Of Horses and
Horseless Carriages

About ten years ago, after a series of unsuccessful dates with women with varying degrees of neurosis, a co-worker offered to set me up with one of her girlfriends.

“So Jeff, what are you looking for in a woman?” my friend asked.

“Well, at this point, I would just like to meet a nice stable person,” I responded.

Misunderstanding my use of the word “stable” my friend set me up with a nice woman of my own age who had recently moved to the high country and was working with horses at one of the local stables. She was intelligent, funny, pretty and generally a joy to be around. And she loved her horses.

A family in an appropriately named Ford Escape finally get to leave the ASU parking deck on Rivers Street over an hour after the end of the Lipizzaner Stallion show at the Holmes Convocation Center. Photo by Jeff Eason

I quickly learned, like many a man before me, that to fall for a woman who spends her time with horses is a foolhardy exercise in futility.

Say it with me now boys, “A woman who loves horses will never ever ever love a man nearly as much.” You will come in a second place so distant that you’ll be lucky to catch a glimpse of the palomino’s tail as the two of them gallop into the sunset together.

It is a state of affairs that has probably inspired a song or two around the old campfire as some lonely cowpoke and his faithful steed gaze at the stars and wonder about the cowgirl and mare who got away (insert sound of harmonica wailing mournfully here).

I was reminded of that time this past weekend when I went to the Lipizzaner Stallion Show at the Holmes Center in Boone with my wife, Leslie, and our niece, Eliza. We had a great time watching the beautiful white Lipizzaners gallop, leap into the air and stand on their back legs.

Of course, any time an equestrian event of this sort comes to town all the girls and women who love horses more than they love men come out from their hiding places. They left their stables and pastures behind and filled the Holmes Center last Friday night. You could spot them because of their “I Love Horses” T-shirts, leather jackets with the fringe on the sleeves, and stylish assortment of cowgirl hats. You could also identify them in the dark by the way they ooh-ed and ah-ed when a particularly beautiful horse entered the arena.

But you didn’t have to be a horse lover to enjoy the Lipizzaner Show last weekend. I’m more of a dog person and I was still impressed with the mighty stallions and the way they could gallop in place without going anywhere. “They can moonwalk!” said my niece in appreciation of the maneuver.

Yes, a fine time was had by all at the Holmes Convocation Center on the campus of Appalachian State University last Friday evening. The show ended around 9:30 p.m. and Eliza, Leslie and I braved the windy winter weather as we walked with hundreds of other families from the arena to the new parking deck on Rivers Street, almost a quarter of a mile away. There, everybody got into their cars and waited patiently to be let out of the parking deck.

As it turned out, the Appalachian State University Department of Parking and Traffic, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to charge everybody who parked in the parking deck on their way out, even though the Lipizzaner event was held long after classes were over on campus. One by one, the cars on the first deck had to back out of their spaces, line up and pay the lone attendant on duty—in cash: no checks or credit cards accepted.

We were on the second level and cars there did not move for at least 45 minutes while the cars on the first level made their way out of the parking deck, at a rate of about one per minute. Considering that most of the cars had young children in them, people were extremely well behaved, if increasingly irritated at being stuck that way.

I used my cell phone and first called university police, a branch of crime fighters with an office located right below us in the parking deck complex. I told the officer on duty the situation and asked if there was anything he could do about it. He politely told me that the parking deck was the jurisdiction of ASU Parking and Traffic and there was nothing the police could do. I then called Parking and Traffic and talked to a woman whose sole responsibility appeared to be answering the office phone at night. She had clearly been on the phone with several of the people stuck in the parking deck. She told me that she had forwarded the complaints to ASU Police to see if there was anything they could do.

I then walked down the stairs to the first level to see if the attendant would consider just raising the gate and letting everybody out. There I met several other people from the immobile second and third levels who were wondering the same thing. One man (with a passed out toddler in his arms) told me he was surprised that the parking deck was charging for after-hours parking because parking there had been free a few nights before when the ASU men’s basketball team played Western Carolina at the Holmes Center.

Not getting any satisfactory answers from the parking attendant, we all walked back up the stairs to our cars to wait it out. One hour after we started the car, we paid the attendant and left the building. We even had to pay for the extra hour that we waited in our car to leave.

I was truly impressed at how civil everyone behaved during this inexcusable situation and feel that it is a credit to our community that I never heard a raised voice during the entire debacle.

I feel that the university, particularly the Parking and Traffic Department, owes all of those parents an apology and that it needs to rectify the situation so this doesn’t happen again.

Here are some suggestions for that department: If you are determined to have people pay for parking during after-hours events at the Holmes Center, have them pay a flat fee when they enter the parking deck. That way, when everyone wants to leave at once after the show, they can do so with relative ease.

You should also consider adding 50 cents or a dollar to every ticket for Holmes Center events and then let everyone use the parking deck for free. You can probably figure out a system where you’ll make the same amount of money and not inconvenience so many patrons of ASU-hosted events.

Whatever you do, be consistent. Most of the people I met said they would have parked elsewhere if they had known that they would have to wait an hour or more before leaving.

You might also want to be more consistent with traffic control before and after events at the Holmes Center. Before the show we were caught in a steady stream of cars going behind the arena with the wish of turning left up the hill to the big parking lot there. It was only after that we were behind the arena that we were told that the parking lot was full and we would have to park in the parking deck. Like everyone else in that situation, we had make a left onto Rivers Street without any help from traffic control, and then make an additional left into the parking deck.

While I commend Appalachian State for building two new parking decks in downtown Boone and helping to alleviate a genuine problem for visitors and businesses, the university still has a few kinks to work out in making sure the decks are a positive for all who use them.