Every year at this time, Babel salutes the long weekend at the beginning of August with a festival named after an 18th Century British rear-admiral. Kempenfelt Bay is the jewel around which Babel is wrapped. British Rear Admiral James Kempenfelt is hardly well-known in naval circles let alone a name that rolls off the tongues of school children. It seems appropriate that he was famous for the fact he went down with his ship off Spithead, England where his ship, HMS Royal George, was undergoing repairs.
But they added the word ‘fest’ to make it Kempenfest and people come in the many thousands every year. And, worst luck for Babel, they bring many thousands of automobiles with them. The people are good for business; we could do without their automobiles. One supposes though that the problem is not the automobiles as much as the people not knowing what to do with them.
Parking is something of a problem in Babel at any time. Nobody here knows anything about the art of parking. Parallel parking is a foreign country to Babelites. The family car is only a year old but the experiences of trips for groceries and for essentials at the liquor store have left it already banged and nicked and broken to a current estimate of $2000 in minor body work repairs. We have about reached the point of checking the prices of used tanks to try to withstand the abuses. Now we know why the richer Babelites prefer those big ugly Hummers. Park next to one of those monsters and you are lucky if they do not empty their ashtrays on you.
But Kempenfest brings out the worst in all drivers:
“This looks like a good spot Mabel. Grab the kids and let’s go.”
“Harry, you’re in the middle of the road.”
“Yeh, but I can’t get no closer. C’mon.”
Call it creative parking. If they would just build lighter cars, we would find them parked on top of each other. From the vantage point of our aerie, the helter-skelter masses of abandoned cars looks like a movie set for “The Night of the Car-Crazed Zombies.” Retrieving an automobile from the set of this movie would require that everyone leave the keys in the vehicle and you just take the first one you find able to break free from the Gordian Knot. And this is assuming that nobody takes their best car to an event that can get you a year’s worth of dings and dents all in one afternoon on the Lakeshore.
Welcome to Kempenfest. And happy Simcoe Day.
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