Sunday, February 08, 2004

	Click photo for larger image.

Like the old Lincoln Highway out front, the Fort Pitt Motel isn't as busy as it used to be.

Still, at this time of year, you can't even get onto the waiting list for rooms that offer what the brochure bills as the "Pocono Touch."

Translation: Big, red, heart-shaped whirlpool tubs, bubble bath and nudge-nudge-wink.

The Pocono Mountains in Eastern Pennsylvania became the "Honeymoon Capital of the World" thanks to Morris B. Wilkins, who in 1958 invented the love-ly bathtub and watched it froth into a fad. His and other hotels already were pulling in newlyweds from all over, including, in 1957, Pittsburgh's Howard and Erma Mink.

	"Here" is a weekly feature produced by Post-Gazette photographers and writers who roam the region to capture close-up slices of life. Can you point us to a special person or place, experience or story? E-mail us at here@post-gazette.com. Link to past installments HERE.

Erma was the daughter of Tony Saveikis, a first-generation West End Lithuanian who, with his wife, Lurline, built the Tonidale Motel (and restaurant and gas station) where the new U.S. Route 30 turns off the Parkway West. Erma had worked at the motel as a girl and later ran her father's Tastee-Freez.

In 1969, the L-shaped Fort Pitt Motel, a few miles farther west on Steubenville Pike, went up for sale. It apparently had been named after the blockhouse-shaped Fort Pitt Inn next door, a landmark restaurant on what had been the main road to the horse-racing track in Chester, W.Va. Erma took her dad's suggestion and bought the motel.

She and her husband moved in and raised three sons. She remembers charging $7.45 for a single room and $8.48 for a double.

It wasn't until the mid-1970s, when she was executive secretary of the Pennsylvania Motel Association and on a "research" trip to the Poconos, that she and her husband got to try a heart-shaped whirlpool tub. They came back and spiced things up by putting one in their motel.

Customers loved it so much that the couple put in another, then turned the bungalow out back into king and queen "Pocono Touch Suites." In 1989, the family's onetime living quarters became three "Pocono Touch Patio Rooms," complete with tubs, gas-log fireplaces and lots of mirrors.

There was no motel here like it, and there isn't still. Yes, many places now have Jacuzzi suites, but they might prohibit the bubble bath, since some products can gum up the jets. The Fort Pitt also has hard-to-find amenities such as vibrating beds (still a quarter), real keys (with tags you could drop into a mailbox, "Return Postage Guaranteed") and a bell in the office ("Ring for Service").

The bell still is answered by Erma, who in the late 1980s divorced and remarried and became Erma Dodd. She can't bring herself to sell the place where she raised her kids, so she plans to pass it on to them. Meanwhile, she continues to enjoy license to play Cupid to fellow romantics who stay here.

"Really," she says, "it's married couples who are celebrating an anniversary, or a birthday, or, you know, she just graduated from nursing school. Or, 'I'm surprising my husband because he's working too hard.'"

This brings up one of her many stories, about the woman who showed up early to decorate the room, then continued on in her limousine to pick up her shocked husband at work for a night on the town before a night at the motel. "She had on a fur coat with nothing but a teddy under it," Erma says. It still makes her giggle.

Her reservation forms are printed with places to mark if the stay is a honeymoon or anniversary or "Surprise: Him / Her." There's a box to check -- should the clerk need to call back -- whether it's "OK TO SAY MOTEL." If it's not OK, there are two options: If a man answers the phone, "SAY MRS. HEART TUPPERWARE" is calling for the woman. If a woman answers, "SAY HART CONSTRUCTION" is calling for the man.

Frequently, it's Erma and her staff who are surprised. One night last month, they hosted in a heart-tub room a man who was headed overseas with the Marines and a woman headed out West to a new job. While checking out, the young woman announced that they'd gotten engaged. Erma told her, "Honey, have a good life," in a different way than people usually say that.

Erma has met brand-new babies who were conceived in these rooms. She once mused that she'd be a millionaire if she had a nickel or even a penny for every time nudge-nudge-wink happened here. Sometimes she can tell just by the smiles the next morning.

Happy couples make her happy. She used to lend guests marriage-enrichment tapes, and she thought about holding retreats here. Even now -- make that, especially now, in this faster-paced world -- her heart goes out to couples who don't make time for themselves.

The office, which sells everything from wine openers to candles, is all decorated with hearts and red flowers for Valentine's Day, which is the busiest time of the year. This weekend, the holiday weekend and the Saturday after, the tub rooms already are booked and paid for, at the $79.95 to $129.95 a night regular rates.

Most customers live not much farther away than Joyce and Ed Sowinsky, from Cecil in Washington County.

They're both 56, married the second time for 10 years now. He works as a traveling welder, she as a nanny to two children and as an elementary school lunch lady. Their daily schedules don't leave much room for romance. But, for the past eight years or so, they've made a date to celebrate Valentine's Day at the Fort Pitt Motel. They'll be there next weekend and have already made their reservation for 2005.

He buys her a dozen red roses. She packs chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne. They check in on Friday and don't even leave the king suite until Sunday, not even for food, which they order in.

You can guess where Joyce especially loves to spend a lot of the weekend.

"It's relaxing," she says, giggling some herself. "It's like you're in a different world. I recommend it to anyone, especially when you have the bubbles all over the place. Up to your neck."