Yesterday Ned and Judy, who belong to a congregation I used to serve, were in town visiting relatives. I was supposed to meet them for lunch at the church down in Palo Alto. Bay Area traffic being what it is, I allowed an extra ten minutes beyond the usual twenty-five minutes driving time. But when I walked down from our apartment, I saw that someone had parked their car at the end of our driveway. I couldn’t get out.<\/p>\n
I called the police. They wanted to know what kind of car it was, and I told them it was an older model Toyota Camry, dark green, and gave them the license plate number. I didn’t bother telling them about the statue of the Virgin Mary on the dashboard. They said they’d send someone right out.<\/p>\n
I called the church, and Debra said she’d leave a note on my office door saying that I would be down as soon as I could get there. Then I stood there waiting, and hoping that whoever owned the car would come along right then, and I’d tell them that they really shouldn’t park in someone’s driveway, and they’d look embarrassed and drive away — that would be the fastest solution to my problem.<\/p>\n
After about fifteen minutes, one of the city’s little three-wheeled traffic enforcement vehicles rolled around the corner. The traffic officer, a pleasant, soft-spoken young man, shook his head when he saw where the car had parked. He radioed for a tow truck. <\/p>\n
While we were waiting for the tow truck, I asked him how he liked the little three wheeled vehicle — the name plate on the back labels it an “Interceptor III”<\/a> — and he said he liked it pretty well, but the city was going to get all-electric versions, which he was looking forward to. We started talking about electric cars, and it turned out that his brother-in-law worked for Tesla making batteries.<\/p>\n About then the tow truck showed up. The driver, a tall middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, got out. He shook his head, too, when he saw where the car was parked. “I towed one a couple of weeks ago from that driveway,” he said, pointing at the neighbors two doors down.<\/p>\n One of the guys from the hardware store across the street walked up just then. It turned out that the traffic enforcement vehicle — the “Interceptor III” — had parked right behind his truck, and he thought his truck was about to be towed. He, too, shook his head when he saw where the car was parked. “Must be from out of town,” I said. “Everyone who lives or works around here knows where you can park.” The traffic officer told us that the green Toyota was in fact registered in Sunnyvale.<\/p>\n The tow truck driver had the Toyota’s door unlocked in about thirty seconds. He popped the hood, and disconnected the battery so the car alarm couldn’t go off while he was towing it. The traffic officer filled out the paperwork, including a visual inspection of the condition of the car. The tow truck driver took a picture of the car with his smartphone. “Liability?” I asked him.<\/p>\n “Naw, sometimes they try to tell me that they didn’t park in front of a driveway,” he said. “Sometimes the wife will send the husband down, or the other way around, so they can argue with me.”<\/p>\n And with that, this little piece of street theatre came to a conclusion. I thanked the officer and the driver, and they drove off. The whole process had taken fifty minutes from the time I had discovered the car, to the point where I finally drove off.<\/p>\n As I drove to meet Ned and Judy, I wondered about what the driver of that green Toyota would do when they discovered their car was gone. They’d probably call the police to report it was stolen, only to discover it had been towed. They’d have to figure out how to get back to Sunnyvale, and how to get over to the tow lot to pick up their car. They’d have to pay the ticket, plus the costs of towing and storing the car, all of which could mount up to several hundred dollars. I felt a little bit bad for them, but only a little bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday Ned and Judy, who belong to a congregation I used to serve, were in town visiting relatives. I was supposed to meet them for lunch at the church down in Palo Alto. Bay Area traffic being what it is, I allowed an extra ten minutes beyond the usual twenty-five minutes driving time. But when … Continue reading “Towed away”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[215],"class_list":["post-3342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bay-area-calif","tag-san-mateo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3344,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}