UTK, Dick Cheney and parking

Hearing about Dick Cheney's visit to UT Knoxville (link may require registration) has reminded me of another presidential visit to UT. Back in (was it in 1990?) George Bush the elder came for a visit. Tickets were free, all you had to do was take your activity card down to the Student Center and get it punched.

In the run up to the big day Secret Service were prowling all over campus and they weren't very secretive about it. I remember working out at the Bubble and looking up from the stairclimber machine to see two men in dark suits and dark glasses with wires coiling out of their ears surveying the sweating students. It was rumored that the Secret Service had crawled through the sewers running beneath campus as part of their detailed security assessment.

The night before Bush spoke I drove up to the Hill, parked in the Faculty One lot and studied in the Geology building. I then went to the library (the one stocked with books, not the one stocked with beer) and walked home.

The big day.
Maybe I went to class, maybe I didn't. But I met up with friends and we all went to see Daddy George speak at the Alumni Gym, I don’t recall that the president received the same kind of warm reception that Cheney got. Lamar Alexander was there, too. Perhaps it was during his brief ineffectual spell as UTK president.

I can't remember much of what was said but I do remember the sound of Security locking the doors behind us and the curdle of panic in the packed auditorium. Alumni Gym is old and wooden and a fire trap. And we knew that should anything happen they'd get out the Pres and the Republican elite of East Tennessee while our bodies piled up in a terrible crush at the sealed exits. (However, I'm sure there would have been a lovely memorial to us all in Circle Park).

After the speeches we all went down to the Copper Cellar where it was dollar well drinks. I handed over more ones than a groom at a strip club stag night. I think other fine establishments were visited, but which ones they were has been lost in the mists of time and sloughed off brain cells.

I crashed at a friend's dorm room in Morrell and got a lift home the next day. The first thing I noticed was that my car wasn't parked in front of my apartment. I asked my friend to circle the block. No car. We circled a couple of blocks. No sign of it.

Then I suddenly remembered I had left my car up on the Hill - in the faculty lot - and it had been sitting up there all day Friday. Damn, damn, damn - the Parking Nazis* of UTK were sure to have plastered the car with expensive tickets. My friend assured me that I wouldn't behold that sight should we drive up to the Hill, for the car was certain to have been towed already. (If you didn’t go to UT, I don’t know how to explain exactly how evil and ruthlessly efficient parking enforcement was)

I made him drive up there anyway. And there was the car, parked in front of Ayers Hall. How many tickets? – Zero. Not a single ticket. Apparently there’s either a special rule for full parking amnesty during a presidential visit, or the Secret Service didn’t want the Parking Nazis roaming around. I meant to share this before Dick Cheney spoke at UT, so any students might take advantage of this piece of secret wisdom, but I didn’t. Story of my life – (more than one) day late and a dollar short, but overall pretty lucky at parking.

Update: Egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women has some great pics of Cheney's visit - Go Vols! I hope y'all all went down to the Copper Cellar afterwards for a snootful.

*These people are hard. I once saw them ticket a female faculty member’s car who was about 8 and 3/4 months pregnant as she parked in front of the Physics building (1 Lot) five minutes before parking restrictions lifted. She had a permit for the 2 Lot which would have required her to climb many flights of steep stairs.