Linkmeister

Vacancy!

One of the benefits of being a military kid was that before I was twelve years old I had been on a couple of coast-to-coast drives. When I was seventeen we embarked on the last one, leaving Northern Virginia in June and arriving in Los Angeles in July, stopping in various unheralded places on the way until we got to Jackson Hole in Wyoming and then heading south to Yellowstone National Park.

One of the things I remember is motel marquees. All motels seemed to be on the same strip of highway, and each would try to distinguish itself from its competitors by advertising its in-room amenities. Back in 1968 when we took that last trip color television was still enough of a novelty that the marquees would often proclaim "Color TV" directly under the "Vacancy/No Vacancy" sign. Later, color became commonplace, so I suppose the big selling point became "Clean Rooms" and "Pool." Then cable TV came along, and the motels had a new shiny thing to separate themselves from the other guys. HBO was an early entrant (1972), and it was rare enough that the motels which had it placed those three letters onto their marquees. It wasn't till 1984 when cable was deregulated that multiple cable ventures started distributing content and the motels started subscribing and advertising that as well.

I haven't been on the road on the Mainland (Hawai'i has few if any motels, even if you leave Oahu) since 1993, which was before the Internet was widely available. I would imagine that "Free Internet" and now "Free Wi-FI" are showing up on motel marquees these days. Am I right?