that is true at some spaces in Alabama also.
Gwen

We have those here, too.  But I've often seen people zip up in teeny cars or
motorcycles and fill those "landing zones."  Dad tires pretty easily and the
last thing I'd want for him to do is to have to wait in a hot shopping mall
parking lot until some bonehead came out and moved their car.  Every once in
a while Dad gets pretty feisty and I would hate for him to get involved in
any kind of confrontation with a handicapped space-squatting squid brain.

I think Gwen pointed me in the right direction.  I'll get both the rear
crane-type hoist and the power sider door and electric ramp.  That way
there's redundancy as well as insurance against being "parked in" by an
inconsiderate idiot.

--
Bobby G.

That is true in Mass as well and people are constantly
parking in the stripped line section. I once countered
someone who did that with 'its for the handicap' and
their answer was that it was not marked. Well, that is
true and I couldn't answer that so said nothing. Wasn't
going to explain to an idiot that a wheelchair car
needed the space. sigh
Duckie

bobby

i know it's probably not what you want, but would you be interested in a bruno
trunk lift - for free????
301-495-0277

paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks so much for the Bruno trunk lift. I brought it over to Dad’s house
last night. I’ve been giving him printouts of various screenshots of the
many models of lifts and things and immediately wanted to see the "business
end" with the lifting motor. I said, "Dad, it’s a little too heavy for you."
(The truth be known, the motor head was a little too heavy even for me!) He
said "nonsense, let me see!"

I can’t remember him being so insistent about something for a long time. So
I placed it in his lap and he sat there, running his hands back and forth
over the black enamel arm and the shiny motor case as if it were Excalibur
pulled from the stone. He asked me where I got it. I said it was a generous
gift from Paul Holland, the Internet guy. "The who?" (I’ll bet he thought I
was saying Paul Holland was the ONE guy who ran the *entire* Internet!) So I
told him that Paul was the man who had answered all the scooter questions we
had in the beginning and told us where to find batteries at a good price.

He went back to studiously examining the lift arm again, clearly matching up
all the pictures and diagrams he had seen with the reality of the carefully
engineered metal contraption that was now in his hands. He pointed out how
well-made it was, how the steel was as thick as battleship armor plating and
the welds were thick, strong and precisely laid down. Then he asked how much
it cost. I said "It didn’t cost anything. I told you; it was a gift. Paul
Holland gave it to uyou for free!" He looked up at me again and said, with
one eyebrow raised the way he does when he’s trying to figure something out.
"The Internet?"

(Dad’s too old to have really gotten the concept of the Internet. I think
for him the net has always been some foggy other-worldly sort of
neighborhood just six blocks west and a few more blocks south. Sort of like
NYC’s "The Village" or the Atlanta Underground. He vaguely knew of these
places, but I think he felt that wherever it was, it was always, in some
way, out of HIS reach.) I started to explain who you all were, and how
supportive everyone is of each other in this group. I could tell I was
losing him when I told him what a tireless spambuster and quack debunker
Paul was. So I went back to the lift and told him you said it needed a
little work; the fuselink was gone and it might need a little polishing here
and there.

By this time he was cradling it like a Stradivarius in need of a little
waxing and some serious TLC. He didn’t look up as he said, again, and more
questioningly, "the Internet?" again. "Well, Dad," I said, "it didn’t just
pop out of thin air, it’s Paul Holland’s generosity that got it here. He
runs the Wheelchair Society.

As I watched his stiff fingers move up and down the motor arm I couldn’t
help but think about what a tough life he had; much tougher than mine or my
friends. His father died when he was 10 and the family was evicted soon
after in the middle of the Depression because they couldn’t make the looming
balloon mortgage payment on the house. He wanted to play the saxophone but
he started work when he was twelve and worked every day, sometimes at two
jobs a day, and managed to get two master’s degrees in spite of that by the
time my sister and I were born.

Just recently he’s lost his prized pussycat who was his tireless companion,
and he’s lost his older brother. But he’s been married to the same woman for
60 years and supported our family through two near fatal heart attacks and
so many of our crises I’ve lost count. Mom’s cooked a special diet for him
for nearly 40 years now.

Though he never says it, I know what he feels when he sees people eating the
kind of foods that he used to love. Foods that are "kryptonite" to him now
with both diabetes and a serious heart condition. And I know how much mean
old Mr. Arthur Rightis bothers him, though mostly by what he doesn’t, rather
than does, say. I don’t know what, but I couldn’t help thinking of my
earliest memories of Dad. Running to the front door at precisely 5:30PM with
my sister right beside me, jumping up and down and squealing "Daddy’s
home!!! Daddy’s HOME!!!"

No matter how hard the workday was, no matter how tired he was, he would
always take the time to pull something magical for both of us out of his
"beefcase" (I was too young to pronounce "R" in "briefcase" very well!). It
always made me feel that wherever he was during the day, he was always
thinking of us. Dad also felt he had to be strong for all of us, and outside
of his mother’s and brother’s funerals, I don’t think I had ever seen him
cry.

He asked me again, just to be sure I guess, "Your friend Paul gave this to
me?" with his brow furrowed as if it didn’t compute. I guess he’s been
beaten down so long it was hard for him to believe in human kindness
anymore. That’s when I saw a big, fat tear roll out of his eye, making a
bull's-eye on the letter "B" in the word "Bruno" on the lift arm. I started
to choke up, too, because *he* was so moved.

He saw that I saw the tear and he tried to casually wipe it away with his
hands as if it were a speck of dust, well, because he was the "The Daddy"
and Daddies don’t cry in front of their children. It was then I realized
something profound: the father I grew up with, the man who could fix
anything, the man who wasn’t afraid of any challenge, was back. And I
realized just how very long he had been gone.

They say that there are single, compelling acts of humanity that can change
the course of lives, if not the course of history. Well, Paul, this was one
such act and in one stroke you reached out and pulled Dad back from whatever
dark place the world had driven him into. It’s way past my bedtime and I am
getting a little farklempt again, so I will thank you once again for your
generosity and the way it touched my Dad’s spirit with two of my favorite
quotes:

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
-- Winston Churchill:

"Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but
very few a generous thing"
-- Alexander Pope

Daddy’s finally come home again. Thanks, Paul, for helping him find his way
back with your generous spirit.

Bobby G.