Noel M. Loomis

“ It was funny to see that two-ton truck hauling a toy car across the floor.
Yes, we had a deal. Late at night, after we'd closed up and had time for some coffee, Slim would talk about how we were going to build a chain of parking ramps across the country.
"We'll make billions," he said, his deep eyes shining with a far-away fanaticism that only Slim Coleman can exhibit, "and we'll be known as the saviors of civilization. We'll call ourselves Parking Unlimited."
Then one night the building inspector came. ”

“ But now the ramp was filled with people. The cops were getting off the elevator. I jumped up and ran over to where Steve was standing.
The building inspector was staring bug-eyed at his huge car. Somebody went around the stall and saw the six-inch car crawling out. Somebody else took hold of the stall and shook it. "Where's my car? What's going on?"
Well, a mob is a funny thing. In about half a minute there were eight hundred people in that basement, and all of them tearing apart the reducing stall.
Slim and I hesitated no longer. We ran up the stairway and sifted out through the crowd.... ”

“ We'd block the wheels with a two-by-four after we had a car inside, then reduce it, take out the block, let the car roll onto the gadget and haul it away. We arranged them on the concrete floor in rows about four feet apart. When somebody came back to get their car out we had to pinch-bar the car back up on the gadget and wheel it to the stall.
The second week we had two stalls, one reducing and one expanding, and Slim was talking of having a new sloping floor put in to help in handling. By that time we were handling two thousand cars a day; you can do your own arithmetic. ”

“ He went on dreamily, "We should have five thousand. We can start up again, and this time we'll start off right, so we can run indefinitely without anybody catching on. We've got some capital to work with now." ”