52nd City

Tickets

We're all walking around with our own sets of accumulated knowledge, yes? That's why trivia nights are such fun, when the right combination sits together. Someone might know Rod Carew's career batting average. Another might be able to recite the entire Star-Spangled Banner. A third may have uncanny abilities to memorize the national capitols of South America. Bravo to all three!

My own gaps in knowledge are great. Occasionally, they're filled, through any variety of means. For instance, today, Office K. Hudson of the St. Louis City Metropolitan Police Department taught me that parking within 10-feet of a US mailbox will draw a city fine of $25. I did not know that.

The spot was just outside of Hartford Coffee Company. Over the past four or five years, I've seen dozens, if not hundreds, of cars parked there, never noticing a ticket hitting a windshield. My creeping sense is that I'm not the only person that doesn't know about the 10-foot rule and that enforcement's a selective, day-to-day endeavor. The lack of signage or striping reinforces that theory.

Honestly, I'm okay with most indignities that befall me as a City resident. Every so often, someone will mess with myself or my property. I'll hear car horns blaring and I'll see trash deposited in the street. I'll scratch my head over civic decisions, brought on by either knucklehead voters or elected officials. I'm willing to deal with all that. I love the City, warts and all.

But these tickets! Ayie! I'd just as soon pay the City, say, $40 a month for a ticket tax, which would eliminate the ticket-to-ticket stress that's brought to my life, thanks to forgetting the street-sweeping day or parking too far away from the curb or getting dangerously close to a mailbox.

Today's transgression, that one. Today's ticket. Today's $25.

City folks, esp. those of you working in the 15th Ward, please allow me this request: I have a lot on my mind and I forget things. Some things I simply don't know. Painting a thick f'ing yellow line along the f'ing curb next to the f'ing mailbox at Roger and Hartford would go a LONG, LONG way in making sure that I remember to be at least 11-feet from said mailbox.

Unless, of course, the idea all along was to bleed one more sucker another $25, while they're spending time and money inside a nearby, independent City business.

Thanks. I feel better, already.