes much of the credit for cleaning up and popularizing motels.

The present-day value of the Duncan Hines imprimatur, however, is debated briskly in the industry. Some say it isn't worth what it used to be when there were only a half-dozen motels in each city and Hines gumshoed through all of them to see which was the best. Now, with the industry's great flourishing, there are many without the Hines blessing as good as those with it. One Arizona court even sports a sign, “This motel NOT recommended by Duncan Hines,” and seems to be doing pretty well.

The issue apparently boils down to this: Operators upon whom Hines has bestowed his benediction think it's worth its weight in gold. Those denied his favor call him a has-been.

One of the pleased possessors of the Duncan Hines benediction is Robert H. Sebree, proprietor of the Sea Breeze in Phoenix. Sebree is certain that the Hines recommendation sends him customers because they tell him so, by means of tactful questionnaires left in each room. One traveler upset Sebree's careful tabulations, though. Filling in the space where he was asked to state why he stopped at the Sea Breeze, he explained simply, “Because I was sleepy.” It probably should be noted in passing that Duncan Hines himself spends a month every winter at the Sea Breeze. But Sebree's claim to distinction in the Arizona motel industry rests more firmly on the fact that he is the state's biggest motel operator and, in fact, one of the biggest in the country. He shares in the operation of a million-dollar chain which also includes motels in Gila Bend, Safford, Holbrook and Blythe, Calif. Sebree's partner is Joe Sheldon and they call each of their motels outside Phoenix the Sea Shell, for an easily discernible reason.

Sebree, a tall, brusque and beefy man, was in the hotel business for 14 years and shifted over to motels. “I was born lazy and I constantly have relapses,” he says. “The hotel business was nerve-wracking. I thought surely there was an easier way of making a living. So I got into motels -and I've found it even tougher than hotels.” Within a 30day period one of Sebree's managers quit from overwork, another resigned because his wife was having a nervous breakdown and a flash flood put the Gila Bend Sea Shellappropriately-under two feet of water.

The motel business is tough, says Sebree, because it's a 24-hour job-so harrowing that that he gives his managers a two-week vacation every every four months. If he didn't they would get all unstrung and start insulting the guests, he says.

Sebree believes that many operators newly come to the motel industry are novices heading down a one-way street to bankruptcy because they don't know the business. Most of them came into it from something and somewhere else -a filling station in Indiana, a grocery store in Arkansas or a career as a railroad conductor-and with the thought of semi-retirement. They would hang up their signs, sit on the lawn, kick off their shoes and wait for the customers to flock in.

But there is a lot more to it than that, insists Sebree. And not the least of it, he says, is financial know-how and old-fashioned salesmanship.

He might have added one more thing-rapport between the motel proprietor and his guest. This is a quality of motel living which appeals to the gregarious, informalityloving tourist. It is also a quality which prevails at most motels, since 95 per cent of them are owner-operated.

Typical of these owner-operators with the homey touch are the Altschuls-Julius and Blanche-who run the Villa Motor Hotel on U.S. 60-70 at the east edge of Phoenix. They are a handsome, friendly couple-former Chicagoans.

Julius was assistant to the president of a chain of hotels. But they hated the big city “treadmill” and Midwestern weather. In 1947 they bought the Villa and settled downArizonans “forever and ever and ever,” as Blanche fervidly affirms.

The Altschuls put great store by this thing of rapport. Their guests stay at the Villa for periods as long as five months and come back year after year, like the birds winging south. This qualifies them with the Altschuls for the elite standing of “alumni” or “family.” “Anyone who's here beyond the third day, we call 'em by their first name,” says Blanche. “After the fourth day they're helping us run the place.” Such is the flavor of informality at the Villa that, when Blanche caught her finger in a car door, a wealthy lady guest came in and did her dinner dishes that evening. Roberta Altschul, age 15, can usually find a knowledgeable guest to help her with her algebra. And whenever one of the Altchuls' mama cats goes down into the valley of the shadow, as they seem to be forever doing, the entire court paces the hospital corridors.

But Julius and Blanche have found that the business of a roadside innkeeper isn't all beer, skittles and gentle camaraderie. It yields to no other business in the quantity and variety of its headaches.

