how boring must indiana be to think of this as fun

Okay, so I have now been to Vincennes and got a whole different feel. I love the old buildings downtown and met this really nice Robert Mitchum lookalike at a record store who was super sweet and nice. We ate at Guppy's and it was the best food I have had in the state. Really not bad. So things started to look up. Driving back to Petersburg though, my depression returned. It's this small town. It doesn't matter what I do here, this particular place is just rank, has a sleazy vibe, racist vibe, I am not myself here at all, I don't even have my usual thoughts. I can usually deal with a bad situation watching TCM but the motel doesn't have that channel. Very challenging.

Yesterday we went to Terre Haute and Bloomington. Loved both places! Bloomington reminded me of Austin circa 1989, maybe even 1986. I was a big fan of Breaking Away and this sweet bartender was patient enough to put up with me geeking out to the film and asking him where the different scenes from the film played out. Had a great glass of wine from Argentina there too, lots of friendly smiles, there were bookstores, nice restaurants, cool buildings really enjoyed the day.

Back to Petersburg where I have just woken feeling blehk despite the awesome day long excursion yesterday. We are here till mid-August. I am planning on spending time out of Petersburg during the week with trips to Vincennes. I have never had such an aversion to a place. I have felt uncomfortable in some places, temporarily, maybe just for a moment, but never like this, where I loathe to wake up here.

Interesting gossip: This Hispanic waitress at a Mexican restaurant in Washington told me the "gringas" like to go hang out at the Mexican store at the edge of town and pick up Hispanic men. I had just been to that store and was impressed with their sundries. It's like little Mexico in that store, they even sold nopales. Anyway the place was packed with men, I figured it was a day labor site. They were polite and friendly, told me where I could find more of my people and liked that I was from Texas asking me about the work there and all. The waitress said that in Washington, IN, White men are not interested in Latina women and so there is a lot of animosity towards the White women because they take the Latino men. The waitress said it's because they are just so bored. I couldn't help but think, yeah, day laborer site for sure.

There are good beers here... that is for sure.

bamcquern: I apologize. I sincerely never want to insult anyone's nawnee. It isn't the whole state, it's this town. I wish I could even say only a few individuals in this town, but it is the whole town.

BTW: Every little town we passed from Bloomington back to Petersburg last night had a library. I really liked that.

growing up in Louisville, Ky right on the border there was an ambient dislike of Indiana that was a kind of civic pride, plus lots of basketball rivalry, no real outcome other than corny / nasty remarks about the Hoosiers on the wrong side of the river- since KY has an identity crisis about whether it is the MidWest or the South, I guess the Hoosiers helped us to feel more Southern maybe?

Oh Kentucky, sweetie, you're the South.

I admit though, it weirds me out thinking about states that are part of Appalachia where the mountains are to the East.

Kentucky's not the South. They're the pie crust for Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Sounds like tera* is writing a Shirley Jackson book.

Teeheee....

I <3 Indiana so much

Was this already posted?

Guy lives in a Wal-Mart for 3 Days.

In Iowa, so it's sort of relevant.

Actually, this thread is more about IA than Wal-Mart, so I will go away.

Had a great conversation with a third generation farmer at the laundry mat this afternoon. It is unfortunate that we were interrupted just when he was getting into stories his grandfather told him about the Great Depression here in Indiana.

This 84 year old man came in and was sweet, telling me all about his life here in Indiana and how he can never find shoes. Then out of nowhere he told me that I could find more Mexicans in Jasper and Washington. I thought, hey, he is 84 and maybe wants me to be happy here and thinks being with my own people will make me happy. I did after all ask the waitress the other day if there was a good dance place in town that played cumbia, ranchero or tejano music.

Anyway, he quickly followed that with how those places have poultry farms and lots of poultry business and I could find myself a good paying job working there. Hmmm, was it my blue and white checkered dress that inspired thoughts of poultry work? I do love chickens. How did he know that? I just thanked him and said I wouldn't be in town long. When he left he told me to take good care of myself. All and all I would say it was a nice day.

what is the opposite of sb?

Agreed! I don't dream about Indiana any more after 21 years in the Pacific NW, but I used to when I first moved here, for years even. *tera your posts are great and very evocative of the strange slow vibe that this region has.

there is something of a Mexican population in Dubois county, around Jasper and huntingburg. My people are there. It is indeed grim but French Lick has these two super cool Edith whartonish turn of the century resorty brain tonicky hotels that are worth seeing. West Baden is one. Don't remember the name of the other.

*tera are you a writer? Cause if you ain't, you should be. These are some damn engaging posts :)

Than you, I am not a writer.

I did once write a piece for Para Mi Magazine on childhood trips to Los Mochis. I have done real cheesy freelance work for Demand Studios but I am not what I call a writer. I haven't written for Demand Studios in two years because I didn't think I was very good at it. I am just experiencing something right now and my girlfriends are all back in Texas so I write to feel better.

