To the editors:
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Last weekend was typical. As I was washing my car (in my yard) carloads of people drove up and down my street trying to park. One van (from Illinois with six men in it) parked (illegally) in my neighbor’s yard was told to move and ended up getting stuck (there is a lot of sand in Miller) and tearing up the yard trying to get out. Were they sorry or apologetic? Quite the contrary, they yelled and cussed the whole time because they had to find another parking place. Not five minutes later, the scene was repeated with a car full of people (from Illinois). This time (this was the fourth confrontation in less than an hour), I simply went and got my golden retriever and told them if they wanted to argue, they could argue with him. Obviously they stayed in the car and yelled obscenities at me instead. I have neighbors who handle these situations much more gracefully than I do. They simply call the police and have all the cars towed which results in $25 tickets from the police and a towing charge of $75.00 and up. Nine out of ten cars towed are from Illinois. There is parking in Miller for the beaches. It costs $1.00 and it is an integrated beach area. But for some unknown reason (or known only to people from Illinois), hordes of Illinois beach-goers insist on parking illegally.
Our small community is a disaster on weekends. There are only two effective streets in and out of the Miller beach area and these roads will sometimes be blocked for two to five miles of bumper-to-bumper cars. A fifteen minute trip to the store can turn into a two hour nightmare trying to get back home. People who live right on the beach have had their fences torn down and used for bonfires on the beach, have had people urinating on their lawns without discretion (because most of these areas are private beaches with no facilities for the public) and the beach area is left a mess with broken beer bottles and pop-tops sticking out of the sand after the masses leave for the day.
L.M. Marshall
