Crowded hotel rooms for a home….

A Schulz Family History essay

Imagine yourself sitting on a bed in a hotel room reading a book or playing solitaire. The room is just big enough for two double beds, a dresser with a TV on top, a table, and a roll-away bed. There’s an end table between the two beds. It holds the book you are reading, as well as the ones your sisters are reading. At night, your glasses go here — as do theirs.

This was life for me for months at a time while my family moved over three countries in three years. My sisters and I shared the room described above. At the front of the room was the bathroom — small but usable. At the head of the roll-away bed was the door to my parent’s room.

My younger sister’s toys, dolls, games, Legos, etc. were stored under her roll-away. Every night before she went to bed, a quick check of the room was done to make sure nothing was laying in the path to our beds. Stepping on Legos and Barbies was not a pleasant experience!

The parents’ room was larger. But it held more stuff too. For the three of us girls, our clothes went in the closet or in the drawers. There just wasn’t room for suitcases in our room, so all the suitcases and such went in their room. The folks had a single king size bed, so there was a bit more room to move around. When we were all doing something together, we did it in their room. Card games and meals happened at the table in their room. Two or three of us in chairs, the others sitting on the edge of the bed.

During the day, hotel stays got pretty boring. We would go swimming fairly regularly — at least 3 or 4 times a week. The three of us all loved the water, as did Mom, so swimming filled hours at a time. The best times were when the hotel had an outdoor pool or a rooftop pool, but even a small indoor pool would keep us occupied for a couple of hours.

Speaking of swimming… We three were not always nice to each other. We would pull pranks on each other and mess around. Never did anything dangerous, but more at the level of splashing or such. We would play Marco Polo. Race each other. Do dives and “fancy falls”. The hours in the pool were a great way for us to burn off excess energy, but they were hard on our swimsuits. Each of us had at least three suits at the start of any given summer. By the end of the summer, at least one of them would be outgrown or over used.

The summer between Rio and Manila, we got nice swimsuits in Rio and again when we went through Hawaii on our way to Manila. Buying suits in Hawaii wasn’t originally in the plan, but it became necessary. Why? Because as I started to get out of the pool one day while we were swimming at the hotel in Monroeville, the bottom half of my bikini didn’t. We had been swimming so much since the school year ended in Rio that the material just gave out. The bottom half just hung behind me in the water — not wearable at all. After a bit of embarrassment, I think I wrapped up in a towel and headed back to the room. I didn’t swim any more THAT day!

When the hotel we were staying in had a gaming room, we would play pinball. Lots and lots of pinball. There weren’t video games yet, so pinball was king. At some hotels, there were two or three machines. At others only one. The three of us would get some of our allowance as quarters just so we could play. We never reached the level of pinball wizard, but we did have top scores on at least one of the games each hotel stay.

When we were totally bored, we went to the lobby just to escape our hotel room. This was likely to happen during stormy weather or when we had been cooped up for some reason or another for several days. We would grab a book and go sit in the lobby until we were kicked back up to our room. My older sister and I could read for hours, but the younger one wasn’t quite the reader we were. She would get sick of being down there much quicker than we would. If Mom was around, little sis could go back upstairs to be with her. But if it was just the three of us, we would “negotiate” who was going to go upstairs with her.

On the days when Mom had the car, we would go for excursions. Window shopping at the mall. Clothes shopping for the new school year for all three of us. Especially when we went to Manila, we knew there wouldn’t be clothes our size available in general over there. That lesson from Rio was learned quickly!

Shoe shopping for the three of us, that took almost as long as the clothes shopping. I had a size 7 foot when we went to Rio. By the time we got back, I was pretty much in a size 9 1/5. My sisters had big feet too. Big feet in those days meant hours and hours trying to find shoes that we could wear to school. Shoes that were sturdy enough to stay in one piece — no matter what we put them through. No heels. Nothing fancy. Sandals for the summer, school shoes for the winter.

We also did some of the touristy things around Pittsburgh. Not as much of that stuck with me, but I know that we did quite a bit of it between Rio and Manila. I remember going to concerts at Three Rivers Park in Pittsburg the best. Sitting out on the ground with a picnic and great music all around. We also visited Fort Pitt just about every trip through Pittsburgh. Why? Lots of room to walk and run!

We learned after the year in Rio that once you have spent a month in a hotel room, the next visit to that area doesn’t give you a whole lot of options of what to do. Over the three summers, we spent close to three months in the Pittsburgh/Monroeville area. It became a regular conversation about where to go next and what to do.

One of the things we quickly got sick of? Eating from the vending machines. There were good choices in the machines, not just junk food. But how many days in a row can you eat the same sandwiches, soup, or other pre-made meals? No microwaves. If you were getting something hot, it had been put into the machine hot hours ago. Hot dogs weren’t bad, but some of the “real meals” were terrible.

We generally walked to a local fast food place for lunch if it was just the three of us. If Mom was along, we would walk to a slightly nicer place or eat in the hotel. If she had the car, we would go for a drive to a place to eat.

What about room service? Room service becomes boring when you are living on it. Because of that, we were severely limited to the number of times we could order it. It was generally reserved for evenings when the parents were going out and we three were totally sick of vendoland.

Breakfast was boring too. You couldn’t just pop a thing of oatmeal in the microwave to cook it — microwaves weren’t in hotel rooms yet in the mid-70’s. We did generally have access to a small fridge, if I remember correctly, but it didn’t hold much. Unless we did room service or got all the way dressed and went down to eat in the restaurant (not a common occurrence), it was cold breakfast in the room.

Between Rio and Manila, Mom had a job to do that kept her busy and left the three of us alone much of the day time. That job? Go through the stuff in storage and figure out what was lost and what wasn’t. As she did that, she also set aside the stuff that would go to Manila by slow boat. The idea was that since we were going to be there a few years, she could have things shipped that we would need over the coming years.

Between Manila and Oregon, there was another round of sorting. What did we want right away and what wouldn’t be shipped until we were into a house…

Which brings us to the worst part about living in hotels so much of the time in those years. When we were in most of the hotels, they were good sized hotels in major cities. When we got to Oregon (IL), there was one choice of hotel. Luckily, they had two rooms available. The rooms themselves weren’t much different than the other rooms, but we were different.

Younger sis and I started school pretty much as soon as we got to Oregon. The school year had started weeks earlier, so we had to play catch up. Bus to school in the morning and back in the afternoon, then homework until dinner. No pool. No pinball. No excursions. Even weekends were filled — mostly with getting adjusted and making friends. Halfway through our hotel stay, the boxes of stuff from Manila started to arrive. We went from two rooms with ourselves and our suitcases to two rooms with boxes everywhere and suitcases on top of the boxes.

The folks did finally find a house to buy. Fairly close to the schools. Reasonable neighborhood. Unfortunately, closing on the house took time. Time we continued to spend in those two crowded hotel rooms.

There are family stories and family memories that ring in every family’s past. Stories we think everyone else in the family remembers as we do. Stories we want to pass on before they die completely.

My family is no different, I suppose, but the stories from a few of the years are not like yours. In this series, I hope to share pieces of those pieces of our lives. Some are happy, some are not. But they are all as I remember them — with help from my dad and my older sister.