ANYONE CAN MANAGE a motel successfully--anyone who can subsist on meals snatched a mouthful at a time, and requires no sleep; anyone who is a mechanic, gardener, publicity agent, handyman, psychologist, carpenter, and midwife combined; anyone who can cheerfully greet as "Mrs. Beaulabottom" each of the various women who accompanies salesman Mr. Beulabottom on his frequent trips; anyone who is gregarious to the point of welcoming the strangers who will witness, interrupt, and discuss the intimate

IT WAS A long, hot, uncomfortable ride. The children, who ordinarily ride in the back seat, had to ride in front because the back seat was piled to the ceiling with clothes, pans, boxes and suitcases. Grant had fastened an old blanket over the trailer to protect its contents from dirt and wind. It wouldn't stay fastened, though, and when we were on the highway headed toward Banning he had to stop the car and get out about every ten minutes to adjust it and to see how the things in the trailer we

FORTUNATELY I HAD the children in bed, where I didn't have to worry about them, when the next customer drove in. He was a brisk-looking, gray-haired man in a new coupe. Often during my life I had heard people speak of "buck fever." It had seemed strange to me that any hunter should, at his first sight of a deer, tremble and shiver and find his fingers too numb and unresponsive to pull the trigger. Now, though, I understood. With no capable, confident husband to talk to the man, I would have to d

THERE'S A LOT of work to running a motel, and no matter how many people there are to do the work, there's never a moment when they are completely caught up. Always there are the big jobs awaiting any rare moments of leisure--digging out the insidious weeds that thrust their way through the gravel, planting flowers and improving the external appearance of the place, utilizing the extra land, and repairing the inevitable damage done by careless customers. Mr. Featherbrain, the old man next door--w

GRANDMA COMES OUT from Los Angeles to see us every other Friday, and returns the following Monday morning to her job as fancy presser in a cleaning plant, and to her small apartment, which is a ten-minute streetcar ride from Hellwig's apartment. She is a creature of such infallibly regular habits that I sometimes wonder if there isn't a small, precise clock or calendar, or some mechanism for keeping track of time, tucked away inside her. She works hard whenever she comes. If there's work at hand

EVERY NIGHT WHEN Grant goes to bed he lays out his clothes in exactly the places and positions where they will be easiest to get into in a hurry. (Except on the nights when all the cabins are full by bedtime; then, knowing he won't have to get up to answer the doorbell, he reverts to type and tosses all his things in a heap on the floor!) But on the nights when our "vacancy" sign is on, he likes to be prepared for the inevitable summons. He wears his underclothes to bed. His trousers hang over a

IN THE MIDDLE of September school started, and David, who was a little over five and a half years old, entered the first grade of the Banning grammar school. And with the start of school came the "summer slump" that our irritable neighbor, Mr. Featherbrain, had been forecasting. Business was terrible. The highway was almost deserted, and of the few cars that did appear, most of them plowed right on toward their destinations. The occasional customer who rang our bell professed to be shocked at ou

"MADAME, I WONDER if you would be so gracious as to do me a favor?" Mr. Hawkins, coming through the office door, put his dark hat on quickly so that he could remove it in a sweeping, deferential gesture. "Of course," I said automatically, looking up from my morning's bookkeeping. "That is, maybe," I added warily. His brown eyes, as usual, were sparkling with a private amusement. He always gave the impression that he loved people, but couldn't resist a few chuckles at their expense. "I fear the m

THERE IS AN indefinable air about every motel cabin that is felt, I imagine, by all but the most insensitive of motel owners. It's the composite spirit of all the people who have slept in that cabin. It's nothing more tangible than memory, actually, yet it's very real. Miss Nestleburt and Mr. Hawkins had been with us so long that their presence still seemed to cling to their cabins. I felt almost guilty the first time I rented their cabins to other people after they left. A stern, rigid old coup

EMBARRASSING MOMENTS ARE the rule, rather than the exception, around a motel. If, as Grant puts it, he had a dollar for every time he has gone busting, with his cleaning equipment and fresh linens, into a cabin he thought was empty, only to find the cabin still occupied, he'd be able to buy a new neon sign that would make the Peacock's big blue and red bird gallop away in shame. With so many strangers about the place almost constantly, embarrassing incidents are inevitable. I never did get over

PEOPLE WHO MANAGE motels shouldn't throw stones, for they live in glass houses just as surely as does any goldfish. In fact, a goldfish in a bowl placed in the center of Grand Central Station would live a life of privacy and seclusion, compared to the life of a motel owner. I am so inured, by now, to the lack of privacy, that I can calmly continue dusting furniture or changing Donna's clothes if a couple of strange men barge into the living room, mistaking it for the office. I am not in the leas

BANNING'S WEATHER COMES assorted, like a box of chocolates. Some of the tidbits are sweet, some have a bitter tang; some, wrapped in glittering tinsel, turn out to be not as nice as you expected them to be. But they are all delicious, once you have developed the taste for them. When winter is barely under way in Banning, suddenly it's spring. In mid-January, when the enclosing mountains are still shivering and huddled under their white fur coats, spring tiptoes through the Pass, breathing warmly

GRANT GREW VERY tired of the conscientious customers who made a point of delivering the keys to one of us personally before leaving. It was annoying enough for us to have to interrupt breakfast or a bout with the razor or the dishpan to answer the bell and accept a key; but it was infuriating to be called out of bed unnecessarily in the wee small hours. Most of our customers, of course, sensibly left their keys inside the cabin, or sticking in the keyhole of their cabin door; but for the maddeni

AN AMBULANCE WAS to take Mrs. Watkins to the hospital in Loma Linda, twenty miles away. A few phone calls put in by the doctor at Mrs. Watkins' request had ascertained that Eugene's "Gramma in Frisco" would come the following day to get him and the car, and that arrangements could be made for the boy to stay at the hospital with his mother this first night. The ambulance would arrive in about an hour. In the meantime, Mrs. Watkins and the baby were sleeping, the doctor had gone home, and Grant a

WHEN BUSINESS SLOWS down for Banning motels due to the scarcity of tourists, it naturally slows down for the service stations and highway restaurants as well. Moe, the beak-nosed owner of the cafe next door, was very annoyed because business was so seasonal, and he decided to sell his place and take his family back to Los Angeles, where the demand for restaurant meals was more the same all year around, and where it wasn't necessary to comb the want ads and employment agencies for enough help par

I'M TOLERANT ABOUT it when men customers flirt with me, but when women customers flirt with Grant, that's different. Grant and I had been pulling weeds from around the shrubs in front of cabin 3 when a lank, stick-shaped woman appeared by the office. Grant went to talk to her, while I stayed on my knees pulling weeds and wondering what it was about the woman that disturbed me. I had seen her before, I felt sure; no doubt she had occupied one of our cabins recently. But there seemed to be somethi

OUR MOTEL HAS always had a high average, in comparison with other motels, of repeat business. Part of our success in drawing customers back again and again has been due to the fact that our motel is new and that we make a point of keeping it spotless; part of our success in this direction has been due to the deluxe service rendered by Grant, who acts the part of general handyman par excellence. The goodwill of the customers, that intangible thing so vital to any business, we make a special effor

Nancy Vogel's literary career began when, at the age of twelve, she had a poem published in a newspaper and won an essay contest. From then until the time she was married she wrote spasmodically; it wasn't until her first child was born, making free time for writing out of the question, that she began to write in earnest, producing fiction, articles, humor, poetry, book reviews, light verse, cartoon gags, newspaper columns, and everything else that varying kinds of word combinations might be ter