The Secret of Locust Lane: A Picture Mystery

When I first moved in and started taking Jin on walks in our neighborhood, I noticed that there were always cars parked along a particular isolated section of street about four blocks away, more than it seemed there should have been. It looked like someone was having a party, but there was no nearby house to play host:

My very first conclusion was that students were parking there to hike the Y. After all, it was the end of the summer, they looked like student cars, and hiking the Y is the thing to do for new freshman and returning students. I figured there just wasn't enough parking in the parking lot up by the trailhead to handle the late-August rush.

But when I actually thought about my conclusion, it didn't make any sense. The Y trailhead has plenty of parking, and the trek from all these parked cars to the trailhead is a good fifteen minutes or so of steep roads that themselves have plenty of unused curbside space for parking. And once classes started, the cars were still there. And when the weather turned and the snow began to fall and the trail became unhikeable, the cars were still there.

A long, long hike to the Y trailhead.

To understand why it seemed so odd to me that all these cars were parked at the side of the road, I'm going to give you a little picture tour of the surrounding area.

Just north of the parked cars is a church building with an ample parking lot. It does not host any student wards, and even on Sundays there are always available parking spaces.

To the east is a big, desolate hillside. Lots of rocks and weeds, and exactly zero picnickers or Ultimate Frisbee players or hikers.

To the west is a horticulture research station. The sign says they study shrubs, but I don't know who "they" are because as far as I can tell, nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out.

And finally, to the south are a couple houses on large lots of land and a little cul-de-sac filled with a dozen expensive homes. The houses on large lots of land have long driveways to park on, and the houses in the cul-de-sac have short driveways but large garages, and neither population look likely to host so many guests every day that the parking would spill out onto the street.

Not only is there nothing of interest in the immediate vicinity, there is nothing of interest within easy walking distance - no restaurants or stores or schools or parks or major or minor apartment complexes. I cannot think of a single reason that even one person, let alone a dozen or more, would want to consistently park their car on this street.

And yet the cars are always, always there.

The cars aren't abandoned. They move and change, and sometimes get parking tickets. I even occasionally see people get into cars and drive away (though I've never seen anyone drive up and park). Twice on morning walks with Jin I saw an SUV drive up and let out a guy dressed in basketball shorts next to one of the parked vehicles. The other vehicle owners I've seen have all seemed to appear out of nowhere, so I assume they've walked, but I don't know from where. And they are always wearing workout clothes. Really. Today, after I'd written about the workout clothes, I went to snap my pictures and this guy in gym pants and a sweatshirt came jogging around the corner and up the street and jumped into one of the cars and zoomed away. Which means now I have photographic evidence of my assertion:

If you walk down a block or two into the residential neighborhood, you'll find that the streets are lined with dozens upon dozens of "No Overnight Parking" signs. It partially explains why that particular stretch of road is a parked-car magnet (apparently there's nowhere else nearby that they can park overnight). But I'm not satisfied. It still doesn't establish a motive for parking overnight in the first place. And apparently not only do people park overnight in spite of a lack of obvious motive, but there's such a problem of motiveless overnight parkers in the neighborhood that the city has invested in signs and laws to prevent them from doing it.

On Saturday as Jin and I were walking past the parked cars, a girl appeared and started unlocking one of the car doors just as we were passing. This is my chance! I thought. All I had to do was catch her attention before she got in her car ask why all the cars were parked on the street. Surely, as a street-parker herself, she would know. I didn't feel embarrassed or self-conscious about doing this. She looked friendly, and I had good reasons for asking.

But at the very last second, I realized that I didn't really want to know. While I can't conceive of a reasonable explanation for the persistent existence of cars parked at the side of this isolated stretch of road, I'm pretty sure there's some boring, logical explanation that I just haven't thought of. And once I figure out the boring, logical explanation, it won't be fun anymore. I'd much rather imagine underground tunnels below the grassy hillside, or mysterious goings-on at the shrub science research station, or a city council initiative whereby students with too many parking citations are no longer allowed to park anywhere but this one isolated stretch of road.

So I exchanged friendly smiles with the girl getting into the car and chose to keep the mystery alive. If you can think of a good reason for the cars to be parked here, I'd love to hear it - but only if your reason is interesting and improbable. After eight months of guesswork, mundane and entirely plausible solutions no longer interest me.


(On a sort-of-related note, remember that post I wrote yesterday about the movie I was afraid I'd built up too much? I watched it last night with Melanie G., and was pleased to find that I still really, really, really liked it. A lot. Melanie liked it too, which was extra validation for my 6-7 year quest. I recommend it if you happen to stumble across it. Which you won't because there seem to be, like, three copies in the entire United States.)