06/28/2007: "“Will The Owner Of The Car Please…”"

If you’re like us, there are times when you have forgot where you parked your car. Not uncommon, not a big deal, and nothing to be embarrassed about. That is, unless you’re the county sheriff, and where you parked the car was on the ferry.

Sheriff Bill had a doctors appointment on the mainland, and had walked onto the ferry, picked-up his personal car that had been left on the mainland, went to his appointment, and drove onto the ferry to return home in the car. Bill said he ended up talking to some tourists from England, and when the ferry came into Friday Harbor, he explained to them they needed to disembark off of the car deck, went down with them and.. well, he had walked onto the ferry, right?.

While Bill walked up the street to where he had left his official car (He did not want to take it on personal business) the ferry workers started looking for the dumb tourist that had not come down to the car deck, gave up, and called in the plate number to find out who the owner was. Since Bill always has a radio, that should have been the end of that. But, -we love irony- the ferry workers ran the wrong plate number.

Before they got that one figured out, Bill was reached, and he ran back onto the ferry (through a gauntlet of people clapping -and some making sort of unkind comments) and drove the car off.

The ferry was put off schedule by nine minutes, and Bill said he is very embarrassed and deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused by his lapse of memory. Nine minutes? We don’t think he needs to be too concerned about the time; we are talking about the ferry not being late, right?.

For our part, we could not help but ask if the medical appointment was related to any memory losses. We are glad to report it was not, and that the question proved he still has a well developed sense of humor.