The Cab Stand

A Daffodil Blooms in November

scritore — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:52:28 +0000

The Smith Ladies ride in our cabs, and have apparently done so since well before my taxi tenure began. Sometimes they shop, sometimes they venture out for a meal together. The Smith Ladies are mother and daughter, exceptionally pleasant women both… the kind of people whose existence provides a simple, elegant pleasure to all who might encounter them. I’ve always enjoyed their company, and I consider it a privilege to take them to and from in my cab.

The Smith Ladies rode in my cab today, and it was the very best ride ever with them… because today, Mama Smith came home from a long stay in a nursing home.

I don’t know what Mama Smith’s particular trouble was, but I do know that she was unrestrained in her joy at the prospect of returning home. A woman of 92 all agrin like a girl of 14 is truly a thing of beauty.

———-

We began getting solo orders from Daughter Smith several weeks ago… picking her up at the nursing home in the mornings, returning her there to stay overnight with Mom later in the day. Each day. Every day. Her weariness from worry, from half-sleeping in a chair, from trying to remain alert to any possible need that her mother might have in the small hours of the night, was evident. As was her indefatigable good cheer. She’d sit in the back seat of my cab and muse about her mom’s interactions with the nursing home staff and with the other residents, and review aloud the chores which awaited her at the house. Daughter Smith was very matter-of-fact about it all, simply dealing with things as another chapter in life, and harboring no doubt as to an eventual happy conclusion.

I listened, and I drove, and I expected to eventually hear bad news… unhappy endings to such things are the norm, so my experience has taught me. Every life is finite, every life ends. When you deal with seniors as a matter of course, and especially when an affection for some of them grows in your heart, you’re constantly reminded of this simple fact. I think that I’m both a romantic and a realist, so I try to savor the little joys in life while refusing to be surprised by its tragedies. Today was a day to savor.

———-

I drove Daughter Smith home yesterday, and she told me that, barring last minute complications or some completely unforeseen problem, Mama would be coming home today. I told her that I’d keep my fingers crossed, and that I hoped I’d be lucky enough to be their driver. The cab company was fairly busy today, and I was running full-tilt all morning, tending to my own customers as well as dispatch’s orders… somewhere in there:

Dispatch- “I need a sedan in River” Me- “‘78, I can get it if it’s fairly short…”

Dispatch- “‘78, the Normandy for Smith…” Me- “…Smith”

I was lucky enough.

And I was able to share a 92-going-on-14 year old’s happiness in returning home on a beautiful autumn morning. She enjoyed the colors in the trees and the crisp chill in the air as if for the first time in life, she loved that she had a “regular” driver as her escort, and she thought it grand that I had an extra blueberry muffin for her to nibble with her back-home-again coffee. Her bantering with her daughter was innocent, girlish and musical.

Mama Smith climbed the several steps to her porch slowly, and with a bit of a struggle. Daughter Smith held her all of the way. Both wore smiles.

And so did I, because every now and then a daffodil will bloom in November.

There Must’ve Been a Street Name Shortage

scritore — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:09:53 +0000

There is a street in Avon, Ohio named Just Imagine Drive. You can look it up. I wish it had existed when they built Cleveland and its environs, because imagination, when it came to naming streets, was often not in evidence. Just Imagine Drive might have been inspirational to the folks who were struggling with the Greater Cleveland Street Name Shortage back then.

On Cleveland’s west side, there’s a street called Elmwood. The ‘burb immediately west of Cleveland is Lakewood, and Lakewood has an Elmwood. Rocky River is next in line… it has an Elmwood as well. Due west of Rocky River is Bay Village… yup, they have one, too. So does Westlake, which is just south of Bay. None of these Elmwoods are connected and none are thoroughfares of any significance. But elms, I suppose, were a major point of civic pride once upon a time.

The aforementioned cities of Lakewood and Rocky River each have their own Wagar Road. Neither version has anything whatsoever to do with the other, save that both derive their name from a local historical character named Mars Wagar. I think it was some years after inventing his eponymous planet that Mr. Wagar took to naming streets, although I could be wrong on that count… he did manage to get both of his names memorialized in Lakewood, as it boasts a Mars Avenue as well. No other local burg has copied that one as yet.

