I hope ya'll appreciate the investigative journalism I had to do to get the facts on this one, as it took me tracking down three other towers to get all the major blanks filled in, but I had a feeling it would be worth it.
Monday I come into work and notice a lump of corroded steel that could charitably be called a car in the back corner where hopeless junk goes to die.
According to registration/inspection, it was last legally on the road in 2010, or, would have been allowed on it through 2010, making me believe the last time it actually could drive was 2009 and became immobile sometime after that last inspection. Something is seriously broken inside this car's suspension, as putting the left front wheel up on top of a spare chunk of 4x4 wood only makes it sit LEVEL from side to side. Take that away, and it'd be listing to port by almost 18 degrees, Captain! It's clearly never going to see pavement under it's own power ever again.
Anyway, what really got me interested was the insides of the windows were plastered with bleached, albeit still legible canned-warning posters you can get at a hardware store that say "PRIVATE PROPERTY: NO TRESPASSING VIOLATORS PROSECUTED!" (How exactly do you trespass on a car? I hear you say? It will all make sense eventually, but I wondered the very same thing too)
Someone being extremely protective of their precious junk is nothing new, I think it was Bon Jovi who pointed out that you live for the fight when that's all that you've got.... and some people are fiercely territorial over their turf, whatever it may be, because the stakes are just that LOW.
So, I'm imagining some toothless redneck in a "DON'T TREAD ON ME!" ballcap was the owner of this, and wasn't lettin' any no-good varmint' run off with it. That $250 scrap-unit value was HIS by-golly! And this is MURRICA! Where all he has to do is declare it's his, and that entitles him to shoot anyone who looks at it funny!
Well, I was closer to the mark than I ever could have imagined.
Here's how we ended up with this lovely little nugget of automotive technology.
Turns out this came all the way from Hickston, a town four exits up the interstate where the signs all say "NO SERVICES THIS EXIT", seriously, this town is so poor, it has only one traffic light, and that only has one color, red, and it's only turned on half the time, as it blinks constantly!
Well, in this humble little burg', lived a man who was apparently in the military and was recently deployed somewhere for an extended period of time, upwards of perhaps 2 years.
While he was gone, his neighbor decided "finders keepers" and claim-jumped his property. Which included a yard, a house, a paved driveway and attached garage.
To keep people out of "his" new property, he parked the aforementioned car sideways in the driveway, about equidistant between the road and the garage. Now the "NO TRESPASS" signs make sense, he didn't mean the car, he meant the neighbors place that he'd just annexed, effectively, he made the car a large, cumbersome and impractical signpost.
Well, as you can imagine, when owner returned from his tour, he was a bit surprised to see a car he didn't recognize in his driveway.
He called his neighbor and asked him to please move the car, neighbor told him not to touch "his" stuff and get off "his" property.
Owner called the State Police
Trooper Friendly shows up, and owner provides documentation that he is, in fact, owner of said property, has no desire for that car to be there, and wants it gone.
Trooper Friendly tries to talk to the neighbor and tells him that he can either remove the car, or, the PSP will have no option but to "call someone who will"
Neighbor threatens Troopers with lawsuits, lawyers and again states he has no intention of moving "his" property off of "his" property because owner of said property doesn't own it despite all evidence to the contrary.
Trooper shrugs and says "have it your way", and he didn't mean go on down to Burger King. Oh no, he calls us, and a truck is sent out. It takes about 45 minutes to get there, but once on scene, it takes barely 5 minutes, under the watchful eye of Trooper Friendly to load it up and follow the Trooper back to the barracks where they can fill out the appropriate forms to let us take possession of an "abandoned/salvage vehicle" since the neighbor's refusal to do anything about it means he's legally abandoned it.
By the time our driver and the Trooper make it back to base, the dispatcher inside said barracks is already on the line with Mr. Bad Neighbor, getting his ear chewed off for all the "illegal" things they just did! Namely, trespassing! (OH THE IRONY!) and stealing! and allkindsofstufflikethatthere! And he's going to get a lawyer! A TRUCKLOAD of them! And sue! and sue! and
*click*
The dispatcher hung up on him.
Driver gets his paperwork stamped, and makes the 45 minute ride back to town with the rustbucket car-cum-roadblock in tow.
No sooner does he get back to our shop and walk in to deposit the paperwork in the office, than he finds not one, but TWO of OUR dispatchers with phones akimbo being yelled at by both Mr. Bad Neighbor and someone who was presumably Mrs. Bad Neighbor, again threatening to drop an airborne division worth of lawyers on us for trespassing, stealing, and otherwise doing ILLEGAL things to him!
Both our people told him "Tough sh*t, you owe us $480 or you don't get the car back" and hung up (Nope, not a typo. It's $115 for an illegal, and then there's the added per-mile charges, both en route and towed. Per borough towing ordinance, if you go over 10 miles either out or back on an illegal call, you can charge mileage. For 99.9% of all tows in town here, you go no more than 4 at the most. But, like I said, 45 minute drive out? and back? That was a not insignificant number of miles he got charged on top, for something that wasn't worth half as much )
Haven't heard from Bad Neighbor since then, and I don't expect I will, but if I do, I'll keep you posted.
