While living at two different places in Melbourne Beach, Florida, my Mom encountered issues trying to get out of the garage. You would think it would be easy. Just open the garage door and back out.
Ah, sounds easy enough. But what if it wasn’t?
These three distinct stories took place in the early to late 1980s.
Apartment
The first place we lived was an apartment on the main road named Atlantic Street and A1A. The garages were located inset into the building down below the three upstairs apartments on the street to the north. It was called Surf Road.
Melbourne Beach and the cities along the east coast in Brevard County are known for surfing. We have a lot of surfers that have gone into the pro leagues. One of the most famous is Kelly Slater from Cocoa Beach.
There were eight garages. Inside there was room for you to store stuff on wooden shelves in the front of the garage. The doors themselves were made of metal and dark brown in color. Each space had a lot of room because not all of the garages had the wooden shelves. It wasn’t very private as anyone could go over there and get your stuff. I don’t remember that we had the shelves and we would never leave any stuff out there that anyone could just grab.
One morning my Mom came out to find a car parked behind our garage. The garage doors were operated by you having to lift the door up and open it. Once she got in the car, she slowly backed up and placed her back bumper on the front bumper of the car blocking her. Somehow she was able to push the car back and into the road. The main photo above is where the car landed. She placed a note on the car telling them how their car got in the road. That night when she got home, she parked in the garage. The next morning she found a note on her car from that person, saying that someone was parked in front of their garage. That is why they were parking in front of ours. Well, that wasn’t our fault. They should have parked in the open parking in front of the apartment.
Another morning, she encountered the same thing. This vehicle was bigger and she couldn’t push it out. In a very difficult task, she was able to maneuver the car inside the garage and come out the door next to our garage. How she did it, I’ll never know.
Townhouse
The second place we lived was a townhouse a few miles south of the last place. It was a few years later that this happened. She came out and noticed that someone was parked behind our garage. She needed to get to work, so she tried the same thing as the other place. She told me the car was sitting in the road when she left.
No one ever parked in front of our garage again.
Conclusion
So the moral of this story is to NOT park in front of anyone’s garage because you may find it in the roadway. And then you’re going to have some explaining to do.
Until next time, happy reading!
-Matt
My goodness! I’ve never thought of that approach! I probably would have just put my hand on the horn until the owner came out to move it!!! I’d have assumed everyone would put their handbrake on when parking but luckily for your Mum I now know that that statistic is that only one in three use their handbrake when parking. If there’s a visitor car spot then that makes sense to use that. Unless it was all full at the time too. Hmmm…. So many thoughts. Grin. Thanks Matthew. All the best.
That's so crazy, to park in front of someone else's garage because someone had parked in front of theirs!!!! Well done to your mom!!!!!