Want to Pay to Sleep with a Total Stranger? It Used to be the Norm

You've been on the road all day, you're exhausted, and all you want to do is drop into bed and get a good night's sleep. So you check into the hotel and go to your room and . . . there's a total stranger in your bed. Or maybe two of them. What do you do? Why you climb in and go to sleep. That's the way it used to be.

I first ran across this while reading the An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt. Then I ran across it in a book about Abraham Lincoln, The Lincoln Reader. It seems that back in those days it was absolutely normal to share not just your hotel room but your bed with total strangers. Of the same sex, of course.

None of these 200-room establishments with pool, bar, and gift shop. You were lucky if the place had four rooms to rent and you took whatever quarters they had to offer. I guess you just hoped the other guys took their boots off and didn't snuggle up to you too much in their sleep.