Word: motel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hopes of making a cushion: freedom from U.S. income tax, cost-of-living differentials and salaries about 25% above stateside rates for equivalent jobs are the lures. A surprising number intend to stay for a couple of contracts (two years each), save up enough to buy a motel back home. But the limited consolations of loneliness are a deterrent to savings accounts: some pretty rugged poker and crap games spring up in the bachelor camps. For men with families-there are now 3,400 wives and children with Aramco and its associated U.S. contractors-the air-conditioned houses, the tennis...
...golfer ever since his high-school days, Mike needed the financial backing of a Durham, N.C. furniture man when he first struck out on the circuit. He was winning too little to take care of his motel bills. Now he figures he has a chance to win any tournament he enters-even the Masters. And he is paying his own way. He has long since proved that he can use his clubs to whack out a good bit more than the price of room and board...
...motel business is no place for amateurs, and no place for the man who wants to get rich quick. Many motel owners make a good living, but many others, who were dazzled by the first postwar bubble, settled down in poor locations and have either gone out of business or barely make ends meet. Even the most successful motelmen have problems of rising costs and bitter competition. Since 1945, construction costs have gone up from an average $2,500 a room to nearly $5,500, with 15% of the boost in the last two years...
More and more motels are being built in the center of town -traditionally a hotel preserve. In hotel-short New Orleans the new, $2,000,000 redwood-and-glass Motel de Ville, which has a pool, a cocktail lounge, restaurant and 24-hour room service, is only 15 blocks from the central shopping district, and manages to rack up a 100% occupancy rate. Those who stay outside town struggle for a choice highway intersection, or even a slight rise of ground so that motorists can see them from afar. Wherever a motelman does well, he can soon expect a rival...
...motel boom shows little sign of slowing down. Around the U.S. last week, some 900 newer and bigger motels were either under construction or in the planning stage. Yet the motelman, eyeing peak auto output and rising tourism, sees nothing but a happy future for the smart operator. Says Seattle's Frank Seal, owner of a 55-room motel that he built in 1947 for $92,200 and now values at nearly $400,000: "It just isn't for sale. This is just too good a thing not to hold...