Tacky Thing

Mystery: Found on a journey

I hadn't slept through a single night of graduate school and work. With a year of accumulated fatigue I started the journey to a couldn't-miss-it reunion and we were racing through the night to get there.

Somehow I came to my senses and insisted on pulling off to spend the night at the only place open along the New York State Thruway. I won't name the place for for fear of retribution. Open holes punched in the walls. Cigarette smoke so thick it formed a goo on the walls and bedding. Exhausted, I slept through the night of drunken brawling in the next room.

On the way out the door the next morning, I found this incongruous thing in the doorway as we left. I don't know what it is, but I've kept it for 20 years now. We've always called it The Tacky Thing and I hang it on my Christmas tree as an ornament.

Dan, a traveler, September, 2005