Heartbreak Hotel

What makes you laugh?

I have a pretty good sense of humor, and there are a few things that I find very comical:

1. Candid photographs with laughable expressions.
2. Practical jokes or pranks.
3. Funny movies.
4. Situational events, which may take years to appear funny:

Our first view of the Holiday Inn was impressive. It was 1968, and Pop had just been transferred to the sleepy beach town of Boca Raton, FL. We’d be staying at the hotel while we looked for a house. I opened the drapes to a beautiful vista of palm trees, a pool, and blue Florida skies.

My brother Doug fiddled with the TV. He looked up in excitement: “Hey! Color TV!” Sure enough, it was a Magnavox 19″ color TV with knobs for red, green and blue tint. Each of our adjoining suites…Doug and me in one room, Mom and Pop in the other… had one on a wheeled TV cart.

Color TVs had just come out, very expensive, and Pop was too cheap to buy one. Lots of shows began with the NBC peacock and the grandiose announcement “The following program is brought to you in living color,” but we watched everything in black and white.

So, this was very cool…our own room…laying in bed eating room service food, and watching Captain Kirk and Spock fight Klingons in living color.

Day after day, Mom, Doug and I went with our realtor Kent to look at houses. The first few days were fun, walking through them, trying to imagine living there. We looked at all kinds: some on canals with docks; others in older established neighborhoods with bigger lots; smaller ones a block or two back from the beach.

Mom was supposed to be the screener and return to any hot prospects with Pop. But she couldn’t make up her mind; they were all exotic and tropical and unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

After several days, the novelty wore off. It became miserable, driving from house to house in the broiling heat, and trailing behind him and Mom in empty, musty houses as he pointed out the various features.

The high point of the day was when Mom called it quits around 3:00 pm and we got to use the pool. In the glorious era before personal injury lawsuits, hotels had a low board and a high board.

We quickly found that trying to do backflips off the bouncing 15’ high board usually resulted in awkward, painful landings that gave us splitting headaches and briefly made us see double. But it didn’t stop us from trying over and over.

Two imbeciles in their own hotel room was a recipe for trouble, but one memory stands out vividly. Pop had had a bad day at work and was very grouchy, Mom tried to smooth things over with a bourbon and coke and suggested he go for a swim. They shut the connecting door, but we could still hear the muffled voices; one irate, one soothing.

Doug and I decided to watch TV and with exquisite timing, got into a wrestling match with the TV as we fought over what show to watch. We grunted and pushed and yanked the TV cart back and forth while quietly calling each other names.

It happened in slow motion: The cart tipped, the TV teetered for a moment…then fell off the back of the cart. Time seemed to slow down as the Magnavox floated toward the floor. Doug and I locked eyes…I heard Doug yell, but it was indecipherable and hollow, distant, like someone yelling through a storm drain. We tried to grab the TV, but our arms moved in slow motion.

Time resumed its normal tempo as the TV hit the floor. There was a tremendous crash, the plastic back broke and the picture tube imploded with a loud WHUMP. A faint tinkle of broken glass lasted another second or two.

The connecting door flew open and in came Pop, breathing fire. It was the face you did not want to see. He immediately assessed the carnage on the gold shag carpeting: A shattered Magnavox TV with a grayish-black hole where the picture tube was supposed to be. It stared accusingly at the popcorn ceiling, and an acrid stink filled the air.

For a few seconds, he stared at it in disbelief. Then he turned to us. “WHAT DID YOU TWO JACKASSES DO??” he shouted. Doug and I babbled and pointed at each other, trying not to look at the ruined TV.

He listened for less than 15 seconds before waving his arm in disgust, going back into his room and slamming the door. The voices resumed, with Pop’s much more angry, incredulous.

They reappeared with Pop showing Mom the TV. Perhaps she thought in his grouchy state he was exaggerating; maybe we had only scratched it or busted a knob. She gave us a sorrowful look.

I forget our punishment for this episode, but my admiration for Pop grew as he slumped his shoulders and went off to tell the Holiday Inn people that his two kids had just busted something worth about $2K in today’s dollars.

Not sure what transpired, but we didn’t end up paying any damages…but it did seem that we checked out very soon afterwards.

Sorry, Pop 😎

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