There are more stories I wanted to include in Dryland Lament, but simply could not. Now I have another chance to start telling those stories:
“Wull Hello There!” The pitch of the cheerful greeting rose and fell like the first half of a sine wave as the silver-haired man peeked around from inside the manager’s office and strode into the motel lobby. “Welcome to Trapper’s Motor Inn. Are you two interested in a room? It’s the height of the season, and we only have a few rooms left.”
“Actually,” the weathered but well-groomed man standing with his wife at the counter responded, ‘We have a reservation. We’re Phil and Elizabeth Bryce. We just drove up from Amarillo for the week. We were here last year and liked your place so much that we planned right then to come back this year.”
This was a common theme for visitors of Trapper’s Motor Inn. In the eighties, in the era before most hotel chains had penetrated up into the little Rocky Mountain resort town of Estes Park, Colorado, small, privately owned inns were common. A decent price and a clean room were consistent, reliable attractions for vacationers, many from the High Plains. My grandmother’s exacting standards ensured both immaculate rooms and her own continual exhaustion.
This was the Snyder’s hotel interregnum, the middle period of their lives when Charles and Eleanor were innkeepers. Before and after, my grandpa was a housebuilder and general contractor. He and my grandmother would build and decorate a house, find a buyer, sell, move, and start the process over. This was the rhythm of their 50+ years of married life, holding as long as my grandfather was able to build, well into his seventies. Charles built dozens of houses, but his consistent application of the Snyder real estate principle of “Buy high, Sell low” kept my grandparents modestly successful. They always had enough to survive, but fortune eluded them. Grandpa’s mind was on to the next project … perhaps patience would have brought a higher price for the current venture?
“Charles, the last time we were here, we sat and drank coffee and talked to you for something like two hours. You’re the only motel owner I ever got to know on a first name basis.”
“That’s right, ” my grandfather responded to the cowboy boot and starch-straight blue-jeans dressed man. “I thought I remembered your faces when I came around the corner. How are you doing Elizabeth?”
“Oh we’re good; our son Philip Jr. has pretty much taken over the ranch, so we have the luxury of getting away once in a while. Estes is the place to come in August to escape the Texas heat.”
So went the pattern of the Snyder existence for that dozen or so years at Trapper’s Motor Inn. Grandma, cooking and cleaning–non-stop labors with the maid staff, my grandpa telling the same stories over and over again to the vacationers, all the while thinking about the next building project. This year it would be a new garage for the motel. Next year, it might be a new spec (speculation) house in Fort Collins or Loveland. Something always in the works….
If I were to make a list of words to describe my grandfather, at the top would be ‘Discontented.’ Just under that would be ‘Unmet expectations.’ (Okay, that’s two words). To be continued…..
