The Police Are Always Dead Right

Our town had two "meter maids" who would patrol the downtown area in Cushman scooters, covering a radius of several blocks They'd cruise behind parked cars in angled parking spaces, marking the tire of each car as they went by.

After a specified period of time, they'd cruise through again. In areas of time limited parking, if they came upon a car they'd already marked, they'd write that car a parking ticket and stick it on the windshield.

An area they paid special attention to was the courthouse square. At the time this incident occurred, there was no large parking lot in the area of the courthouse and parking spaces were at a premium.

On one ordinary day, one of the women wrote a parking ticket for a car and stuck it on the windshield. A man inside appeared to be asleep, apparently waiting for someone to come out. The meter maid didn't want to disturb him, so she did not attempt to hand the ticket to him personally.

The next day, the other meter maid came through and did the same thing, also not wanting to bother the "sleeping" man behind the wheel.

It wasn't until the third day, when the first meter maid got the courthouse zone again, when she noticed that the same car with the same man was still there, his windshield now sporting two parking tickets. She took a good look at the man in the car and finally noticed that he was deader than a mackerel.

Are people that oblivious or are they that stupid? You decide.
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It is a common practice in our town for funeral homes to have a police car to lead funeral processions to the cemetery. It is an optional service that the city charges a nominal amount for -- twenty five dollars at the time I was on the force.

On the day of one such funeral, the police escort had arrived a bit earlier than the agreed-upon time, and had parked his car into front of the hearse. He settled in to wait for the procession to get loaded up and ready to go. As he waited, he listened to the police radio, as we were short handed that day, and if an emergency came up, he'd have to cut himself loose from the funeral duty.

Just as the funeral procession was ready to set off, the dispatcher called him, sending him to the scene of a bad accident. She apologized for having to do so, but all other units were busy, and this accident had injuries, so he had to go. He didn't have time to tell the hearse driver what was going on, so he just gunned it out of the lot, heading for the address the dispatcher had given him.

Yep. You guessed it.

The funeral procession followed him to the scene of the accident.

I'll bet that reassured the people involved in the accident!