BEVERLY HILLS—The first 75 feet of Clark Drive, after it crosses Wilshire Boulevard, in Beverly Hills consists of four parking meters; two on either side. Open to the motoring public, the meters operate weekdays and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Traveling north on Clark Drive for another 20 feet, a visitor will encounter atop the usual totem of signs, red warnings that indicate that a permit zone lies ahead, where there is no overnight parking.

 

From a thorough reading of all the signs, a reasonable and diligent person could conclude one thing: it is perfectly safe to occupy a space in the metered strip of Clark Drive between the hours of 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. There is not an iota of posted information to conclude otherwise.

 

When I approached my parked car early Monday morning and saw a white paper patch under my windshield, I couldn’t wiggle out of the feeling of being in the heart of a horribly botched ordinance. Heaven knows I tried. I went back to the location and looked the entrance to the 100 block of Clark Drive up and down, high and low: my eyes avidly sought out a spray-painted sign on the curve, a microscopic legend on the parking meter itself—anything to explain what law I had broken by parking here overnight. Nothing, nada, zilch.

 

Dumbstruck by the undeniable wrongness of it all I am forced to take a stand. I reiterate: nothing would suit me better than to pay off Beverly Hills and aid, in a roundabout way, its splendid parks, its jewel of a library and wash my hands of the matter.

 

But enough’s enough. It’s my time to joyfully shoulder the obligations of citizenship, along with its rights, and contest the overnight parking citation. (By the way, let me interject: if any of you has a wry tale to share about being stung with an overnight parking violation in Beverly Hills, share it with me and writegrady.miller@canyon-news.com). Admittedly, it seems picayune, but this is the threshold: the small intolerable that get brushed over, not confronted because of the rat-race or convenience or the mistaken belief that it’s no serious skin off my nose.

 

Big issue at stake: the nature of law. What can be justly enforced, and a culture where we routinely pay off unjust fees and penalties because we’re in too much of a hurry to respond according to what we know is right in our hearts. Of course, you may think this is making a mountain out of a molehill and echo the words of Cary Grant’s mother in “North by Northwest:”

“Roger. . . Pay the two dollars!”

 

You may be right, for still, I would love to escape the growing sense of responsibility for speaking up against this injustice.

 

In the wee small hours last Friday, wanting to confront the parking official in the hopes of getting an explanation for the ticket that would enable my Presbyterian conscience to pay and move on, I staked out the location on Clark Drive. Two-thirty—the hour when the ticket was issued—glided by with no sign of a parking officer. Listening to a program about self-hypnosis on the radio, I became drowsy. A soothing voice encouraged me to “breathe in prana and breathe out anxiety, muscle tension and the dust of the ego”¦”

 

I know what you’re thinking: that I snapped awake to the tapping of a nightstick on auto glass, after dozing off to the self-hypnosis show, the proud father of a newborn parking violation. No, I managed to keep my eyes open and reach the refuge of City of Los Angeles, shortly after 3 a.m. with a deep and grateful sigh. There my native ability to parse street signs garnered me the right to park all night. I never met the officer who wrote my ticket, but funny thing, after listening to the self-hypnosis show I’ve felt free of the urge to smoke.