When Parking Wasn’t About Cars
Before smartphones, GPS, and reclining seats, teenagers had a Camaro, an 8-track, and a quiet country road. If you ask people my age about parking, they are likely to respond, “What kind? Parallel? Angle? Backing in? Perhaps they will talk about some neer- do-well who pulled in a spot crooked, making them feel like a human tube of toothpaste as they tried to squeeze out of their car. However, some of us have forgotten about another kind of parking. The type of parking that was not an adjective, but more like a noun. The kind you did in a car, not with a car. It was the kind of parking we did as high school kids on a Friday or Saturday night. The kind of parking we used to do between the end of the movie and taking your date home. The kind that would elicit a question from your friends like,“Hey, did ya’ll go parking last night?” Parking was an integral part of the dating ritual during my high school years. It involved finding an out-of-the-way road, pulling ove...