Every morning I wake up at 6am Petersburg, IN time, that is 5am, my old, home time in Austin, TX, to make breakfast and lunch for my Sweetie. I will then watch four episodes of I Love Lucy back to back and just hover over falling back to sleep. Around 8am I hear the theme song to The Golden Girls and wake up. I will clean up the top of the desk that doubles as my kitchen, straighten up the motel room then shower. There are some days when I have a list of errands to run, other days I will leave the room only to throw out the trash. I am happier in the room listening to music, television on but muted and face to face with my new best friend, my Mac. Lately I have been feeling I need more sleep. I usually drift off around midnight and it just isn't enough. So yesterday I didn't watch the Ricardo's or the Mertz's and was able to pick up three hours of sleep. I was in much better spirits the rest of the day.

This morning I was looking forward to the same. Around 8am there was a knock at my door and I thought it might be room service so I called out that I was okay today. They usually come around 1pm though. I heard a man and two women saying something about me being in here and how one of them heard me say something. I fell back to sleep before I could figure anything out and dreamt about my friend's wig shop. In the dream this old rotary phone was ringing and I kept picking it up but my hands were just going through it. I finally woke up and realized it was the motel phone across the room. Across the room! So I got up and answered it and caught the time 10:12am. I barely said a word assuming it was going to be a wrong number because no one would ever call me here. This lusty female voice kept repeating , "I'm sorry, hon, were you asleep?" I kept saying yes, yes, mmmhmmm, and couldn't make out who this was and what they wanted. Before I could ask the woman who she was or anything, she said she wondered if I wanted to make $15 and run to the Wal-Mart for her. I then realized this was the motel caretaker. It is not like we have become friends or have even had a conversation beyond weather chit chat. I wondered why she was asking me to do this. She said she was sorry for waking me and hung up.

I am left a bit baffled. Maybe it bothers her I don't leave the room until 12pm on those days I do leave. They don't pick up the room until 1pm and yesterday it was 2:30pm before they ever got here. The room is usually clean anyway with little two little tidy corners, one that holds luggage and the other a bag of dirty clothing. I did laundry yesterday so that corner is clean. There is a tote filled with yarn and knitting needles, a yoga mat and girly weights neatly tucked under the desk/kitchen. I would feel odd running an errand for someone I don't know anyway. I mean someone I haven't really had a real conversation with. She has a vehicle, a child and a husband. She is in her early 30's and she is friendly with a few other women I see around here during the day. Wal-Mart is in Washington, IN, 13 miles from this spot. No, today I do not feel like making $15 running to Wal-Mart.

I can't help thinking that she might think you need the money?

I wear a different dress every day. Though she may not see me every day. I packed for the duration when we came here not knowing when we could get back to Texas. I don't need the money. I still have a tiny bit of my divorce settlement still in savings...

Tera - these are interesting to read esp since I've never been anywhere near Indiana and am sort of fascinated by these sorts of towns. May I ask what you are doing there? My apologies if you've already said as much and I missed it. I mostly read your long posts and skimmed the rest in an attempt to catch up.

Indiana - The Too Long; Did Not Read State

The idea of staying in a "motel" -- almost by definition something small and crappy and occupied by drifters and the temporarily homeless -- in small-town Indiana in the summertime makes me need to go lie down and cry. There must be a reason you couldn't/didn't find even the smallest rental property with its own KITCHEN?? At least that way you could make some tea and look around you and be ALONE during the day.

Um. People who take vacations stay in motels all the time.

Motels? Or hotels? Maybe it's just because of the small town and the "caretaker" at the front desk that I'm imagining it like some ramshackle one-story thing with rooms you walk to outside, and bed spreads dating from 1979.

Like this

http://www.lake-landmotel.com/parklot.jpg

The inside: http://www.lake-landmotel.com/room1.jpg

That's about all there is out in the boonies!

I love those kinds of places. & I have a friend who travels the nation in search of those places; he's a kind of amateur photojournalist of that lost America, without irony.

xp I know! Those pictures are from a motel in my home town.

Laurel, Jesus. For family vacations, my dad used to drive a few hours out of town, register at a motel with a pool, and call it a day. And it would be awesome. If there was an arcade nearby it would be doubly awesome.

You're not gonna fool anybody though when you hide the money in the air-return vent.

those places can be really good, or they can be a total nightmare, depending on who owns/operates the hotel

Jeez, okay, sorry! I never knew anyone to use anything like that, and we had several right in town. They always seemed like their heyday ended in 1967 and no one had cleaned anything in them since.

pp, are you referencing a movie? there's something on the tip of my tongue but I just can't think of it.

If I were in a small midwestern town, and it was well-maintained with no visible criminal activity in the parking lot, sure, I'd stay there.

No Country for Old Men!

do not stay at one that is within a half mile of a strip club

Sound advice.

I drove across Indiana on a cross-country road trip when I was ten. I remember absolutely nothing about it.

3rded/4thed notion that you should be a writer, tera. i read ilx at work, so posts as long as yours usually wouldn't get read. but i've read every one here.