There is a street named West Park in Cleveland, one in Fairview Park, and another in North Olmsted, all within eight miles or so of each other. Since people have missed out on deliveries of pizza and Christmas presents from the ensuing confusion, I think that there should have been an 11th Commandment:

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Streets

I also think that cities should hire cab drivers to name their streets… you’d get distinctive street names, whimsical and non-derivative.

Elvis Avenue

Pork Chop Lane

Ennui Court

Support Hose Road

It really isn’t difficult.

Option D

scritore — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:15:57 +0000

Multiple Choice

You know those multiple choice questions that are part of informal quizzes? The ones where several reasonable answers are given along with one ridiculous one? Let’s give it a try…

You’re driving down a single-lane-in-each-direction street and, as you’re about to enter an intersection, you suddenly realize that you don’t know which way to go… do you:

A) turn left;

B) turn right;

C) go through the intersection and then pull off the road to consult your map;

D) enter the intersection, come to a complete stop, block all traffic in every direction, and begin a cell phone call to, presumably, some person who might be able to give you directions even though you probably cannot explain where it is that you are.

I saw someone choose “D” this morning. From now on, when you see someone opt to do the exact wrong thing in a given situation in spite of its obvious absurdity, just refer to them as an “Option D.”

We’ll all know what you mean.

The Directors

scritore — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:28:31 +0000

I had a Director in my cab yesterday.

I’ve had any number of Directors in my cab through the years, but this fine gentleman was easily the best example of the breed to patronize my rolling establishment since I’ve begun writing these little blurbs at you. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I very strongly suspect that Directors dwell in a plane of existence that is, if not clearly superior to yours and mine, then clearly different.

I came across yesterday’s Director at a medical building in Westlake. I presumed that, just like all of us who’ve moments ago escaped the clutches of our chosen medical overlords and their nursely tormentors, he’d want to go home. He did.

“Where can I take you, sir?” “home, please… I live on Munn Road, in Cleveland… do you know where that is?”

“One block south of Edgecliff, between Warren Road and Rocky River Drive” “oh, you’ve been there before?”

“Many times over the years, yes sir…” “well, we can take the highway…”

:: thinking that I have a new blog topic and deciding to play it out ::

The medical building is immediately adjacent to I-90, of course… it’s a Cleveland Clinic facility, and local ordinances require that one of these things be built at every third interchange on Interstate Highways that pass through the region. They’re ubiquitous.

So, I pull the cab away from the curb, my Director settled nicely in back. We exit the parking lot and head for the highway, just a few hundred feet distant… and I flick on the right turn signal just to see if…

“we can get on the highway there… we should go east…” :: yup, he’s a Director ::

“Do you take cabs often, sir?” “no, I always drive, but today I couldn’t because of my leg.”

“Well, you can relax… I’ll have you home in no time…” “it doesn’t take too long when you use the highway…”

Now, we need only travel two exits down I-90 to get to my Director’s neighborhood. His exit off the highway is maybe a half-mile past an entrance ramp that becomes a new right lane, expanding the highway from three lanes to four. You must get into that new right lane, and fairly quickly, in order to exit where we’re going. In anticipation, I again flick on the right turn signal so as to advertise my intended lane change for all the world to see… there’s no traffic, and I execute a splendid and graceful slide to the right. I almost expected to see Eastern Europeans dressed like dinner mints standing at the berm, holding placards with 10s on them.

But there are no Eastern Europeans… there is only me… and my Director. My turn signal continues to blink…

“we should get off at this exit”

…and we do. And since we must turn right at the intersection atop the ramp, the turn signal blinks unabated and unabashedly to the right…

“we make a right turn here…”

…and we do. And because we must make a left turn at the very first intersection upcoming, I want to dazzle my Director by making the underhand-fingertip right-to-left turn signal switcheroo… the turn signal now blinks left…

“now, we make a left turn at that next light…”

We have only one more turn to make at this point, a simple left onto Munn Road, the Director’s specified destination. It will be at the first traffic light we encounter, and we can only turn left. There’s even a convenient left turn lane awaiting us. So I signal a left turn and glide effortlessly into the aforementioned left turn lane…

“we should make a left turn here… this is my street…”

We do. “My house is five from the end on the left…”

That part I actually did not know, and I was grateful to my Director for sharing. We pulled into his drive, and he paid his fare, adding a reasonable tip. He seemed relieved that he had defied all odds and arrived at a more familiar plane of existence than the morning’s fates had chosen to deal him… and even his dog seemed happy to see him, standing at the fence, tail all a-wagging… You know what my Director said to me as I held the door for him?

