Emergency parking

I’m back from a few days book-ended by to and fro on the interstate highways of Ohio. Here and elsewhere, I’ve noticed small pull-out areas with signs reading, “Emergency Parking  2 hour limit.”

That strikes me as amusing (but then, what doesn’t?). Seems to me that if your emergency has continued for as long as two hours without an EMS wagon showing up, you’re in deep difficulty. Or maybe not.

Once upon a time (I was all of nineteen years old), in a land far away (on the PA turnpike somewhere between Pittsburgh and the Breezewood exit), I pulled off on the side of the road.

A trooper stopped behind me and walked up to my car, a homely Rambler passed on to me by my grandmother, a car my friends somewhat unkindly nicknamed “the bathtub.” 

“Is everything OK, Miss?” he asked, bending over to peer into my low-to-the-ground window.

“I’m fine,” I answered, scribbling away on a sheet of staff paper.

He paused. “You can’t stop on the shoulder except in an emergency.”

“This IS an emergency,” I said, no doubt with some degree of adolescent drama. “Something was playing in my head and I had to get it down before I forgot it!” 

I continued to write. “You know,” he said, both elbows still on the door frame, “I could give you a ticket.”

“I’m almost finished,” I said. “Really, I’m just about done.”

He sighed and straightened up for a moment. He bent back down to my window. “Don’t . . . ever . . . do this again,” he said, then walked back to his car and drove off.

It was a different age. Today he’d have run my license and registration through his computer and probably told me to step out of the car. And he probably would have given me a ticket. Unless, of course, I parked in one of those emergency parking places. Then, I would’ve had two long legal hours to work. I might have finished the whole piece right there.