The police car, which is revealed to have no occupants, cannot understand why Mead would be out walking for no reason, and so it decides to take him to the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.
This has caused speculation that this short story is actually referring to himself, or is in some related way a message to his home town of Waukegan, Illinois.
In it, Eller writes that Bradbury's inspiration for the story came when he was walking down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles with a friend in late 1949.
According to Eller, "[the story's] composition in the early months of 1950 predates Bradbury's conception of 'The Fireman,'" the short novella that would later evolve into Fahrenheit 451.
[3] The story was made into an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater, starring David Ogden Stiers as Leonard Mead.