I’ve mentioned my city’s farmer’s market before – it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I go for the ambiance, a plate of pad Thai, and a bag of kettle corn. I watch the people, children, and dogs. I contemplate the dragon fruit, but I never buy any. Once in a while, I get a jar of orange blossom honey or a giant buttery croissant.
Not too long ago, I found the market filled with all the beautiful things on a gorgeous Saturday. The air was chilly, the sky was blue, and there were a few fat and fluffy clouds overhead.
I was thinking it couldn’t get any better when I saw something strange in the aisle between two produce booths. I actually gasped. It was a two-door Honda Accord.
The market is set up in a portion of the parking lot of a city complex that includes a park, pickle ball and tennis courts, amphitheater, and more. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, they pop up the retractable bollards and move in vendors. On this particular day, a single car sat right in the middle of all of it, guilty, but unaware; abandoned, but not alone; surrounded by the teeming, chewing, chatting crowd of market shoppers.
I imagined the market’s organizers arriving early to set up, and finding a car in the middle of the venue. Did they scramble around trying to locate the owner? Call the police? Call a towing service? They must have given up eventually, because when I encountered the vehicle, it was simply flanked by two tall orange traffic cones. I watched for a few minutes and nobody seemed fazed.
I imagined the car’s owner hoping to retrieve it and finding it could not be moved until after 1 pm, when all the booths were disassembled and the patrons had gone home with their flowers and squash, artisan bread, and persimmons.
I had a good laugh (in my head – because I don’t want to look unhinged like one or two people I see hanging around the market regularly) and took a few pictures. Partly because I work for Parking Today, and partly because I find harmless incongruity amusing, this scenario really made my day. I’d like to find the car’s owner to thank them for the entertainment. I might also suggest they avoid this type of vehicular mismanagement in the future.
