Spring Training

Several years ago, Edie and I went to Houston. We went to see an exhibit of Impressionist art from the Hermitage, which was at the fine arts museum, and because we had never been there. We were pleasantly surprised at what a good tourist city Houston is: terrific, world-class museums, the Johnson Space Center, Galveston Island, very good food and a cousin we get to see very rarely. But the trip was flawed. Wanting to stay an an upscale hotel, we chose the St. Regis. It was very elegant, and well located for touring, but it sits very close to a train track at a grade crossing, and the blare of the train's sirens throughout the night kept us awake for most of the four nights we were in town. We wondered (still do) how the hotel manages, although a clerk told us that "some people don't seem to mind".

We vowed not to let that happen again.

But only about six months later, we found ourselves in the Theodore Roosevelt Badlands in Madera, North Dakota, staying at one of the spartan lodges run by the government. No sooner had we got to bed, but a familiar sound rang through the air, even louder and sharper than in Houston. This time, the grade crossing appeared to be only about 100 yards away from our first floor room. We left the next morning, moving to a very nice motel in Dickinson, ND, about 40 miles or so away.

We vowed again.

Yet here we were, earlier this week, at the central city Holiday Inn, in Columbia, South Carolina, when, to our surprise, throughout the night, the blare of a train at grade crossings woke (at least me) up. The first of our two nights there, from 3:30 a.m. until about 7 in the morning, I counted nine trains.

This got me thinking about other noisy disturbances at hotels that I have experienced, and it brought to mind the following:

1. Church bells. In Albuferia, Portugal, in 1972, where the church chimed hourly throughout the night and, because of the topography, my room was on an exact plane with the belfry, which was probably no more than one hundred feet away; I left the room at 3:30 to find another place. And in Erie, PA, where at least they did not start ringing on a Sunday morning until 6 a.m., but once they started the kept going, very deep and resonant sounds, every fifteen minutes. This was in September 1960.

2. Parties and night spots. I remember our first night in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1977, when the hotel's night club sounded like it would never stop. And somewhere in Scotland, in 1978, when a wedding party was so loud that, like in Portugal, an alternative was required in the middle of the night.

3. Ship whistles. My advice is not to camp at the campsite opposite the port of Bremerhaven, in Germany (if it is still there); you will not sleep.

4. Noisy neighbors. Noises from the room next door can be all too common, from the raucus teenagers' party somewhere in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, to incessant and noisy lovemaking in San Juan, PR and Shepardstown, WV, to the noisy drunk in Leningrad, to the ubiquitous television viewers who turn the volume up far too high, to the man practicing his Torah portion over and over and over and over on a Friday night in White Plains, NY.

Will I ever recover from the sleep deprivation?