We managed to spend part of the night in the very back of an enormous empty parking lot, not in, but to the left of a Malco movie theater parking lot in the Memphis city limits. It was very secluded, dark, and private with tall trees to block others from seeing us. Aside from our van, this massive lot was completely deserted.
All was well until 3:45A.M. when what I could only assume to be a cop, drove up shining his huge spotlight in our windows. I crawled to the front seat expecting the usual request for I.D. but instead he stayed in his car and kept the spotlight blaring into my face so that I couldn’t see a thing the whole time he was asking questions-asking what I was doing there, who I was with, where I was heading, how long I was going to be in the area, why I wasn’t at a motel-I answered all his questions sweetly and without hesitation, but all the while wondering why he was being such a dick and continuing to blind me with his spotlight. I explained our financial situation and he sounded disappointed. That again surprised me-had this guy been hoping for a bribe? He finally just said, “well ya can’t stay here,” and slowly backed up, never taking the spotlight off us until he was too far away for us to see him or his car. And that’s when we started wondering if he had even been a real cop. We never even saw his face, it was a most peculiar experience.
So we left a perfectly good empty parking lot and sought out a new one. We found a few more good hours of rest at an Equestrian park not too far away.
