The Wayside Motel, with its sad lightbulb arrow, is one of the familiar sights on the east side of Grants, New Mexico. But not, it would seem, for much longer. In September 2018, City of Grants code enforcer Robert Windhorst announced that the Wayside Motel was on its hitlist for demolition – or, at least, what remains of it. The motel itself is long gone, what is left is the two-storey white building that served as motel office and living quarters for the owners.

It originally started life as the Grants Motor Lodge in 1945 and is said to be the first motel that wasn’t a campground on the east side of Grants, although that seems quite a late date for such a claim. Over its lifetime it appears to have been a relatively run of the mill place; nothing made it stand out, no murders, no fires or the excitements that various other motels seem to attract. The one postcard I have been able to find is a generic drawing that could depict a motel in any town – and probably did.

The Grants Motor Lodge ran through a number of owners and managers with one of the most memorable being the Lesters in the early 1960s. Clint Lester and his wife stood out in Grants because of their size. They were little people. That’s not an insult; Clint, at just 4 foot 8 inches tall (his wife was two inches shorter) was the Director for District 10 of The Little People, an organisation founded in 1958 by Billy Barty.

Perhaps its slow decline started with the change of name to the It’ll Do Inn. However quirky or amusing it might mean to be, that really doesn’t show a lot of pride in your establishment… It was still the It’ll Do Inn in 1974 when the owner was clearly keen to sell, even offering to take a house in Albuquerque as payment. By the time it was rechristened the Wayside Inn, the place was firmly going downhill.

The 15-room motel accommodation was eventually torn down, leaving the main building marooned. Anyone passing by might notice the collection of cars that nuzzle up to the building – an old Mercedes, a 1950s Jaguar Mk2, an MG Midget and some older vehicles. It was these cars that recently gave the Grants Police Department one of its less glorious moments.

On the morning of Wednesday 26^th September 2018, just days after the City announced it wanted to tear down the house, some enterprising thieves rolled up in broad daylight and made away with a two door 1933 Ford, a 1927 Packard and a 1929 Model T. It seems they did this in quite a leisurely manner – if I recall rightly, the ’33 Ford and the Packard were parked on trailers, so the thieves took those too – no-one took any notice. Someone did eventually call the police and Lt Jeff Marez made his way down to East Santa Fe to enquire what the gentlemen were doing. They assured the Grants Police Department officer that they were moving the vehicles for the owner. They then reeled off the owner’s name and details and Lt Marez went away satisfied. The three cars, the trailers and the thieves were long gone by the time that the Grants Police realised that those details were all on the zoning notice that the City Council had pasted to the Wayside Motel’s door and all the thieves had had to do was memorise them…

The Wayside Motel isn’t a grand building. To be honest, it’s not even a really very interesting one. But it is part of the history Route 66 through Grants and the chances are that the next time you pass this way it will probably be gone.