Sometimes Parking Is Difficult

[NOTE: Illustrations will be added to this post when Blogger quits acting weird.]

When there isn't a parking space available on "our" block (10th Street, between Jefferson and Adams, preferably on the east side, preferably at the north end near the house), we have to park the cars elsewhere in the neighborhood. Parking got more difficult when the medium-density apartments across the street were replaced by the high-density construction which we call the Great Wall, and more recently when a nearby area was made into a parking district, and our block was not included.

The other day, I wound up parked on 9th, between Jefferson and Adams, in between a carnation-pink Smart car with a license plate that read FLUFFF, and a vehicle with plates issued by the Grand Portage Band of the Chippewa nation.

Almost 30 years ago, while hitchhiking across the country, I got a ride through Chippewa country in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I had an interesting conversation with a Chippewa, and had the pleasure of joining him in urinating into Lake Superior, at what he told me was Whitefish Bay, a location I instantly identified as the safe harbor that the Edmund Fitzgerald did not reach. He told me that people on the lakes appreciated that song very much, and took it as recognition for all the many ships which had been lost on the Inland Sea.

But I did not know that the Chippewa issued their own license plates, much less did I think that one day I would see one in my own Corvallis neighborhood.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "And what associations do you have with a pink car named FLUFFF?"\\