Parking meter loss leads to very bad dream...

Written By Jim Heffernan for TheDuluthNewsTribune/May 2, 2026

I admit I was worried as I drove my aging white SUV toward downtown Duluth. I’d heard that they’d junked all the parking meters and somehow hooked parking regulation up to so-called smartphones. 

I’m not so smart on my smartphone. Oh, I can check the outside temperature and answer it if somebody calls, but I don’t text stuff. I don’t use the keyboard at all — my fingers are too fat. I’ve always had fat fingers, much to my chagrin in junior high school. I’m over it now. The chagrin.

So, when I read in this newspaper that the city is now controlling parking downtown with cell phone QR codes instead of parking meters, I pondered: What the devil is a QR code? Looking it up, I learned it’s “a machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone.” Oh, is that all. I enjoy storing URLs, especially on weekends when the sun is shining. Yeah, right.

But I was still feeling plenty nervous venturing onto parking meter-less Superior Street in my SUV last month.

I had to park to pick up my taxes from the guy who can figure them out. I’m not so hot on taxes either. But where to park? How to pay with no meters? Would I get a ticket? How much do they fine you these days? Last time I paid a parking ticket they cost $2. That was sometime in the last century.

These were my thoughts as I rumbled on wondering if my muffler was shot. Jeez, I’m thinking, if I can’t park, I can’t get my taxes and send them in on time. I could get arrested by the IRS and sent up the river for an undetermined amount of time or even be deported to Mexico, although I like their food in spite of being a (half) Scandinavian hotshot from Doolut.

I determined that the taxes were more important than a potential parking ticket, so I decided I’d just pull into an angle parking place and take my chances. Alighting from my vehicle, I noticed a nearby small metal box about waist high atop a pole and decided to check it out.

What a relief!  A new style parking meter that covered the whole block. It had a keyboard featuring numbers 1 through 10 and the entire alphabet A through Z. Now I was getting somewhere. There were instructions at the top indicating what you should do before inserting coins in the slots at the bottom.

I can do that, I figured, perusing the instructions. First, they told me to put in my license plate number. Made sense. That’s how they’d know which car was which once I got to the stage where I was to put money in. So, I punched in my plate number JIM8O6 (not my actual plate number or my locker number at the Family Sauna) and moved on to the next instruction.

Next, they told me to put in my date of birth, which I willingly did. That got rejected with the message that I am too old to be driving. Hmm. Moving on, the gizmo told me to punch in my Social Security number, my weight, my height, my shoe size and educational attainment — choose 12 years, 14 years, 16 years, graduate school level (up to 20), and degrees such as B.A., M.A. PhD, MD, DDS, DM&IR, Etc.

No problemo. I don’t mind spreading my Social Security number around the globe. It can lead to some interesting e-mails from needy rich guys in Nigeria who need help accessing their money.

Yawn…I was getting drowsy writing this. Suddenly ZZZs and then a dream: 

In the dream after I punched in all of the requested information, the parking box told me to insert a gold coin with President Trump’s image on it. I didn’t have one on me so I darted into a nearby bank, putting my hand in my jacket pocket with the index finger pointing like a gun. I ordered a teller to give me a Trump coin because I didn’t want to over park in my spot with no meter. She smiled and pressed a button and a loud noise rang throughout the bank lobby, scaring customers. There were three.

Soon guards and cops showed up in my dream placing handcuffs on my wrists behind my back, causing me to wonder how I was going to eat lunch. And then there was the problem of picking up my taxes and getting them mailed by April 15. And how could I sign the tax forms with my hands handcuffed behind me? My doze was becoming a night…er… daymare.

When my nose hit the keyboard I had been typing on, I suddenly woke up. What a dream, but it was no dream that the parking meters are gone. Used to be two bits for 10 minutes and done. Done is right.

Oh, and what about my taxes? They got sent in but I’m starting to smell tacos.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go...

Portrait at about 102-103
(Wikipedia)

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/April 4, 2026

 I’ve been around Duluth for a long, long time — dipping a teensy-weensy toe in the final weeks of the 1930s and an old toe in the 2020s. That’s parts of 10 decades, although I’m not 100 years old…yet. I’ve seen a lot of Duluth history, much of which has understandably, even deservedly, been lost on younger generations of Duluthians.

 

Take Albert Woolson, for instance. Some local folks today likely never heard of him. He was the last surviving member of the Union Army during the Civil War. He lived here and died in Duluth in 1956 at the age of 107 or 109 — nobody was ever quite sure of his exact age. He was young when he served, doing duty as a drummer boy.

 

For a time back then he was probably Duluth’s most famous person. Coincidentally, he was a Central Hillside neighbor of today’s most famous ex-Duluthian, Bob Dylan. When Bob was a child, his family, the Zimmermans, lived a few doors away from the aged Woolson. 

 

I saw Woolson a few times in his final years. He visited old Lincoln Junior High School for Memorial Day assemblies a couple of times when I was a pupil. The principal presented him with a box of cigars in appreciation. He also was feted in Superior Street parades late in his life, always wearing a dark suit coat, festooned with various medals, and a military-style cap.

 

Why all this now? A few weeks ago, in this newspaper’s Bygones column an item from way back in 1956 reported that Woolson smoked a few cigars while being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital for lung congestion. Nothing like a good cigar to treat lung congestion, I always say. The celebrated centenarian died later that year.

 

Whenever I am reminded of Albert Woolson, I am also reminded of a story once told me by an older friend in the Duluth news media that I think of whenever I pass by the statue of Woolson outside the St. Louis County Depot in downtown Duluth, depicting him as an old man seated with a cane in his hand.

 

Here is that story as I recall it being told to me (the historical perspective is mine):

 

It was an election year, and, as usual, American politics was a main subject in the 1956 news. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was running for a second term. Democrats would re-nominate Adlai E. Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, to challenge Eisenhower as he had four years earlier and, of course, lost. His running mate would be Sen. Estes Kefauver (pronounced KEE -foffer or kee-FOFFER, take your pick), a prominent Tennessee politician who was strong on fighting organized crime.

 

Seeking support on the campaign trail, Kefauver came to Duluth where he was warmly greeted by local Democrats who came up with a bright campaign idea: Bring Kefauver to the hospital to visit the last survivor of the Union Army in the Civil War, demonstrating the candidate’s deep respect and concern for this great American veteran and so on and so forth blah, blah, blah. Bring the press and never mind that Kefauver represented a Confederacy state.

 

They brought the press — the newspaper, TV, radio, all they could muster, including the reporter who passed this story on — and assembled in the hospital hallway to document the visit of this esteemed U.S. senator-cum maybe U.S. vice president with the ailing centenarian and last Union army veteran of the war between the states.

 

Unfortunately, Woolson, very hard of hearing, apparently was not aware of exactly who was coming to visit, or if he knew at all that a visit was imminent. When the moment arrived, Senator Kefauver entered the Woolson hospital room, local Democrats and members of the press watching nearby.

 

Woolson looked up at the approaching visitor and said, “Thank heaven you’re here doctor, I haven’t had a bowel movement in three days.”

 

Kefauver’s and the press’ reaction were not reported to me (nor was it reported to the pubic), and Woolson lasted only a few more months. He was given a huge funeral in the National Guard Armory on London Road, with special written condolences from President Eisenhower, who regretted he could not attend. Of course.

 

Today, as I occasionally walk by the statue of a seated Woolson outside the Depot in downtown Duluth, I reflect on that old hospital visit story and wonder what exactly it is he is sitting on. Three days can cause quite an explosion.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.