The Folksy Voice Of Motel 6 Ads Turns Out The Light To Get More Time With His Son

HOMER, Alaska - Tom Bodett is still trying to live down the quip that made him famous.

It all started in one of his first recording sessions as spokesman for the Motel 6 chain in 1986. Bodett, then just a carpenter and fledgling radio commentator, was nervous. He read the ad copy too fast. With a couple of seconds to spare, he ad-libbed.

Now eight years and 300 Motel 6 advertising spots later, Bodett's warm Midwest monotone and "We'll leave the light on for ya" tag line are familiar across America. And his far-off little recording studio is inundated with offers from advertisers wanting him to work the same folksy magic for them.

Just a hick radio voice to millions, the three-dimensional Tom Bodett is actually a writer and storyteller who is just creative and quirky enough to be the pride of this little tourist-crowded sand spit.

The Michigan native added a bit of fame in the 1980s weaving homey and humorous tales on national radio about a place called "The End of the Road." In the broadcast, Bodett gave life to a cast of characters that suspiciously resembled the artists and fishermen of Homer.

The shows resulted in four books and seven recordings. But a series of what Bodett calls "explosions" handed him a midlife crisis at 39. He found himself divorced and an absentee father spending more time than he liked cranking out a script week after week.

So Bodett gave up his radio show, and he is spending more time with his son, Courtney. He also is trying his hand at his first novel, searching beyond the end of the road for the man behind that folksy voice.

The novel, called "No Place Like Home," focuses on one of Bodett's radio characters, a fellow named Ed Flanigan, who has lost an arm and decides to move from the End of the Road back home to a trendy, modern town in Oregon.

"It definitely speaks to the changes I've been going through as I slide into middle age here," Bodett says, "being more concerned with how my friends are doing and less about how my friends are doing for me."

"And meanwhile," he says, nodding toward the stand-up microphone where another folksy product pitch awaits him, "there's advertising."