Don’t Tell My Daughter I Did This — The Parking Meter Story

An adventure with a slightly inebriated friend, an unfriendly parking meter, and the lake.

A couple of days ago, I read a fantastic story of youthful adventure, and I knew I had to share this adventure with you all. I was inspired by Trent Fox “The Night We Stole an Airplane !”

A young man’s folly.

Just as there is a time in every young man’s life that he throws caution to the wind and does something really risky or just plain dumb, there is a moment when he wishes to come clean. It’s like Newton’s Third Law which roughly says for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you need a visual explanation of this, try jumping from an untethered boat to a dock.

I spent my college days in Texas at a time when the legal drinking age was 18, not age 21 as it is now. I had a friend named Louis. Louis was a likable guy teased by other young men in our age group. I think they tended to tease him a bit because he spoke funny. I’m not sure whether it was an accent or a speech issue that made him sound odd. I liked him well enough because he was active, treated me well enough, and was rich enough always to buy the beer.

He came around the dorm one Saturday night looking for a drinking buddy. He invited me to go with him to a fine establishment a half block from campus called the Barndoor. I wouldn’t have called it a dive then. It was mainly the first bar I had ever been to, so it was what was expected. Now, nearly 50 years later, I have been to other places and can say it was a dive with certainty.

However, it was good enough for poor college students and had the outstanding qualities of having a jukebox, a smelly restroom with working fixtures, and no busy streets to cross to get back to the dorm. A bonus was that they sold heavily salted popcorn. It was the preferred drinking destination for many of my dorm mates.

We stayed for a bit, then Louis announced he was hungry and wanted to go somewhere to eat. We had a couple of choices within walking distance. There was the Waffle House; it was a couple of doors down. Louis didn’t want to go there because he could afford to go where he wanted, and as unlikely as it was, the Waffle House was dumpier than the BarnDoor. The other choice was the McDonald’s on the corner, but that busted out because it was after 10 pm, and they were closed.

So Louis decided we would drive somewhere. He had parked his car on the side street. He had parked his car when he was alone, so he didn’t notice the parking meter was blocking the front passenger door from opening. I pointed out that I couldn’t get into the car. Louis came around to look. A simple solution would have been for him to pull away from the curb enough for me to get in.

However, Louis had a more straightforward solution; get rid of the parking meter. Louis was big, not as big as a refrigerator, but big enough. It took some time, but he managed to push and pull the meter until it came out of the ground, including the concrete base. That should have been enough to get into the car. But no. Somehow, in our inebriated state, we thought leaving the meter on the ground was a bad idea, and putting it on the back seat of his car was a good idea.

So now we had this parking meter on the back seat of his car, covered with a blanket. Precisely what does one do with a parking meter? It’s not like you can sell it for scrap, and there is the issue that it is stolen property. Our solution was to drive to the lake and dump it in the water. It would have been easier to drive to the park two miles away and toss it into the river. But I suppose our logic was better to be caught by a federal Army Corps of Engineers park ranger than a city park officer. It might have been a time like this that I learned it is futile to argue with a drunk.

Anyway, we drove fifteen miles to the lake at the city's edge to one of the lake parks, past the cars with fogged windows, and pulled up to the shore. We pulled out the meter and tossed it into the lake a few feet from the shore.

I think we got back to campus at about 3 AM. Louis parked in his spot again, and we headed back to the dorm.

I got an exciting tale to tell many years later, and Louis got a free parking place for nearly a week until the city put a no parking sign next to his car.

Don’t tell my daughter

Now, remember, don’t tell my daughter I did this. I don’t want her to get ideas or think I was young once.

Disclosure: Grammarly.com edited this story.

Copyright 2022 Harold Zeitung All Rights Reserved

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