Morris Minor Alert!

As I was walking the other day, I happened upon another Morris Minor!  This one was parked in a lot off Oxpens Rd, just a stone's throw away from the Post Office, where I was headed to pick up a package.

For whatever reason, this guy's front wheel seems to have been 'clamped', as this penalty is known in UK parlance.  Americans call it the boot.  I remember well my my first exposure to the boot.  It was in 1997, many moons ago, a time of suburban life at 13013 Chavile, which meant football practice after school & the Simpsons on Sunday evenings.  Fans of the show will remember "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", a great episode in which Barney takes the Simpsons' family station wagon, acquires a number of parking tickets, then abandons the car outside the World Trade Center in NYC, where the eponymous five must go to retrieve it.

In 2000, some four years following that Sunday evening episode of the Simpsons, I would visit New York City for the first time & stand atop the World Trade Center.  Perched there, admiring from above the numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies, I was a million miles away from the idea that another four years' time would find me living in New York, adapting to a city beat, riding the subway to work, & eventually feeling like Brooklyn was my home.  Funny how life works out, sometimes.

Okay... enough of that.  Remember to pay your parking tickets, everyone, esp if you're lucky enough to drive a Morris Minor!