Monday, November 30, 2015

The "A" Parking Sticker

When Judy and I lived in Denton, parking on the North Texas campus wasn't a problem because I never had to park there.  We lived two blocks from the Auditorium Building, which is where the English Department was located.  It was an easy walk, rain or shine, sleet or snow.  Things were different when we moved to Austin.  We were located within walking distance of the UT campus, but only if you were an Olympic speed walker.  In bad weather, it would have been difficult if not impossible to make the walk.

So we needed a campus parking sticker.  Students got a "C" sticker, which cost $3 when I was a first a student.  I don't have any idea how much it was then or how much it is now, but I didn't want a student permit.  The parking lots for students weren't as far away from campus as our apartment, but they were fairly distant.  Judy didn't like walking that far.  Since she was working on campus, only a block or so from where I'd have an office, and I was working, too, we qualified for a better class of sticker.  

The stickers for faculty and staff were "A" and "B" stickers.  Which one you got was determined by your salary, and you can guess which one we qualified for.  They wouldn't let us combine our salaries, so we had to settle for a "B" sticker.  The "B" parking wasn't much more convenient than the "C" sticker would have been, but it appeared that there was nothing else we could do.  

However, as you've guessed, I wouldn't be writing this if a solution hadn't presented itself.  The statute of limitations has long since expired on our crime, so now the story can be told.  We knew someone who shall, even after this long interval, remain nameless.  She worked in the office where the stickers were issued.  Not only that, but she qualified for an "A" sticker.  Because of her position, she could get two "A" stickers, one for each of her cars.  Except that she had only one car.

I don't know whose idea it was, but someone suggested that she could get a second sticker and give it to us.  No one would ever know unless we violated some rule, which we assured her we would never do.  So soon enough we were in possession of the coveted "A" parking sticker.  Not only could we park in the "A" lots, but we could park on the Inner Campus drive, right by Parlin Hall, the home of the English Department, if we got to campus early enough.  

I'm not sure that parking is still allowed on Inner Campus Drive, but in those days all the entrances to the campus were guarded by guys in little gatehouses.  If you didn't have an "A" sticker, you were stopped, questioned, and sent to Gitmo if you didn't have a good reason to be entering the campus.  Okay, I made up the Gitmo part, but the rest is true.

I'll never forget the first day of driving to work with the "A" sticker firmly secured to the front windshield of our '67 Plymouth Fury III (that's it in the photo up above).  There was a little bit of trepidation as we approached the gatehouse, especially on Judy's part.  She didn't have a criminal nature, as she proved many years later when we were on a train that was going to cross the border between Austria and Germany.  But that's another story for another time.  Maybe.  This time, she was nervous.  How nervous was she?  She looked and acted like someone who'd just robbed a bank, shooting and killing two of the guards.  I hoped the guy in the gatehouse couldn't see into the car too well.

Unlike Judy, I exuded quiet confidence as we approached the gatehouse and cruised right on by as the guy inside gave the merest glance to our "A" sticker.  After that, it was all exhilaration, and if the high five had been invented, we'd have done one.

We continued to use the "A" sticker for two semesters, but when our friend moved, we couldn't use that method any longer.  Luckily someone mentioned to me that if I was interested in teaching technical writing, that course paid $100 more per class per semester than teaching freshman English.  I was teaching two classes, and it happened that $200 more per semester would put me into the "A" sticker bracket.  That's how I wound up teaching technical writing for the rest of my career as a teaching assistant.  And also how I continued to park on Inner Campus Drive for the rest of my time at UT, no longer a petty criminal but an honest man.

10 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

Jackie wants to know if you coordinated your suit to your car on purpose.

Either way, looking good and loved the story, especially Judy acting furtive.

Unknown said...

Any coordination is purely accidental. Judy would never have succeeded at any criminal enterprise.

Rick Robinson said...

My entire time in college I was either on campus (dorm) or within walking distance, so never had to park. I didn't even have a car part of that time.

Cap'n Bob said...

I knew there was a dark side to you, you sticker-stealing, system-gaming scofflaw!

Unknown said...

That was the highlight of my criminal career.

Anonymous said...

I had no idea that your multitudinous talents included technical writing expertise. Just how did that enrich your crime fiction prose style? And would you care to grade some of my old papers?
Art Scott

Unknown said...

No thanks on the grading. I might still have my copy of one of the texts we used, the REPORT ON TECHNICAL REPORT FORM. Now made obsolete by the computer, of course. The main text was called, I think, just TECHNICAL WRITING. It was by Gordon Mills and John Walter, who just happened to be members of the UT faculty. I taught the class for several years and had some pretty good writers during that time. Some who weren't quite so good, too.

Don Coffin said...

I think everyone who spent any time working at a university has a parking story. And yours is great. Mine...

I taught at Indiana University Northwest, which is a commuter campus. So parking was a very big deal. There were two classes of faculty/staff parking stickers--one for "general" parking and one for "reserved" (numbered) parking spaces. (If you had a "reserved" parking tag, you could also park in a "general" parking space, which was sort of unfair.) I had an administrative position for a couple of years, and I wound up going to off-campus meetings maybe twice a day, three or four days a week, which made parking a real pain. In addition, there was a rule that if someone gave up a "reserved" space, it reverted to "general" parking, so there was no way to get a reserved space.

One of my colleagues had one, and decided he didn't want it any longer. I offered to pay for it if he would keep getting it, but pass the tag along to me. (Also, he'd been paying for it monthly as a payroll deduction; I offered to pay him the entire year in advance. We both taught in the business school...so, time value of money and all that, he agreed.) So while (and after!) my admin job, I had reserved parking.

Then he retired (and I thought ,"Oh, s*it!"). But the bursar, who was a friend of ours, and who knew what we were doing and hadn't blown the whistle on us, just quietly transferred the tag to me, and I parked happily ever after.

Since I retired, the school changed its policy. I wouldn't bet on this, but I suspect the $600 or so in additional revenue per parking place played a role. Now, anyone (well, not including students) willing to pay can get a "reserved" tag. And parking revenue has, I'm told, more than doubled...

Unknown said...

Clearly I'm not the only parking criminal on the blog.

George said...

With this current job, I have to pay to park in a lot each day. I've had parking stickers with other jobs, but none of them got me into the "A" category.