My wife’s car was towed and held hostage. Did I overreact?

s5670 via Flickr/Creative Commons

s5670 via Flickr/Creative Commons

Maybe I overreacted. Perhaps I’ve turned into a grumpy old man at the tender age of 44. But what would you have done in my situation? Here’s what happened…

It was close to midnight on Friday, Aug. 7, and I was in bed, reading a book, when my fiancée, Sarah, called. She’d taken down a First Friday art exhibit at the Masonic Temple in Portland, where she’s employed as the artistic director, and then discovered her car was missing from the parking lot behind the building. After the panic typical of such situations subsided, she’d determined that the car had been hauled away by Tardiff’s Towing, even though it was parked in one of two spots in the lot reserved for temple employees.

Her conversation with the dispatcher at Tardiff’s had not been productive, to put it mildly, and they were no longer answering her calls. Enter yours truly.

I got the dispatcher on the line and calmly informed him that his company had towed Sarah’s car in error. I politely requested that the vehicle be returned immediately to the place from which it had been illegally removed. The dispatcher told me that was not possible. There was no one in the office with the authority to return the car, he said, which had been towed at the request of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church, which also has parking spots in that lot.

To get the car back that night, we would have to pay Tardiff’s $110 cash; to retrieve it the next morning, $85 cash. If the car was towed in error, the dispatcher said, they would refund our money.

So, yeah, that was me, at 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning, pounding on the empty church’s big red door. I was tired and angry, having made three trips between Arundel and Portland to pick Sarah up, bring her home, and then bring her back to town by 8 a.m. for a family-related errand. And yeah, though I didn’t yell, I had raised my voice a minute later on the phone when the secretary in the church office first denied that they requested the tow and then said I’d have to wait till Monday to speak with someone with the authority to handle this matter, before she hung up.

Hours later, I was at the impound lot on Warren Avenue, handing a wrecker driver $85 cash. On Monday, I sent the first e-mail to every contact at the church I could find, and cc’d Portland City Manager Jon Jennings and John Peverada, who heads Portland’s parking division.

The city’s response to this incident was prompt and professional. Peverada confirmed that the car should not have been removed from that spot and offered further assistance if necessary. The tow company’s response was slow and utterly unprofessional. They basically blew me off. The church again denied responsibility and suggested it wasn’t worth my time to get my money back. I’ll leave it to God (or whatever Unitarians worship) to judge them.

Long story short, weeks passed and, after the cops got involved, Tardiff’s agreed to refund my money and will no longer be towing any vehicles from that lot, which is actually city property.

This incident prompted some soul searching. Did I really need to get the city manager and the police chief involved? Did I need to threaten to sue Tardiff’s and the church for $85, plus hundreds more for my time and aggravation? What would my parents have done?

My mother’s people were Italians and Russian Jews from New York City. Yes, they had mob ties, and no, you did not cheat Emilie Busby out of a nickel without hell to pay. My father was raised in the dirt-poor hills of West Virginia and the blood-stained streets of Baltimore. He served in Korea and Vietnam. Though unfailingly law-abiding, he also had zero tolerance for swindlers. My kin in Kentucky, also from my dad’s side, would have been at the tow company’s office shoving a shotgun up someone’s nose within an hour.

So Mr. Tardiff should consider himself lucky he got off with a refund and the loss of an account. But I marvel at the chutzpah (as Mom would say) of these people. The parking situation in Portland is already infuriating. The idea that a company can essentially steal a car, hold it hostage in its fenced lot while demanding cash, refuse to respond to requests for a refund, and not expect retribution (violent or otherwise) is astounding to me, yet also oddly comforting.

This must be “the Maine way.” There are no mob bosses or rednecks (or, apparently, Masons) to fear around here. City government can and will make things right.

But again, I ask you to ask yourself, what would you have done?

Chris Busby

About Chris Busby

Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard, a monthly magazine about Portland. He writes a weekly column for the BDN.