There was, to begin with, the large number of things that had to be done to the Villa, after the Altschuls bought it in 1947, to make it satisfactorily inviting to the passing trade. One such item was the necessity of altering the wall heater in each of a dozen units. The builders had installed the right heaters in the right places-but each one was in backwards.

Then the Altschuls discovered that all the units were designed for two people apiece and there were no accommodations for parties of three, four and five. This required extensive remodeling. “The folks who built the place must have had the idea that everybody travels in two's, like Noah's ark,” Julius remarked sententiously.

A year or so ago the Altschuls installed a swimming pool and also, to advertise the fact, a fancy animated neon sign portraying a girl swimmer diving into water. The sign elicited more comment than customers until Julius got it fixed. The timer was off and the girl kept diving before there was water to dive into.

In the life of a motelkeeper, problems like these can be met, overcome and forgotten. But the help problem is always with him. Julius, once accustomed to presiding with Jovian aloofness over a 1,000-room hotel and, when something needed to be done, ordering George to do it, now can fix a malingering toilet with the best of 'em. And Blanche, if she has to, can make 22 beds in a day without breaking a nail.

Their advice to newcomers in the motel industry: "Be able to do every single job on the place yourself."

It was the incident of Minnie the maid (Minnie wasn't her name but it will suit our purposes) that taught the Altschuls self-reliance. Minnie weighed 300 pounds and enjoyed eating in proportion thereto.

One day, when some guests in a kitchenette unit checked out ahead of schedule and left a lot of groceries behind, Blanche gave them to Minnie. Minnie didn't show up the next morning. When Blanche called to find out what had happened, Minnie's daughter explained, "Mama is taking a vacation."

The Villa, along with its problems, gets its quota of eccentric guests. There was the traveler who couldn't unlock the door of his apartment and kept the Altschuls up half the night trying to solve the enigma. Turned out he was attempting to get in with a key he'd carried off from an Albuquerque motel by mistake.

Then there was the couple who stopped one evening to ask the price of accommodations. Blanche, who was on duty, quoted it.

"We sleep flat," said the lady. "How much in that case?"

"I don't understand," said Blanche.

The lady explained: "We don't sleep on pillows. We sleep flat. How much without pillows?"* But then, so far as that goes, every motelkeeper in Arizona has had experience with eccentric customers. For motel guests are, after all, people, and people are peculiar. Eccentric guests aren't alone in posing the average motel owner-operator with day-to-day irritants. Indigenous to the business of running a motel is the problem of confinement. In season especially, the conscientious motel man feels that either he or his wife must be on the premises at all times.

This has given rise to a budding new profession-that of "motel sitter." A "motel sitter" is a trusted person who comes around in the evening to ride herd on the desk while Mr. and Mrs. Motelkeeper take in a movie, visit the Joneses or perhaps attend a motel convention.

Still and all, the business of running a motel-as with any other business-has its compensations. One is comparative freedom from the depredations of sticky-fingered guests. Reason is that it has been a long-established custom in motel life for a guest to record his automobile license number when he checks in. If a luxurious Turkish towel or a fetching bedspread arouses the petty larceny in him, he reconsiders.

But not always. A Prescott motelkeeper experienced what was unquestionably the ultimate in pilfering. Three young men checked in one evening and out again the next morning early. When the proprietor went to inspect their suite, he found that the guests had taken everything with them-beds, bedding, dresser, chairs and miscellaneous furnishings. The place was stripped clean right down to the wall-to-wall carpeting.

More often, however, the problem of articles-goneastray afflicts the motelkeeper from the other end. Absentminded guests are forever leaving something behind, as did the lady who left a $20 bill in a Sunday school folder at an Eloy motel. It was all she had to get home to Oklahoma, she said anxiously when she called back a few hours later from somewhere down the highway.

The proprietor found the Sunday school folder and the $20 bill in his incinerator and mailed it on. That was four years ago. Every year since then his grateful guest has sent him a crocheted doily for Christmas.

It is such as this that makes life everlastingly rewarding for a motelkeeper and persuades him that nothing else in the world would satisfy him quite so well, unless it's operating another motel. After all, he is only doing what every American loves to do have company come over in the evening-but he is doing it for a living. In this case the company is you, the gentle traveler.

If you haven't tried our motels yet, you really ought to give them a fling. You'll meet some awfully interesting people. And who knows-you might sleep in the very bed that Duncan Hines slept in.