Dibs

 

After the blizzard of January 1967, people of Chicago had to dig their giant American cars out of the snow. It was back breaking work and when you finally got your four door Oldsmobile out of the snowdrift, you needed to save that parking spot. That was the beginning of what they called 'dibs' in Chicago. What you did was put a couple of Mom's kitchen chairs in the parking spot to save it. This custom grew rapidly. You could drive up and down streets in Chicago and see all sorts of crap sitting out at the curb. Just when you thought you had found an open space to park, you would see that somebody had claimed dibs on that spot with a pile of broken children's toys or Grandma's old rocking chair. Unfortunately some people abused this custom and started claiming dibs with only two inches of snow on the ground. So the city has tried to put an end to it. Three days after any storm, the city comes around and picks up all the crap people have put out there. Luckily, I don't have to worry about digging my car out of the snow on the street. I don't park at the curb. I have a garage in the alley. Sadly, that does not help me at all because nobody plows the snow out of the alley. I cleared a four foot apron in front of the garage, but beyond that is over a foot of snow that my car cannot negotiate. I will have to wait for it to melt, or for the garbage truck to come through and smoosh it down. Oh, and my neighbor across the alley dug all the snow out from in front of his garage. He dumped it in the middle of the alley, so now there's a three foot high barrier between our garages and the exit to the street. It was quite entertaining watching him get stuck in his four wheel drive Range Rover.