by Marcia Rudin

Visitors to Cypress Cove, a continuing care community in Fort Myers, Florida, where my husband and I live, are very fortunate.  The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who come to visit their family members here can enjoy our beautiful public lounging areas and library, exercise in two excellent workout rooms with the latest equipment, swim in a heated indoor pool or in an outdoor heated saltwater pool, play tennis or handball, or walk or jog around our sixty acres of beautiful grounds, observing magnificent Ibis and other tropical birds, rabbits, squirrels, and even alligators in our lakes.  And eat delicious food in our three dining rooms or enjoy snacks and drinks in our new cozy sports lounge.

How different their experience of visiting family members here is from mine when I visited my mother’s parents in Milwaukee in the 1940s and early 1950s!

My grandparents lived in downtown Milwaukee in a one-room apartment in an old brownstone apartment building near the famous Schlitz brewery. In those days, no one lived downtown in any city, and our family was appalled that my grandfather, a brilliant electrical engineer who taught at the nearby Milwaukee School of Engineering, had chosen this dilapidated neighborhood for their home. To make matters even worse, my grandparents shared a bathroom with other tenants of the building on the first floor.  

So my older sister Terry and I were happy when my grandparents finally decided there was no room for us to sleep in their studio apartment when our family drove up from Champaign, Illinois, on a two-lane highway navigating through the entire city of Chicago to visit them. They reserved rooms for us in the nearby Carleton Hotel.  

We were happy, that is, until we saw The Carleton Hotel. 

Our routine never varied throughout the years. Once we had politely eaten the dreadful egg custard Grandma Eva always made for us as a special treat (cooking was not her strong point), Grandpa Sidney and our family would walk the two blocks to the Carleton.  Terry and I would be filled with foreboding as with every step we moved closer to the gloom,y gothic building.

Each time we entered the dank lobby of The Carleton, a residential hotel — what we would today call a welfare hotel — my parents and grandfather would go to the registration desk to check us in. While they were busy with the paperwork, Terry and I would peer apprehensively into the pitch-black TV lounge. As though some supernatural force propelled us, against our better judgment, my sister and I would venture into the small room reeking with stale cigarette smoke and body odor.  

In the 1940s and early 1950s, people watched tiny black and white TV screens surrounded by huge plastic consoles in total darkness.  Of course, there were no TV sets in the Carleton’s rooms. So, all day every day, apparently, the hotel residents – all men, from what we gathered – sat motionless in the darkness, mesmerized by the flickering images. It seemed to us they were the same men throughout the years.  Every time we arrived, the man with such bad breath that he polluted the entire TV lounge was ensconced on the broken-down couch near the doorway. 

When our parents and Grandpa Sidney completed the check-in process and came to retrieve us from the TV lounge, Terry and I would exchange a look of terror. We knew what was next. Clasping hands and tightly squeezing each other’s fingers, we prepared ourselves for the inevitable.

We would begin the foray down the frightening, dark, and gloomy, seemingly endless, worn, flowered carpeted corridor where we were certain ghosts of residents past still resided. Our destination was our special “suite”, two adjoining rooms with mismatched flowered carpets and wallpaper, with no doubt the only private bathroom in the hotel. 

The bellboy carrying our bags led our procession. He was the owner’s son, who had an intellectual disability. Looking back on this experience, I am horrified by how afraid my sister and I were of this unfortunate young man.

My grandparents have been dead for more than sixty years. Of course, so are my parents and, unfortunately, my sister, Terry, who died last year. I’m sure that young man lived out the rest of his days carrying bags for hotel guests down those long corridors without access to the understanding and support that people with disabilities receive today. According to my cousin, who still lives in Milwaukee, the Carleton Hotel and my grandparents’ apartment building were razed years ago to make room for the gentrification of what is now an upscale residential section of downtown Milwaukee.   

But the very name “Carleton Hotel” is still today enough to transport me back to my childhood ordeal that bound Terry and me together forever in stalwart sisterhood.  

Visitors to Cypress Cove: if you only knew how lucky you are!