And what's the moral of our story? Some people really DO think they own the world. And, dumb people seem pathologically incapable of realizing that they're, well, dumb.
Monday I come into work and notice a lump of corroded steel that could charitably be called a car in the back corner where hopeless junk goes to die.
According to registration/inspection, it was last legally on the road in 2010, or, would have been allowed on it through 2010, making me believe the last time it actually could drive was 2009 and became immobile sometime after that last inspection. Something is seriously broken inside this car's suspension, as putting the left front wheel up on top of a spare chunk of 4x4 wood only makes it sit LEVEL from side to side. Take that away, and it'd be listing to port by almost 18 degrees, Captain! It's clearly never going to see pavement under it's own power ever again.
Anyway, what really got me interested was the insides of the windows were plastered with bleached, albeit still legible canned-warning posters you can get at a hardware store that say "PRIVATE PROPERTY: NO TRESPASSING VIOLATORS PROSECUTED!" (How exactly do you trespass on a car? I hear you say? It will all make sense eventually, but I wondered the very same thing too)
Someone being extremely protective of their precious junk is nothing new, I think it was Bon Jovi who pointed out that you live for the fight when that's all that you've got.... and some people are fiercely territorial over their turf, whatever it may be, because the stakes are just that LOW.
So, I'm imagining some toothless redneck in a "DON'T TREAD ON ME!" ballcap was the owner of this, and wasn't lettin' any no-good varmint' run off with it. That $250 scrap-unit value was HIS by-golly! And this is MURRICA! Where all he has to do is declare it's his, and that entitles him to shoot anyone who looks at it funny!
Well, I was closer to the mark than I ever could have imagined.
Here's how we ended up with this lovely little nugget of automotive technology.
Turns out this came all the way from Hickston, a town four exits up the interstate where the signs all say "NO SERVICES THIS EXIT", seriously, this town is so poor, it has only one traffic light, and that only has one color, red, and it's only turned on half the time, as it blinks constantly!
Well, in this humble little burg', lived a man who was apparently in the military and was recently deployed somewhere for an extended period of time, upwards of perhaps 2 years.
While he was gone, his neighbor decided "finders keepers" and claim-jumped his property. Which included a yard, a house, a paved driveway and attached garage.
To keep people out of "his" new property, he parked the aforementioned car sideways in the driveway, about equidistant between the road and the garage. Now the "NO TRESPASS" signs make sense, he didn't mean the car, he meant the neighbors place that he'd just annexed, effectively, he made the car a large, cumbersome and impractical signpost.
Well, as you can imagine, when owner returned from his tour, he was a bit surprised to see a car he didn't recognize in his driveway.
He called his neighbor and asked him to please move the car, neighbor told him not to touch "his" stuff and get off "his" property.
Owner called the State Police
Trooper Friendly shows up, and owner provides documentation that he is, in fact, owner of said property, has no desire for that car to be there, and wants it gone.
Trooper Friendly tries to talk to the neighbor and tells him that he can either remove the car, or, the PSP will have no option but to "call someone who will"
Neighbor threatens Troopers with lawsuits, lawyers and again states he has no intention of moving "his" property off of "his" property because owner of said property doesn't own it despite all evidence to the contrary.
Trooper shrugs and says "have it your way", and he didn't mean go on down to Burger King. Oh no, he calls us, and a truck is sent out. It takes about 45 minutes to get there, but once on scene, it takes barely 5 minutes, under the watchful eye of Trooper Friendly to load it up and follow the Trooper back to the barracks where they can fill out the appropriate forms to let us take possession of an "abandoned/salvage vehicle" since the neighbor's refusal to do anything about it means he's legally abandoned it.
By the time our driver and the Trooper make it back to base, the dispatcher inside said barracks is already on the line with Mr. Bad Neighbor, getting his ear chewed off for all the "illegal" things they just did! Namely, trespassing! (OH THE IRONY!) and stealing! and allkindsofstufflikethatthere! And he's going to get a lawyer! A TRUCKLOAD of them! And sue! and sue! and
*click*
The dispatcher hung up on him.
Driver gets his paperwork stamped, and makes the 45 minute ride back to town with the rustbucket car-cum-roadblock in tow.
No sooner does he get back to our shop and walk in to deposit the paperwork in the office, than he finds not one, but TWO of OUR dispatchers with phones akimbo being yelled at by both Mr. Bad Neighbor and someone who was presumably Mrs. Bad Neighbor, again threatening to drop an airborne division worth of lawyers on us for trespassing, stealing, and otherwise doing ILLEGAL things to him!
Both our people told him "Tough sh*t, you owe us $480 or you don't get the car back" and hung up (Nope, not a typo. It's $115 for an illegal, and then there's the added per-mile charges, both en route and towed. Per borough towing ordinance, if you go over 10 miles either out or back on an illegal call, you can charge mileage. For 99.9% of all tows in town here, you go no more than 4 at the most. But, like I said, 45 minute drive out? and back? That was a not insignificant number of miles he got charged on top, for something that wasn't worth half as much )
Haven't heard from Bad Neighbor since then, and I don't expect I will, but if I do, I'll keep you posted.
And what's the moral of our story? Some people really DO think they own the world. And, dumb people seem pathologically incapable of realizing that they're, well, dumb.
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