“That’s my dog…”

I grinned all the way back to Rocky River.

Automotive Profiling

scritore — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:22:06 +0000

The Mercury Grand Marquis is, to me, an interesting car.   But not because of the car itself…   I find it interesting because of the people who drive it.   The Mercury Grand Marquis seems to be the one automobile whose driver can be described to a T without even being seen.

The Grand Marquis is essentially the same vehicle as the Ford Crown Victoria ( commonly used as taxicabs and police cars, and no longer built save for fleet purchases ) and the Lincoln Town Car ( the most popular vehicle for black-car services ).   And it’s a nice car… roomy, sturdy, smooth-riding… classic American styling, with understated lines.   The Mercury logo does leave something to be desired, though.

Anyhow, it’s a lazy Saturday afternoon, and I’ve been wanting to jabber about something inconsequential, so let me tell you about the folks who drive the Mercury Grand Marquis…

——————–

The odds are about 4 in 5, according to my highly scientific cab driver observational research notes, that when you find yourself stuck behind a Mercury Grand Marquis, the driver will be:

- male;

- caucasian;

- seated with an erect posture, holding both hands on the steering wheel;

- living on a double dip of Social Security and a union pension;

- of retirement age, but not elderly;

- freshly barbered… and I do mean barbered.   The men who drive a Grand Marquis very definitely do NOT frequent stylists;

- a member of a fraternal organization;

- as likely on his way to Sears as anywhere else, or if it’s a Sunday morning, on his way to the nearby Methodist church, or if it’s Sunday and services are over, he’s on his way to Bob Evans and then on to Sears ( if you don’t believe me, follow them around… you’ll see );

- the paternal head of a reasonably successful, well-behaved family, now comfortably into its third generation;

- making every turn slowly, and with considerable deliberation;

- and driving between 5 and 10 miles per hour below the posted speed limit.

These men do not talk on cell phones while they drive, and while they’re commonplace in major urban areas, they never live in the city itself… they are suburbanites to their very core.

Their wives long-ago mastered the use of the deflavorizing machine for dinner preparation, and you will never see a Grand Marquis parked in the lot of a Thai restaurant.

The men who drive the Mercury Grand Marquis are, I am certain, good men… responsible husbands and fathers and grandfathers, and generally upstanding citizens.   But I always have they feeling that they never learned how to have fun.

It is a nice car, though.

Comments: a how-to

scritore — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:18:17 +0000

Second Opinion

If you’d like to comment on something I’ve scribbled here, please fell free to do so.   My inner attention-whore will worship at your feet.

You needn’t register to post a comment…   simply click the “Comments” link at the end of the specific article you’d like to skewer, and a little reply box will open.   That’s all there is to it.

Shine a light…

scritore — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:38:17 +0000

Finding a specific address in the pre-dawn hours can be a bitch.   We’ve passed the autumnal equinox, and now the days grow short.

In the dark hours, shadows conceal detail.   Glaring streetlights hide more than they expose.   The headlamps of oncoming vehicles destroy night vision, and colorful things that are vivid and obvious in daylight often blend into the greys and blacks of the wee hours.  Sometimes, for an early morning cab driver, just finding a customer’s home is a challenge.

Most urban areas follow a reasonably predictable pattern of assigning addresses, and it behooves a cab driver to learn his work area well enough to discern approximately where a given address should be.   This isn’t terribly difficult, and any cab driver worth his salt can do it.   Approximately, however, is a different animal than exactly.   And the end game in the process of finding you does, after all, require exactitude.   Two doors down, at 4:45 a.m., doesn’t cut it.

So cab drivers, visual creatures that we are, look desperately for a number on your home.   Seems simple, yes?

No.

Try this the next time you have a moment or two to kill while driving through a residential area:   look for how many different, and often surprising, places people post their house numbers.   We tend to expect house numbers to be somewhere near the front door, and in many cases they are.   This is tradition.   But… in many cases they aren’t.   Over the garage door is a popular place for house numbers, and in a growing number of new homes, house numbers can be found etched in a cornerstone, hidden behind the decorative shrubbery.   House numbers sometimes are not even on the house… they’re whimsically displayed on signs nailed to trees, planted in front gardens, hung from a lamp post, or painted, fading, on a curb.   And sometimes there are no house numbers at all.

