The Park-O-Meter Comes to Main Street

Put a penny in the meter for twelve minutes or a nickel for an hour. That is how much it then cost the motorist to park on Main Street. The date was June 1, 1953, and the latest rage in city planning, the control of parking in the business district, had come to Beacon--a new city parking ordinance and the resulting installation of hundreds of Park-O-Meters on Main Street.

The coin-operated devices were manufactured by the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company of Oklahoma City which sent an agent to Beacon in May of 1953 to lay out spaces of 22 feet per car in the metered zone. The total cost of the meters to the city would be over $31 thousand, to be paid in yearly installments to the meter company as the revenue spilled in. A fraction of the revenue came from parking tickets: if a cop spotted a red flag displayed by the meter, it meant a fine of one dollar ... not a cause of endearment of local motorists with the new meters.

Pranksters had their own way of expressing dissatisfaction with the new ordinance, too. In their first week of operation, 28 meters were vandalized with gum, candy. toothpicks and pop-sickle sticks plugging up the coin slots. And business owners were not sure what to make of the new meters: did they keep traffic flowing, or did the threat of Red Flags drive away potential customers?

But in the end all of those pennies and nickels (and dollar fines) added up. After one year, the parking meters produced $28,032 in revenue (minus $11,742 to Park-O-Meter) ... a jingling success for the city's finances.