Dan's Papers - April 18, 2008

So here is the grand finale of my impounded Tahoe story. But first, here is the story thus far. I park my 2007 Chevy Tahoe in front of Citarella in downtown East Hampton on the last Saturday in March. I come out with shopping bags and three police cars with five officers are there and they tell me my Tahoe is going to be impounded. And it is. It's towed off. That's the first part.

The second part, which is the boring part, is about all the rides, taxis, buses, jitneys and hitchhikes I went on during the next 13 days as my Tahoe waited in the East Hampton impound lot while my insurance people tried to sort out mixed up paperwork from a year and a half ago. Also, almost everybody I met told me someone they knew had a similar car insurance nightmare. They could empathize.

Indeed, the seizure of this car borders on the fantastic. The Tahoe had not been the problem. The seizure was because of a 13-day lapse that occurred in my insurance coverage nearly two years ago on a 2005 Land Rover that I owned BEFORE I bought the Tahoe.

It's because the insurance follows the plates. And the moral of the story is that if you ever get a new car and the dealer asks, "Do you want to use your old plates?" - just say NO!

Everybody try it. NO! One never knows, as I discovered, that old plates might sometimes bring with them secret diseases.

And the other moral of the story is never, never go to downtown East Hampton Village if you are driving a car with transferred plates. The Village Police now own a license plate zapper that links up to Albany instantaneously. When Albany zaps back, bingo. Your car is gone. Even if there was a paperwork error for 13 days a long time ago, which, in this case, there was. The zapper, like a vacuum cleaner, is removing about one out of every five cars on the streets in that town as we speak. Nobody's perfect. And the zapper knows. It's a great success.

Before I get to the final act, I should like to report that I owe a great deal to the Enterprise Rent-a-Car people, to my delivery truck manager Tom, to my fiancée Chris, to the Hampton Jitney, and to everyone else who was kind to me during this period.

And it was just amazing to me how often I passed hapless motorists along the side of the road here in East Hampton, pinned in by three police cars giving the same routine that I got. The zapper is a big money maker. East Hampton is the only Village in the area that's got one and they are on a tear, not only to pile up the money, but to single handedly get a very large percentage of all the cars in the community into the impound area and thus solve all the traffic and parking problems in the town. Somebody's got to do it.

So here's the final act.

Thirteen awful days later, I went to Riverhead Department of Motor Vehicles at 3 p.m. on Friday with the appropriate documents. Three dollars and about half an hour later, I walked out with a new registration and a new sticker for the windshield.

Thirty miles later, a friend dropped me off at the East Hampton Village police station, which is part of the emergency services building on Cedar Street.

The lobby there is not a citizen friendly place. There is no place to sit down. You enter a narrow shiny walled room with a 12-foot ceiling, where high up on one wall there is what appears to be a sliding glass mirror.

"Hello?" you shout. The voice echoes.

The glass mirror, which you now realize is one-way glass, slides open. And a woman officer peers down. She's up there. You're down here.

I stated my case. I told her that I wanted to get my car out of the impound area, and had been told by the lady in Riverhead who gave me the proper documents to come there, present them, and then be taken by an officer in a police car to the impound area, which is about two miles away, where I would be given my car.

She said, "One minute," and slid the slider closed.

A few minutes went by. I paced. It's uncomfortable knowing you are being watched from on high. I paced some more.

Finally, Officer Erickson came out a door next to the window and walked the seven steps down to where I was.

I would need to show him, he said, my driver's license, my new registration, the green form showing I had paid my fine in Riverhead and the receipt from Balcuns Gas Station showing that when Jigger from Balcuns had towed my parked car away from in front of Citarella 13 days ago, I had paid him the $150.

"And then there is the impound fee," he said. "It's also $150, and with tax, it's exactly $162.93. And it has to be in cash and you have to have the exact change."

I told him I had heard of that and had the money, and I checked my wallet and told him I had lots of twenties and a ten and a five. I had everything else except the receipt for the towing. And I had also not been given any green form in Riverhead. Just the new registration.

"You need a green form that shows how much fine you paid."

"There was no fine. The lapse was rescinded."

"Then I need a green form showing that."

We stared at each other for a while. I repeated there was no form and there was no fine. And he decided to give way. But he had another card to play.

"I can't do anything without the towing receipt," the officer said. "You have to get that."

I suggested that since to get to the impound area from the police station you have to pass Balcuns, that we proceed as if we had it and we stop off there and I'd run in and get it. I also told him I had been dropped off and was on foot.

He told me to walk there.

