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A lot of people seem to be possessive about the street parking space in front of their houses and don’t want their neighbors parking there. I don’t understand this at all, but there are rules that need to be followed, like no blocking driveways, mailboxes or fire hydrants.
In this story, one person’s neighbor blocks both their driveway and a fire hydrant. They ignore the situation for awhile, but eventually, they decide to teach the neighbor an expensive lesson.
Let’s see how the story plays out.
Park in front of a fire hydrant and block my driveway? I’ll ruin your party.
As the title should make obvious, I’ve got a fire hydrant in front of my house.
My street has plenty of places to park, being a residential neighborhood, and you’d never have to park more than a couple houses away from wherever you’re trying to get to.
Of course, this is still a problem if you’re anything like the guy who lives across the street.
He is breaking the law.
Whenever his driveway is full (you can normally fit 2-3 cars per driveway in my neighborhood), his solution is to just park his Chevy Silverado right outside my house.
Either he doesn’t realize it’s illegal to park in front of a fire hydrant, or he doesn’t care.
Either way, I live in Central Texas, and we’re not an area of the world where you want to mess around with when it comes to fire safety (look up 2011 Central Texas wildfires if you don’t believe me).
On top of that, since his truck is longer than the curb space he parks next to, the end of his truck sticks a couple feet into my driveway, making pulling into my driveway fairly difficult.
For awhile, garbage kept the neighbor’s truck away.
I should also add, this is the space where I put my garbage and recycling cans, so on garbage day, I’d have nowhere near my curb I can drag my cans to unless I boxed his truck in (which I did without a second thought).
To combat him parking there, I started keeping my garbage can out at the curb at all times.
I figure if there is a fire on my street, it’ll be easier for the fire department to move my garbage can a foot out of the way than his entire truck.
This all worked as intended until Saturday night, when I looked out my front window and saw his truck parked there, with my garbage can moved on to the sidewalk.
It was perfect timing to ruin the neighbor’s fun.
Clearly this wasn’t a case of not noticing the fire hydrant, since he had to have seen it when he put my garbage can right next to it to make room for him to park. He just decided his convenience was more important than the fire department’s.
I left to go pick up a pizza for dinner and nearly took out my own mailbox trying to avoid the back of his truck.
I decided it was the last straw, so when I got home I took some photos of his car and took down the license plate just in case I’d need evidence. I also noticed a bunch of cars parked on the street, and a guy walking to parking jerk’s house with a case of beer.
They had a party going on. Time to spoil it.
The police were quick to respond.
I called 311 (City Services) and asked how I might address the situation, knowing they’d likely connect me to the non-emergency police department line. They did, and I gave them the necessary information as well as a condensed version of what I’ve written so far.
They said they’d send an officer out.
It must have been a slow night because I had a cop at my door within 20 minutes looking for the owner of the truck (the dispatcher mistakenly thought I was the owner, not the caller).
I pointed to the house of the offending driver, and watched as he knocked on the door, brought the guy out, and showed him the two parking violations he was citing him for, wrote him a ticket, and (I assume) told him to move his car before driving off. Victory.
But that’s far from the end of it!
It got better though.
The guy went to start his car, and it wouldn’t start.
He had a few of his friends out helping him now, and they got a set of jumper cables. They pulled up another truck, hooked up the cables, and still nothing. They spent the next half hour looking at the engine as I sat inside enjoying my pizza, and they still couldn’t get it going.
I checked back every few minutes and eventually saw them just standing around, having given up on getting the car started. It turned out they were waiting for a tow truck to come, since the car decided right then and there it didn’t want to live anymore.
It did not end well for the neighbor.
The tow truck eventually came and towed the truck away, all probably an hour after the police cited him for the violations.
So on top of the ticket, he had to pay for a tow, and had to go back to his party knowing he’d have to get his truck fixed.
I woke up yesterday morning, took the empty pizza box down to the trash can, and set it back in front of the curb, knowing he learned his lesson the hard way.
Who needs TV when you can watch your neighbor deal with drama!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
It would’ve been even worse for the truck driver if there had been a fire.
It was basically pro revenge.
This man found the story very satisfying.
Here’s how another person handled people parking on his lawn.
It went from bad to worse for that neighbor.
If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.