We wanted to avoid the great sprawl of Albuquerque by staying in the little town of Belen. Belen had a Holiday Inn Express, our on-the-road Motel of choice, and we figured it was a safe enough bet for a quick over night stay.
Boy, were we wrong!
Belen is a mean little town with a heart of steel -- several hundred tons of steel -- as Belen exists only to serve the men and women who work the trains.
Weary travelers who arrive at many of the hotels in Belen are turned away, sleepy children and pregnant mothers in tow, because some of the large chain hotels in Belen will only rent to train employees. "Better empty rooms than a DRIVER in our beds" is the unofficial motto of Belen, that angry gash of a town that bleeds into the monotony of the New Mexico desert.
We arrived at our motel (luckily, one that deigned to rent to non-train-workers) at 10:00 PM. Exhausted and hungry we turned greedily to the 24 hour diner adjacent to our hotel, only to be told that the diner is only open 24 hours a day for train workers. For the rest us, those pitiful every-people who tour our great nation's National Parks in cars, the diner closed its doors at 10:00 PM.
I had barely had a sip of coffee at my continental breakfast in the morning when I was informed that the breakfast was being shut down -- at the hour of 9:30 AM (and I was still on Arizona time)! It seems that the train workers all leave early, in the motley town of Belen.
They ain't kidding.
Our hotel did provide us with a plate of stale, brickish, cookies. At first I was confused, but soon realized that the hard disks were akin to the hard tack that the train workers tuck into their worn leather lunch bags, next to the wax paper wrapped salt pork.
The wicked town of Belen services the train workers in more ways that one. Propriety keeps me from going into detail. Still, be warned: Don't let your teenage daughters within the city limits of Belen, New Mexico.
Belen, New Mexico: Whoreish, broken, empty. Teenage boys from neighboring towns dare each other to ride their skate boards down the diesel-choked main drag. Bad little children in Albuquerque are told that if they don't straighten up, they'll be visited in their dreams by Belen Hoteliers.
The children of Albuquerque are remarkably well-behaved.
2 comments:
Wow, I thought places like that only existed in the Twilight Zone. Does the ACLU know about this place?
There was something very Outer Limits-ish about the place. I would have worn my striped over-alls and engineer cap if I'd known that's what you have to do to get a grilled cheese sandwich in the hateful town of Belen, New Mexico!
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