I Used to Have a Quota, Now I Can Write as Many Tickets as I Want!

Whitney Portal, Mt. Whitney Ranger District, CA – 1970

Yosemite Valley in 1970, experienced the “4th of July Riots”. Hundreds of anti-establishment, anti-Vietnam counterculture youths camped illegally in  Stoneman Meadows in the national park. The park rangers ordered them to leave. Horse mounted rangers rode into the crowds in an attempt to remove them from the meadow by force. The park rangers lost this battle, but later won the “war” with help from the National Guard. This incident immediately filtered it’s way into the Forest Service.

Tom Klepperich gathered all the summer seasonals together and gave us the “new policy” of the Forest Service. From now on we were not to give warnings; we were to issue tickets. Tom informed us that if someone had not paid their campground fee by eleven o’clock that morning, no excuses accepted, write the campers a ticket.

So we took two vehicles and all of us headed up to the Whitney Portal campground. Tom said he would show us how it was done.

All of us sat at a nearby picnic table and watched as Tom walked up to a camper trailer at 11:30 am. We weren’t close enough to hear, but we could see everything.

Tom knocked on the trailer door. A grey-haired man in his late 60’s came out with a smile on his face and shook Tom’s hand. As they were talking the wife came out of the trailer. She too had a smile on her face. Suddenly she turned and disappeared back into the trailer. A few seconds later she returned, standing at the door, holding out a plate with a piece of pie on it for Tom.

Klepperich tried to refuse the pie, at least his hands said, “No”. The woman stepped down from the trailer and placed the paper plate with pie and fork in Tom’s hands. Tom stopped talking and took a bite. Then he ate the rest of the piece of pie. The woman took away his plate and fork.  She and her husband, both still smiling and waving at Tom, climbed back into their trailer and closed the door.

A very red-faced Tom Klepperich walked back to the picnic table with his head down. When he looked up he saw six seasonal employees still sitting there but now wearing ridiculous grins.

Jim Brown was the first to speak, “Kind of hard writing a ticket with pie in your hands.”

“Glad you showed us how to do that,” I added.

“Shut up,” Tom replied with a slight embarrassed grin on his face. “I do not care what the Forest Service says is our ‘new policy’. But we will not be writing many tickets this year.”

And we didn’t.