No Parking

There is a great news story doing the rounds. Apparently some joker put up a no parking sign and this resulted in a number of cars being ticketed and towed.

No Parking sign mysteriously appears in Brooklyn, cars towed

The Associated Press Published: September 1, 2006

NEW YORK Several Brooklyn residents woke up to find their cars had been towed by police because someone had posted a No Parking sign on their street. The sign, which claimed to ban parking on their street overnight, mysteriously
appeared Monday or Tuesday, residents said, and then police started ticketing
and towing cars parked there.

This reminded me of one of my adventures. My very first job was working for the Atomic Energy Research folks. The 'campus' was a converted World War 2 airfield.

The air craft hangers served as research facilities. The major problem I had was parking. Now there was no shortage of it, it is just that it was not convenient. To use any of the regular lots resulted in a 20 minute hike to the computer centre.

There were about 3 parking spots right outside of the main computer building. I worked shifts and I quickly discovered that there was no problem getting one of the parking spots at 6am for the morning shift, or 10pm for the night shift. The problem was the afternoon shift that started at 2pm. It was impossible to find a parking spot.

While our location was by no means secret, it's pretty damn hard to hide a big ass air-field, it was however very secure. We had our own police force (and yes they did carry guns), our own fire department, all cars were searched on entry and exit (yes it was a pain in the ass!). We were akin to a small city, with all of the infrastructure that a city would have.


I mulled my parking problem over for a few weeks, and then came up with a plan. I liberated some no parking cones from our Highway (runway) maintenance department.

The day before I was to start the afternoon shift I would wait till the parking space was empty and put up the no parking cones. The next day I'd stash em in the trunk and park, putting them back up when I left.

Life was very good for several months, and I was feeling pretty good about this devious plan. Unfortunately I got busted. One day one of our armed cops came into the centre asking for the owner of the black Moriss Minor, oops, that would be me!

He told me in no uncertain terms that the Police took a very dim view of people parking in no-parking zones. Didn't I know that I was in a no-parking zone? It has been a no-parking zone for months!

I did not feel that it would be in my best interests to tell him that it was me that had created the no-parking zone to begin with.

I took my lumps, and moved my car to the far flung parking lot.