Let us talk about boots, and I am not talk about shoes made from alligator tails.

I am talking about the boots that law enforcement put on cars when you fail to pay parking tickets and are again busted illegally parking at a meter with NO TIME left.

The official name is a wheel clamp but they are commonly known as Denver boots and wheel boots. It is a device that is designed, rather well I might add, to prevent vehicles from moving. Anyway, if you happen to be illegally parked and they put one on, you can not ignore the parking tickets any longer. This is obviously a less expensive way for a municipality to control miscreants than having to pay tow trucks to drag the offending cars away to an impound yard. An impound yard that must be monitored and kept up so vandals do not destroy the property stored there.

These boots are referred to as Denver boots because that is where Frank Marugg was living when he invented the gadget in 1944 and where he still lived in 1958 when he received a US patent for the thing. Old Frank was a pattern maker and a violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra when Dan Stills, a police officer, thought an immobilizer would avoid the expensive towing problem and approached Marugg. Frank was well known and well liked amongst the Denver politicians and police department officials so he seemed a logical choice to design an immobilizer. The police department needed a solution to a growing parking enforcement problem. The city used to tow all ticketed cars to the pound, where they were often vandalized. Those who were ticketed sued the city for the damage and the police had to itemize everything in the cars. It seemed some sort of auto immobilizer would answer all these problems. Legend has it that on a placemat found in Gunther Tootie's circa 1960, gives credit of the name “Denver Boot” to Stills, who indicated that it would do for cars what the Oregon Boot did for prisoners. The Oregon Boot, obviously, was the metal ankle-brace worn by convicts.

The Denver police first used the wheel-boot on January 5, 1955 and collected over $18,000 in its first month of use. 18 grand in 1955, holy cow that is what I would call a successful product deployment. Those initial boots had their problems though, primarily it took three men and a boy to install and remove them because they were cast in steel. Old Frank soon realized that he needed to be casting them from the much lighter aluminum. He created a cottage industry, he was soon selling the gadgets to parking lot owners, hotels and ski resorts and even created a Jumbo version for farm equipment and larger vehicles. The funniest factoid I found was that the Smithsonian Institution has a copy of old Frank’s boot on display in Washington, D.C. How funny is that?

Wheel-clamping is notoriously unpopular with illegal parkers in the same way that traffic wardens are. However, whereas a traffic warden or police officer has jurisdiction only over public roads, in many countries, the law allows landowners to wheel clamp vehicles parking on their property without permission. Wow, how cool would that be to do to someone, it would be like a personal version of the show Punked. I remember an episode of Seinfeld in which a friend of Kramer’s carried a boot in the trunk of his car. He would install it when he parked in an attempt to dissuade the law from installing their boot. Kind of funny really and if you watched the animated film Cars you would have seen them using the Denver boot as handcuffs. The Denver boot has made it to the cartoons – you know you have arrived when that happens.

The funniest part for me is the reaction of the people whose car is booted. There are those who immediately think “shit” I forgot to pay that damn ticket. Those folks, although pissed, remain pretty calm and take care of the parking tickets and booting fees. Then there are others, the ones who are out of control pissed off that they have been inconvenienced by having to deal with the problem. A problem, had it been taken care of at the time of the first offense would have never risen to the level of being a problem in the first place. Those are the people I want to talk about, why – because they are fun to watch deal with this problem and then even more fun to listen to them try to explain their innocence.

All of this talk about Denver boots got started because a friend of mine got her car booted recently while she was with friends at lunch. For me the fun started with seeing a faceBook status update, “sometimes when you think you are headed in the right direction, your car bets booted.” Well obviously I laughed right out loud at that, along with probably everyone else who read it. And why would we not, it is a funny thing to post as a status update and more importantly the fact that she got booted was funny in and of itself. I of course posted the comment “how many tickets must you have before getting booted? Or what are the circumstances that brings the boot out? Sorry but I am just wondering” I mean why would I not say that right? There were others who commented as well but I thought mine summed it up best, I am biased so we have that as well.

So then the next day at work I see her heading towards my office, I could not help myself – I started laughing and it was out loud. I knew that the explanation would be even funnier than the post, and I thought her Facebook post was plenty funny. She goes on to tell me about having lunch and then coming out to find the boot and then once in her car she noticed the paper on her window telling her she was booted. She later told the glue on the note they stuck on her window was VERY sticky and VERY hard to get off and how she would be forced to purchase some goo gone. Again, to me even that explanation was amusing – she was so animated telling the story. So I hear about the 6 block walk across downtown to the tax collectors office to pay the fine. Oh Yes the fine – $232 bucks she tells me. I immediately knew my friend had more than one or two infractions, to get booted and to have a fine of that proportion you have problems with the law. The last parking ticket I got was like 10 bucks. So with the knowledge that my friend was a habitual law breaker the story got even funnier as she is tell it to me. I am laughing even as I type this :)

So after the walk and waiting in line she gets to the counter and I can only imagine how mad she was and then she tells me that the clerk explained to her it was not her fault (meaning the clerk) so I assume my friend was wound up in a flurry of righteous indignation. Well the next part of the story takes her upstairs to the second floor and to investigate the why, three tickets that had been ignored by my friend. It was clear to me now that she held the law in very low regard. She went on to explain to me that if you wait a certain period of time before paying the tickets the prices automatically go up, and then up some more and then eventually, up even more. Until those three $10 tickets wind up costing a person about… oh I don’t know ----- $232 bucks – I am still laughing by the way. She also explained that if you mail the check and before it gets to the office and gets entered into the system you cross one of the price increase dates they will not take your check and contribute to your total. They send the whole check back, not giving you a chance to only get maybe…… say half a boot.

So she also tells of the second ticket and how she thought that one was never really entered. She tells me that the meter was broken, she claims she took a picture with her cellular device but could not produce the picture. Purged, just last month when she was cleaning items from her phone, so she says. So anyway, allegedly, she lodged a complaint with them about the broken meter, she was supposed to follow up a week later with them but – big surprise here – she did not. Well that little miscommunication and misunderstanding ended up not getting that ticket erased from the system and her absolved of the crime. I assume that this miscommunication and misunderstanding was obviously 100% the city’s fault, she did not say that outright but I was able to come to that conclusion pretty easily. What it did do, allegedly, is get them to erase any information about her initial complaint thereby eliminating her ability to pursue the issue any further, screwed I believe is the word she used.

The next big issue was they do not take checks, I agree with her here - that is stupid. Who in this day and age carries around $232 bucks with them. I am guessing that there was a sharp rise in blood pressure that was about to literally pop the top of her head off until she found they would take a debit card – disaster averted. So after she straightened out the consequences of her lawless ways she is back to walking back across town to her car, I would think for a $232 fine the very least the city could do is give you a lift back to your car. The boot removal team is working on her car as she arrives, she diverts into the building to wait until they are done and gone. She explains that was so she did not lose her temper at the poor guy taking the boot off, I would have done the same thing but it would have been out of embarrassment. It was fun to listen to the story and I have not done it justice here at all. I do have say that she gets some credit for accepting responsibility.  She recognized it was her fault but see elements of STUPIDITY on the part of the city of Jacksonville.  For those who know my friend you know what I am talking about, feel free to post you thoughts in the comments field below.

So I tell you this my friends, pay your parking tickets when they are 10 bucks and do not wait until you get booted and it costs $232 bucks.