The real Lamp Post Motel opened on Thanksgiving weekend, 1970, to a full house due to the big fopotball game between the University of Arizona and Arizona State, with 42 rooms, a pool and parking lots in the front and rear. The only video camera on the property then was a dummy black box with a fake lens, intended to simply intimidate, and unsuccessful at that. This book is a work of fiction about a real place. It is not based on real people or events. Any resemblance between people in the book and in real life are either serious delusions on your part or the author having you on. Yes, my father bought the land, had it it built and made the Lamp Post Motel his only successful business venture. When I was a newspaper reporter, I covered a weekend prison escape of a notorious serial killer known as the Pied Piper of Tucson. Days later, the police captured him with little struggle, holed up in the Lamp Post Motel. The blue hallway lights in the motel corridors were 25-watt bulbs and the only lights dim enough to not shine through the cheap curtains in the rooms. After Dad passed away, the family ran the motel for a few years. Joe his sister Rachel and brother Abe managed before the family sold to the current owners, who dropped the storied name and joined a discount chain. To allay any confusion between the place once called the Lamp Post Motel and the book titled The Lamp Post Motel, please note that in the book title, "The" is capitalized.
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