Monday, February 18, 2008 Seares: No room at the motel By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
IT’S no longer a police officer wanting to use a motel room to relieve himself, mighty dubious then because he brought along a girlfriend for the restroom ritual and used a police car to take them there. But, recall, the motel gave him a room.
This time it’s a higher-ranked officer, a superintendent, who wanted a room to sleep off the beer he had been drinking. But the motel turned him away.
The first incident made it to the papers last year as the police car, a new Innova, figured in a traffic smashup just outside the motel.
The second incident saw print in Friday’s paper because the police official complained publicly that he was refused a room. Business was brisk on Valentine’s Day and rooms, at least in that motel, were limited to two-hour use per couple.
He recorded the incident in the police blotter. Probably he thought refusing a customer cop was criminal.
The superintendent was rejected not because he wouldn’t pay. He would pay, unlike the other “motel cop” who obviously loved his rides free.
Cultural noise
It has become part of the cultural noise that on Valentine’s Day one (a) must have a lover and (b) must spend time with the lover on that very day.
Failing (a) is fate worse than standing against a wall to be shot or having one’s nape nibbled by a snake. Or so some lovers think.
Not doing (b) is like being, in Nora Ephron’s metaphor, a wallflower in an orgy room.
That explains why it was full house everywhere last Feb. 14. As community relations chief, the police official should have understood people’s obsession with love and innkeepers’ passion for profit.
