Fourteen-stories of hotel towered<\/p>\n
over downtown Minneapolis;<\/p>\n
the massive pine by our back drive<\/p>\n
stretched nearly to the tenth<\/p>\n
the bottom boughs canopied out,<\/p>\n
branches looping upward, forming<\/p>\n
a cozy, sweet-smelling cave<\/p>\n
we rented out rooms, not the tree<\/p>\n
still, guests were often staying \u00a0there<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
most of the staff didn\u2019t know<\/p>\n
of our guests beneath the tree<\/p>\n
like tourists in our regular rooms<\/p>\n
they spent their days not there;<\/p>\n
it was merely a place to lay a head<\/p>\n
to relax and stash their gear<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
unobtrusively using dead of night<\/p>\n
to slip into the lobby restrooms<\/p>\n
using freshly cleaned toilets to rinse<\/p>\n
soap-dispenser-and-sink cleaned feet<\/p>\n
foot care key, to surviving the street<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
from time to time my boss and I<\/p>\n
encountered our off-the-books guests<\/p>\n
greeting them as we would any others<\/p>\n
with a nod, a greeting, a smile<\/p>\n
a few times, my boss Dennis<\/p>\n
would ask them to wait, asking<\/p>\n
if they were hungry, then going<\/p>\n
to the kitchen, returning with a<\/p>\n
sandwich, or piece of chicken<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like most of our guests<\/p>\n
they seldom stayed long,<\/p>\n
but frequently returned;<\/p>\n
loyalty, as they told us in training,<\/p>\n
was highly valued, and must be<\/p>\n
constantly earned<\/p>\n
the proof of that I can confirm<\/p>\n
because the guests who never paid us<\/p>\n
were the finest that I served<\/p>\n
\n– Mark L. Lucker<\/em>
\n\u00a9 2016<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fourteen-stories of hotel towered over downtown Minneapolis; the massive pine by our back drive stretched nearly to the tenth the bottom boughs canopied out, branches looping upward, forming a cozy, sweet-smelling cave we rented out rooms, not the tree still, guests were often staying \u00a0there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13,1],"tags":[792,810],"class_list":["post-24389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous","category-uncategorized","tag-hour-11-prompt","tag-prompt-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/694"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24417,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24389\/revisions\/24417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}