Can You Guess What This Is??

Richard and I would see these in every neighborhood and wondered what they were used for.  The shape didn't seem to suggest any practical purpose.  We tried to imagine.....

And, then we understood.  Here are a couple of uses that seem to be quite common.

This is a little different, but I have seen dogs tied to the round shape also.

As of yet, we haven't seen any parents tie their children to this apparatus while they dine at one of the restaurants.


Here is another typical New York money maker.  A parking meter.  One of our favorites.

Generally, we have about twenty dollars worth of quarters in a coin purse in our car.  Each quarter will purchase fifteen minutes of parking. The time limit for parking is either one or two hours, depending on the location.  We feel fortunate when we find a parking place in a two hour limit space.  Actually, we feel fortunate when we find any parking place. We have driven around the block for thirty minutes waiting for a place to become available.  After being in New York, we don't mind paying to park, we feel blessed.  Imagine that!  We haven't kept track of the amount of quarters for parking we have spent while being in New York, but it is quite of few twenties.

We do have a couple of sad experiences with parking receipts.  After you put in your quarters, you press the button for a receipt.  That receipt needs to be place in the front windshield so it is visible for a traffic police officer to see when your time is up.  Our first bad experience was when we first arrived,  After purchasing our parking space, we placed the parking receipt on the front dash only to return to our car to find a ticket. We had placed the ticket upside down.  Cost: $30.  We learned our lesson. The second sad experience was on a windy day.  We placed our receipt on the dash only to learn on our return that it had blown off the dash onto the floor.  Cost: $30.

By the way, when we go to Costco it costs three dollars to park our car. Imagine that.  Today we drove to Manhattan to see a sister in our ward who is in the hospital.  Cost:  twenty-three dollars for a forty-five minute visit. We sure are looking forward to go ol' Arizona, especially Payson.