The erection of the restriction post

In their defense, it was *me* who killed the last one, but before me, there have been several who did it just as brutally. Our street is in the very center of the town and it is riddled with small but well hidden yards where people love to park without a fee, packing our own parking lots twice over. On a bad day you literally cannot ENTER your own yard. The small retracting pole in the start of the pedestrian zone is the ideal solution to prevent that from happening. However. That thing is active so irregularly and so often broken, that us, who actually have the remote for it, tend to forget it's there - or it malfunctions and it is known to elevate the cars while they're driving over it, its sensors faulty. The last time I was returning from a long trip, as circumstances go, there was a van parked at the start of the street, blocking my view and another car was just coming out - and the pole, which we all call the cockling - wasn't active for weeks before, so as I proceeded towards my yard, it rose and I scraped the undercarriage of my car, beheading the cockling. 

        Since then, the entrance to the pedestrian zone had been barricaded off and some heavy duty construction has been going on. First a bulldozer took it's sweet time (we are talking days, not hours) to dig a three ft hole and get the previous one out. Then cranes came to plant a new one - this one looks stronger, almost armored, but that's what they all look like out of the shop. Now there's lots of people in white shirts and ties with clipboards, overseeing the frequency setting and the likes. The first time they blocked me out of my own street I was very angry with them, but then I felt sorry because it was very hot outside and they seemed to be doing their best, so I took some cold soda down to them to aid a little. (And the supervisor was hot. Both ways.) Now we, the residents who have seen it all, just kind of not to them politely, patiently. It is indeed a merged effort.

            Of course every time there's a metallic noise in the street, louder than someone dropping a coin, all the residents first think: ah, there it goes, another one.