The Laughter Library published 1936 #134

Having, one afternoon, left his machine near his hotel in a suburb of Los Angeles, a traveler came back several hours later and found it covered with tags citing a variety of offenses. It had been left there more than two hours, the lights hadn't been turned on after dark, it was parked less than 20 feet from a fire hydrant, and so on. Hastily estimating the impending fines, he concluded it would be a pretty economy to report his car as lost and this he did; the police took down all the data and advised him not to worry. He did, though, naturally; and he also suffered considerable embarrassment, because several times a day for a week, every time he went in or out of his hotel he had to pass his car sitting there forlornly with all the tags on it. It took police that long to find it.