Tanglewood Motel – Cashmere Bouquet – Hotel Bar Soap

“Summer Vacation”

Classic hotel soap wrapper, red with white letters, has a detailed (for how small) depiction of the Tanglewood Motel—it looks like a woodcut image. It’s long-gone, and since there’s not an exact address, near Covington, VA, I can’t look up what’s there—likely nothing as interesting as the motel! I found a postcard for it online, which boasted 12 units, tile shower, “Beauty Rest” mattresses, and meals served from 6:30 a.m. until midnight! It looks really good, with striped awnings over the doors and windows. I know nothing about this small town near the West Virginia border, but it looks somewhat stuck in time—forest all around—maybe some old stuff there—might be a place to stop if you’re driving through. Maybe you could find the oldest hotel still there, and it looks like there’s a few downhome breakfast spots. The soap is, again, Cashmere Bouquet, which is the soap inside several of these wrapped hotel bars that I bought—so I get to keep trying to figure out what nostalgic image of the past the soap’s fragrance most evokes. I still can’t nail it down—I don’t know if it’s from my parents’ house or relatives—maybe even traveling. It’s intense, though—a single grand-slam return to my entire childhood—1960 ’til 1978, say—and that’s a lot of memory. Better than drugs.

Soap Review No. 192