And so I did. Round trip is about half a mile. As a half-mile walk might take 20 minutes, I decided to pick up the pace and do it in ten. I also took the heavy shoulder bag with all my stuff in it. I thought it might be a good thing for me to do this brisk walk with the heavy bag. Also I thought I really didn't want to leave the bag in the station because it might get stolen.

On the way there and back, I had some adventures. First of all, walking along hefting this bag, it occurred to me I had just made a decision not to leave a shoulder bag in a police station. It's the POLICE station. I am so ridiculous.

At the light where Cedar meets North Main, I was hailed by a friend in a car that was stopped at the light.

"Hey Dan!" he shouted.

I waved, smiled and marched on.

This is a terrible corner to have to negotiate on foot, even with the traffic light. I almost got hit by a car both going and coming back. Coming back, I was actually in the crosswalk going across the street when a Prius menaced me. Move, buddy, we're comin' through, it said. I stopped and glared at the driver and pointed to the white crosshatch I was standing in. And he decided not to run me over. So I stared at him and made various victorious postures at him.

I wondered why I had challenged him like that. I decided that it was because I was so pissed I would have felt a great sense of satisfaction if I had been run over. That's the mood I was in.

The police station is in the same building as the fire trucks. At the corner where you cross Cedar Street on foot heading south, there is a crosswalk and a pedestrian button, but there is no pedestrian button going eastbound, although there is a crosswalk. My theory is that if you pressed a button to cross to the west at the same time the four giant fire trucks came roaring and clanging out of the firehouse, the computer that controls the pedestrian button would explode. But maybe I'm wrong.

Balcuns Gas Station was an interesting experience. They are usually very nice to me. This time I walked into the office to find three people, one of whom I knew, motionlessly staring at a TV directly over the door where you come in. They continued looking up there. There was no nod, no hello. Apparently it was the interesting part. Finally I told them I was there to pay the $150 towing fee.

One of the three people was a woman sitting on an old upholstered chair with a cat on her lap. She patted the cat. And she spoke very slowly.

"It's one hundred and sixty-two dollars and ninety-three cents," she said, pronouncing every word very carefully. "How do you want to pay it? And what kind of car was it?"

I told her cash and a Tahoe. She motioned to a young man, who had also been looking up at the TV, to get the file for her and then handle the transaction. The interesting part was still going on when we had finished. I walked back.

Back at the police lobby, the woman slid the one-way glass open and told me to wait a moment, and so I did. As she told me that, a lovely woman with a flower in her hair entered the lobby and greeted me warmly. It was Lee Lawler, the Spanish teacher at the middle school who taught two of my four kids.

"Say hello to David for me," she said. Then she told the woman who was still up there next to the slider that she'd lost her cell phone and just on the odd chance it had been brought in to the police station she thought she'd come by to ask. The woman said she'd send an officer out and she could fill out a police report.

And then Officer Erickson appeared with some paperwork. I showed him the towing receipt. And he told me he'd give me a receipt for the $165 impound fee if I peeled off the twenties and the five.

I wasn't quite sure if he thought he was doing me a favor by charging me $165 instead of $162.93. He had said it had to be the exact amount.

"Suppose I gave you $180?" I asked him. It was a test. "Would you tell me I couldn't get the car or would you keep the extra?"

"I think we'd give you your car. But since you knew it had to be exact, I guess we'd keep the difference. We just don't have a cashbox or a register here."

"Sort of as a donation."

Officer Erickson took my money and went over the receipts, told me an officer in a police car would be coming around front and when I saw him get in and he'd take me to the impound.

This only took a minute or two. The car pulled up. There was a big black leather zipper bag on the passenger seat, so I got in the back where the prisoners go. A cage separated the back from the front. And I noticed the door locks had been removed. Most interesting was that there was no upholstered rear seat, just a molded plastic bench. Also there was a panel under the bottom of the front seat so you couldn't put your shoes underneath it.

This officer was Steve Shades who also asked to be remembered to David because he went to school with him.

"I'm really not a danger of going wild back here," I told him.

"It's something new we're trying. Some people, when we're taking them in, they shove things into the upholstery of the seat back there. So we have to search every time. With this we don't have to."

I was sitting sideways and banging around with every bump. I told him I didn't think this would catch on with cars for the general public. He was very polite.

When we got to the impound area - and I could see my beautiful white Tahoe still in there! - he walked around the car to let me out. But of course he did. I was locked in.

I hugged my car. You're such a good car. I'm just so happy now. And I slowly drove home, the officer following me for a bit as I went on my way.