What’s In a Name? Check Into Clarendon’s “It’ll Do Motel”

I have lived in Texas for over thirty five years. It has been an interesting ride to say the least. The year I moved here was in the middle of the first six weeks of the seventh grade. If Canyon schools were like any every other school in the Panhandle we were studying Texas History.

OK that is easy for someone who grew up here. Or started the school year here. I mean when you show up three weeks into it and trying to cram all the Sam Houston, Alamo, and the Texas Revolution in a short three week period it can be grueling. I survived. I didn't pass but I could live with a 63. I still remember that.

So I had a lot to learn about Texas. I took my first trip out of the Canyon/Amarillo area when I was in college. We took a school sponsored trip to Dallas for a mass media competition. A group of us loaded into this school sponsored van and enjoyed the ride. My first trip down 287.

Now I was in college and working for a college radio station. So we had some cool new tunes hardly anyone knew. One of them was Cracker's "Teen Angst". Now this is important because of these lyrics:

Cause, what the world needs now
Is a new kind of tension.
Cause the old one just bores me to death.
Cause, what the world needs now
Is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head.

So take me back to 1992 driving to Dallas with these students and this song being a thing. We got to Clarendon. That is when I was introduced to the It'll Do Motel. I have loved this place for that long.

As student's in that van we started singing:

Cause, what the world needs now
Is another It'll Do Motel
Like I need a hole in my head.

That was our mantra for the whole rest of the trip and actually the rest of the semester. It was such fond memories that any time we drove to or through Clarendon I had to get a picture of the place.

I just loved the name. I mean it's not fancy but It'll Do. Why not? I don't know why I am surprised when I see cars in the parking lot staying there. I always have. It's just a part of Clarendon's history.

What Happened to the It'll Do Motel Sign?

They used to have a sign and I can only guess one of our windy Panhandle days did that in.

Every time I drive to Dallas I look over at the It'll Do Motel and smile. It has brought me such happiness from a place I never stopped at. I always said I was going to. Oh and I just love the names of the places.

I mean they have a Buckin' Bean right across the street.

I actually stopped there and had some coffee. So next time you drive through Clarendon you too can look at both of these places and smile.