A Teenager’s Journey of Growth, Friendship, and Unfulfilled Promises
Reflections from The Holiday Inn
The Holiday Inn in Runnemede, New Jersey wasn’t just my first job; it was my theater. I was sixteen. I worked there for six years.
Tom the Cook was in his thirties, with shallow cheeks and light brown, thinning hair. I wasn’t close to my dad, with the divorce. So I looked to Tom. He lived in Woodbury, New Jersey. Married with two girls, he raced at Atco Speedway. We didn’t have much in common.
He could take apart an engine the way I break down the verse of Shelley.
According to Tom, I wasn’t a man until my nostrils burned with nitrous oxide. One day, I went to the racetrack. If I could tutor Tom about Keats, surely he could coach me on carburetors.
Tom would jam to “Born to Be Wild” while cooking. Meanwhile, I would scrawl my word of the day, like “fortuitous,” on the menu board. Then, changed the mood with Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”
The Holiday Inn opened me to various individuals; the head-banging dishwasher, Harry the Hat; the cigar-chewing sous chef, Smokey, the Grateful Dead-crooning set-up guy, Jerry, and Elise, the Delta Zeta nymph.
On weekend mornings Tom and I discussed the essentials — my nonexistent love life. While lathering the grill, he would shower advice while I held an umbrella.
Nurturing rain from heaven penetrates not an illogical mind stuck in the sand.
Tom also showed me how to deal with anger: one day we marched to the garbage area. When the food and beverage manager gave him problems, he would grab a low-ball glass, mark twenty paces, and let the glass go.
Under the green glow of the Holiday Inn sign, the crystal shattered into a million pieces.
“That felt good,” he said.
Was this the equivalent of wielding a lightsaber or taming the wild Thestrals — channeling my inner wildness?
I was upset about the million mistakes I made with Elise.
Tom asked, “Do you need a shot?”
The strike against the wall alleviated the pain. No one at home could help me navigate the waters of women, so I sought Lord Byron, Han Solo, and Tom.
The shattered glass was never litter. It represented irony: the beauty of senselessness and the satisfaction of defiance — especially against those who had control.
Was my anger, after all, misdirected?
When I was ten, I became the understudy — “a father.” In that coming decade, I would babysit, wash dishes, drive my sister and brother, hither and thither, clean the pool. Mow the lawn.
I gazed at the sign — the glow, like a beacon.
I imagined lighting out, Huckleberry-like — no longer the de facto man of the house. That’s hard for a forty-seven-year-old, let alone a kid with anger issues.
Go West, Young Man!
After freshman year, my mom planned a three-week trip across country with my younger brother David and my sister Noelle.
Tom requested: piss in the Colorado River. Did Tom want adventure, too?
If he had said, “Make sure you piss in the Grand Canyon,” I would have laughed. But he added “For me.” That was huge.
So my mother was unaware of The Wild Man. If she did, would she have slain the Wild Man?
The Journal as The Family Record
During that summer of 1988, I wrote a two hundred-page journal.
After my mother recently alluded to the occasion, I reread the journal. Why the omission? I was old enough to feel the restrictions — the limitations. Passengers have no control over the wheel.
That journal has been published. Day 15 is called “A Mom Saves Her Son From a Horrible Death on Bright Angel Trail.”
When we reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, on July 6, I intended to hike to the bottom. But Mom would not allow it, but I persisted.
But I never revealed the genuine reason
In the journal I wrote: “I tried every possible method to get my way; persuading Dave to agree with me, placing guilt trips, and stating over and over again my intentions.”
We planned to hike Bright Angel for a mile and a half — but wasn’t that amateurish?
I didn’t have gear, boots. A knife. I was a suburbanite. Nighttime would have been freezing. There were rattlesnakes and scorpions and cacti.
If I had to trudge through the Muck and Menace of Mordor, then so be it.
We stopped at the Mile and a Half rest area and refilled the canteen. The brown, curvy Colorado, tempting me, snaked below me. I sulked back without the others — angry — escaping.
I wrote: “Just think if I was at the bottom of the canyon by the Colorado River — In my mind, I wanted to go further into the canyon, but I knew mom would never allow me to do so. I would have to wait until another point in my life to hike to the bottom. Then I could do things right.”
But I was off the mark
It wasn’t in my mind but in my heart. It would have fetched a premium in my hierarchy of manliness.
Urinating in the Colorado may seem lame, but a man I had respected had requested the task so the task had to be respected, and in my heart, fulfilled.
Tom was significant, but I neglected him in my journal.
Mom caught up with me. She was pissed. I wrote: “She had good reason to be mad and she was right. I admit that.”
I was living at home, commuting to college, working thirty hours a week, and other kids living at college didn’t seem to have it so tough. I was angry. Resentful.
I was also lonely. I missed my co-workers. Missed Elise. Harry the Hat. Smokey. And Tom.
Perhaps Mom was frustrated she had to deal with an adult, and up until then, she didn’t have to negotiate with any other adult.
I was acting like an ignored spouse, full of recriminations, not about sex and money, but time. And three weeks is a long time to be caught in that crucible.
Mom cut the visit short and drove to Mesa Verde for the Cliff Dwellings.
Why did I lie? Why wasn’t it obvious then?
The journal was the family record. Tom was private. Was the ‘father’ question still sensitive? Did I want to protect Mother? Or the idea that ‘divorce’ was the best thing for all of us?
Writing the journal was sitting in the front row, the action — impossible to see the whole screen, but now that I’m thirty-two rows back — and, well — the perspective widens.
Did Tom ever ask me if I fulfilled his request? I don’t know. Oh, the calories of our words on the hungry ear!
I still feel the yearning. I think back to those who helped me, those whose names I have forgotten, those who may not loom large in my imagination, who stood outside the walls of the family who may have encouraged me more than my family.
Families must not take offense.
In the future, when I’m leading my wife Mary Jane, and two girls, Madeline and Nancy along Bright Angel Trail, one of them may complain, “Dad, why do we have to go to the bottom?”
“Because I need to go to the bathroom!”
I spent seven years at The Holiday Inn
It was my other tribe. I am fanatically loyal. Tom saw beyond the Fool. The poser who played Mozart. Sometimes when I drive through Woodbury, I think about my drag-racing Yoda.
“Hey, Tom, I still haven’t learned how to fix my car. But I did drive by Atco Speedway that other night, and I did smell that nitrous oxide.”
Because of Tom, I feel more like a man. Somehow I want to thank him, even if I haven’t yet pissed in the Colorado River.
*Names have been changed.
Thank you for reading. Follow me on Medium at Walter Bowne.