I am in Petersburg, IN because my boyfriend works on pipelines and he is doing work on a line here. We haven't been together long and this is the second job I have been with him on. The first job was only a few days in Columbus, TX. That was a teenie town but it was still Texas and the place had a lot of character. It was close enough to Austin,TX and so I had my girlfriends come up to see me.

This is the first job out of state and it is a few weeks. I have always been into small town America and open to it but I naively forget I am Hispanic and look it too. So these little towns may not always be the places they are to my boyfriend who is White. Now that I have had this little culture shock I will be more prepared for the next small town. Although I don't want to be one of those people who is always on the defensive about racial issues.

There is more at play here to. I have always worked at least two jobs since 1995. I had a steady job for 13 years in Austin,TX and now I don't work. I planned on finding jobs here and there as we would travel (like Tod and Buz on Route 66) and now see that I am the type who should be working because my mind just needs to get busy with something or it turns in on itself. The library in town was not too friendly and claimed they didn't even need volunteer work. I haven't seen any help wanted signs and we aren't going to be here long enough anyway. Then of course, would I even want to try and get a job in a place like this? I hope to find a job as soon as my boyfriend finds a job that lasts several months. It may be in another place just like this but I feel that I will be better at dealing with it and will find something to do, volunteer work or real employment. I just hope we don't encounter these places that often. Vincennes, for example, has a whole other feel so I am hopeful. Still, despite everything I am okay with this experience for the most part. I just like experiences even though they might get a bit too frustrating or weird, I know I will look back at them later and be cool with it.

do not stay at one that is within a half mile of a strip club

― it was pleasant and delightful, just like (La Lechera), Tuesday, August 2, 2011 1:58 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

I LOVE motels like that but they have to be well-maintained and clean ones and not all of them are. There's something so distinctly American about them that I find really appealing. Also, they're creepy as hell which I sort of love. I would not, however, want to spend an extended period of time in one.

I've stayed in many good ones but enough bad ones to be able to spot them from the looks of the front desk and location/proximity to skeevy places. Parking lot can tell you a lot too.

I had a horrible toothache in one of those once and I think the nightmares are still with me. Also, one word: bugs. The movie Bug, in fact.

*tera, re the weird racist vibe you're getting, I would say...cautiously... that you're probably not wrong? When I was in gradeschool my parents became friends with a couple from Mexico City through my dad's job, and I remember that the woman found it very challenging to keep her temper while dealing w people in West Michigan. She probably left out the gory details since I was young and impressionable, but I heard enough. They stayed for a couple of years, so she had time to get involved with the art museum, charities, volunteering, (it was a larger town, obv) but when she was out at stores and around town, she was still asked if she was a migrant worker. Or people would be amazed that her English was "so good", etc.

Otoh we also hosted an exchange student from Mexico when I was in high school, and she joined right into everything that all the other HS girls did and was far more popular than I was at my own school. :D So it's really entirely about being seen as an outsider vs an insider, no matter where you're from.

I actually love the motel room. It is very comforting now and my little womb, I sometimes find myself going fetal. It is very late 1940's and the bathroom looks original and well preserved. Other construction and pipeline workers stay here and they are all cool, working men who come home, have a beer, listen to music, sit outside and talk about their wives back home. I like catching those conversations. Makes me realize that at some point, everyone is met with the same batch of problems no matter what their socio-economic level is. If you manage to escape 1/2 of them count yourself lucky and not banal. It isn't a creepy place when they are here. It is very alive. It's pretty empty during the day. I wouldn't say it is creepy, only desolate. The room is my favorite place right now. I do catch myself wondering who has stayed here over the decades and what did they talk about, why were they here...

You can view pics here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tera/sets/72157627216956133/

We stayed at a hotel that housed section 8 tenants in Houston twice. Just over night, it was $29.99 a night. There was always a cop in the lobby. People never went to sleep there. I'd wake up at all hours and there would be so much activity, talking, yelling, babies crying. One night, it was on our second stay, I woke up to a fight next door. There was furniture being thrown against the wall we shared, a baby in the room screaming, people yelling and a few people crying loudly. That is when I noticed how thin the walls were and how a bullet could easily penetrate the sheetrock, the flimsy head board and then our bodies. At that point I thought we were pushing it by staying there even one night. It looked like it was once some really nice place back in 1969. It was clean. It was really creepy though, well, downright scary.

You didn't mention that you had Chartreuse with you. : )

I have always been a huge fan of the show Route 66 so motels, small towns, driving around the country, experiences..it all appeals to me. In fact, it just occurred to me that this is a Route 66 episode. If Tod and Buz were here they would totally help me out with the race issue. I'm sure I would easily be Buz's type too...oh the drama that would ensue before everything got worked out. Teehee. Love George Maharis, he was so, so dreamy!

HA! I do have Chartreuse and it is glorious. Makes everything so nice and wonderful and all of a sudden I have the world on a string. But then it's over....I drank a small 200ml of vodka the other day straight from the bottle and when I was done thought, oh dear, this is how you end up at those meetings. So I am not touching the booze. I had a tequila shot in Washington and realized I had a drive home and I'm a lightweight. So I am hitting the horchata instead.