By JIM HUNT Author, Speaker, Consultant with the Harrison County News and Journal
While it’s hard to give an exact number, I believe I have spent more than a year and a half of my life in hotel rooms. Spread out over sixty years, it hasn’t felt like that much, until you stop and think about it.
My early adventures as a young man were more Howard Johnson and Red Roof Inn than anything fancy. But as time went on, I have stayed in some memorable places, including the penthouse level at The Plaza Hotel in New York City, and once in Beijing, China, in a hotel suite with two levels and a grand staircase leading up to the bedroom.
If you are thinking I must have been rolling in the dough to afford all that, I can assure you, some of my best rooms came about completely by accident.
My stay at The Plaza happened during a trip in 1985 to New York City for the bond closing on the new Clarksburg Water Treatment Plant. As a newly elected councilman, I traveled with about a dozen city leaders on my first trip representing the city. We checked in, I got my room key, dropped off my bags, and headed down to meet the group in the lobby before dinner.
That’s when one of our group stepped up to the front desk to report a problem with his room. The clerk explained that the hotel was undergoing renovation and offered to move him to a newly renovated room. About that time, the gentleman looked over at me and said, “Why don’t you get my friend one of the new rooms too?”
I waved him off and told him I was happy with my room and did not want anyone going to any trouble. The clerk insisted and said everything would be ready when we got back from dinner, and that I should just stop by the front desk for a new key.
We had a wonderful dinner and even stopped by Dangerfield’s, the comedy club owned by the legendary Rodney Dangerfield. After that, all I wanted to do was get back to the hotel and go to sleep. Then I remembered, I had to change rooms.
It was nearly 1:00 a.m. when I picked up my new key and went upstairs to grab my bags and head to the new room. I put the key in the door, opened it, and immediately knew something was off. For a split second I thought I was seeing things, until I realized there were two legs sticking off the end of the bed.
Someone was already in the room. And whoever it was, their legs were long enough that their feet hung past the mattress. I backed out as quickly and quietly as I could and went straight down to the front desk, ready to take my original room and finally get some sleep. I explained what happened. The clerk checked his list and went pale. He apologized profusely, and I told him it was an honest mistake. I said I would be perfectly happy just going back to my original room.
He paused for a moment and said, “Sir… would the penthouse level be acceptable?” I had only heard of penthouse suites in the movies. I never imagined I would get to experience anything close to that kind of lifestyle, at The Plaza, no less.
Up on the 21st floor, the elevator doors opened to a quiet hallway with only four doors. I slid my key into Room 2104 and stepped inside one of the largest hotel rooms I had ever seen, with a grand piano in a huge living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a marble bathroom that included a sauna.
After acting like a goofy teenager for a few minutes, I finally went to bed, already looking forward to that sauna before meeting our group for the bond closing.
The next morning in the lobby, several people were bragging about the tiny refrigerator in their room. When it was my turn, I casually mentioned that my penthouse suite sauna was refreshing, and the grand piano was in perfect tune. As we headed out the door, the desk clerk looked at me and said, “Was everything satisfactory for you, Mr. Hunt?”
I smiled and nodded.