This weekend, I traveled 2 1/2 hours from home to attend Mike Brodeur and Melissa Hansen's wedding at a state park just north of Dixon, IL. I was not your normal attendee, as I was taping the ceremony and reception. I did secretly envy the other wedding guests who were drinking and breaking it down on the dance floor, but I had almost as much fun shooting video of them. While the wedding was very nice, I wanted to take the opportunity in this blog post to talk about my stay at The New Village Inn.

When making lodging arrangements, I first looked at the town of Dixon. Dixon is about 10 miles south of White Pines State Park (the wedding location) and is the largest town within a reasonable distance. However, since I slacked off til the last minute to book a room, I found that all the hotels in Dixon were booked. I branched out to look for hotels in other towns.

Upon searching Google, I found The New Village Inn, located in the town of Polo, population 2500. It lies 6 miles west of the wedding location. When I called to reserve a room, a little old lady answered the phone. There were rooms available. To take my reservation, she merely took down my name and told me that it was $50/night. Cheap and close to White Pines...works for me!

I arrived at the New Village Inn at about 3pm. It was much smaller that I expected...a one story building consisting of 12 motel rooms. The office was in the center of the building, sitting between room 6 and 7. I entered the small office, where I was met by a red haired man in his 40's. He had a mustache, but was balding. He was neutral as far as politeness goes. Not rude, but not friendly enough to win him any customer service awards. He found my name on his paper calendar of reservations and handed me a card, so I could fill out my address, phone number, etc. No computers at this place. I also found out that it would actually be more expensive had I paid the room with a credit card, so it was in my best interest to pay with cash. I bet if I did decided to pay with a credit card, he would have swiped it in one of those carbon copy things that go "clunk clunk" when you slide it across the card. The man handed me a key to room #8, complete with one of those old school diamond shaped key chains. So far, nothing at the New Village Inn seemed to be "new". This held true when I entered my room.

I used my key to enter through the clunky metal door of room #8. It was a modest room, with a mixture of decorations and furniture from the 70’s and 80’s. It smelled like walking into the house of a grandparent. It was carpeted with a short blue and teal patterned carpet. An ultra-fake wood paneling lined most of the walls. Other items that were covered with fake wood paneling were the small air conditioner, and the RCA television that was mounted high on the wall. From first glance, I expected UHF and VHF turn knobs on the front. But surprisingly, the TV displayed the channel number on a red, alarm clock style display. However, there was also an AM/FM radio built into the TV that had a manual tuner. The TV did have a remote, probably from an era where the concept of a remote was new and exciting. It was clunky and consisted only of the following buttons: On/Off, Volume, Channel, and Mute.

Opposite the TV were two double beds, covered with very 80’s looking bed spreads. All of the other furniture including the end table, desk, and chairs were probably manufactured during the Nixon administration. Above the beds there hung a piece of framed art, uncentered on the wall. It was some type of bird in a snowy forest scene. The color was desaturated, apparently faded with age. Towards the back of the room was the sink, attacked to a plain, faded counter-top. Off to the left was the bathroom with a stained linoleum floor.

Besides the door to the outside and the door to the bathroom, there was a third door in the room. The door was on a common wall between my room and room #7. I figured that this door was a connecting door between the two rooms to make a suite. But what weirded me out was that the doorknob on my side had a key hole. So did the person in room #7 have the ability to unlock it? I had thoughts of someone entering through that door while I was sleeping. This motel was, however, a perfect setting for a horror movie.

I went off to the wedding and returned just after 11pm. As I unlocked the door to my room, I glanced into the window of the motel office. There was an old, gray-haired lady sitting down at a folding card table, doing a jigsaw puzzle. I assumed that this was the same lady who took my reservation several weeks prior.

I thought my room to be pretty clean, that is, until I went to bed that night. Mashed into the under side of the bed spread was a large piece of blue gum. Disgusted, I threw off the bed spread. This led me to inspect the rest of my bedding with a closer eye. The sheets and blanket appeared to be clean, but the pillow cases were a different story. Both of the pillows on my bed had a few white-ish spots on them. I assumed that it was from the drool of previous tenants…hopefully nothing more. I chucked those on the floor and had to harvest a pillow off the other bed. It looked to be clean, so I finally laid down and got some sleep.

I checked out the following morning and returned my key to the balding red haired man in the office. I decided not to tell him of my bedding un-cleanliness, as he did not even ask how my stay was. He just took my key and I left.