Brass house numbers are the toughest of all in the hours before the sun.   Brass is pretty and delightful during the day, but effectively invisible at night.   Your neighborhood pizza guy fears brass numbers, too.

After you’ve tried my little exercise, try it again.   In the dark.   With no moon.   When it’s raining.   And no house lights shining a welcome.

So…   what we cab drivers do when we’re trying to find you in the dark is pretty simple.   We drive to approximately where you should be, and then begin searching for signs of life.   Specifically, lights.   Cab drivers love people who shine a light at 4:45 a.m.   But all too often, in the rush to get dressed, pack, review email, or sip the morning’s coffee, our clients-in-waiting forget to shine a light.

We cab drivers do not like parking our cabs and wandering on foot, house-to-house, looking for a specific number at 4:45 a.m. because many of your neighbors, understandably, consider this to be a suspicious sort of behavior.   Their trigger fingers get itchy.   The police are sometimes called to investigate.   Their dogs do not take kindly to cab drivers threatening invasions of their territory.

At 4:45 a.m., we cab drivers roll slowly down your street and do our best to avoid sharing space with folks delivering newspapers and with meandering cats.   We do our best not to collide with parked cars or curbside trashcans.   We do not want to molest your mailbox, either.   We’re just looking for signs of life.   Specifically, exactly, signs of your life.

Please shine a light.

Manufacturer’s Suggested Daylight Time

scritore — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:18:45 +0000

Time.

I was going to call this snippet Manufacturer’s Suggested Standard Time. But since the powers that be in the United States, deeming no issues more pressing, have decreed that we now spend seven months each year on Daylight Time, I decided that the title you now see was more appropriate. Daylight Time/Standard Time/All Things Governmental is a separate rant, however.

Here in Cleveland, and specifically in Cleveland’s western suburbs, we are witnessing a growing propensity toward viewing punctuality as a suggestion or an option.   The cab company with which I am affiliated receives several hundred scheduled orders each day, and the appointment times are set by the customers.   It’s become a coin flip as to whether or not a given customer will be prepared to meet the time THEY set.

When, exactly, did being late, especially for a time that YOU set, become acceptable? Would someone explain this new standard to me, please?

Because in my world, being late is high on the list of Ways To Be Rude To Your Fellow Man.   Presuming that one can, in fact, tell time, being late is saying to the person on the other end of your appointment “My Time matters. Yours Doesn’t.”

I get up each morning at 2:30 a.m. so that I can roll my cab out of the garage at 4 a.m., ready to meet folks who want to get to work, get to the airport, or get home.   Folks going to work and folks going home are generally ready at, and in many cases before, their scheduled pick-up time.   People going to the airport are, more often than not, late. Sometimes a minute or two late, sometimes five minutes, or eight. Sometimes even longer. But late is late. Late is rude. And late is theft.

When you’re late for a business appointment ( and mundane as they may seem, taxicabs are a business ) you are flat out robbing another person of their time…   time that could, and often would, be spent productively and profitably.   When you’re late for your cab, you’re robbing the driver of his income-earning time and you’re robbing the cab company of the driver’s services. You’re robbing folks with appointments scheduled after yours of a reasonable opportunity for their cab to be on time.

Fuck you. That’s not your right and it’s not your privilege.

Pack the night before.

Get a fancy Mr. Coffee with a timer.

Set your alarm fifteen minutes early. Or thirty. Or ask Mom to give you a wake-up call.

Whatever it takes for you to be on time, please do it.

———-

I’ve sat in my cab, parked in various driveways, and watched as late folks:

- re-arranged potted plants;

- took out the garbage;

- held family conferences;

- hugged and kissed goodbye for the thirty-eleventh time;

- chased a cat;

- dressed before an undraped window;

- unpacked ( yeah );

- moved cars about in the driveway and on the street;

- ironed;

- pooped ( yes sir… your front door was open and so was the door to your downstairs bath… in perfect alignment with my cab );

- searched for I.D.;

- searched for tickets/boarding passes;

- and ate breakfast,

among other things that I did not especially want to see.   I’m not paid to deal with this nonsense.

If you do this to me once, you won’t see me or my cab again, because I won’t take your order a second time. And there’s a good chance that on some freezing pre-dawn morning in January, you’ll have scheduled a cab… and I’ll be the only cab available.   You won’t see me.   I don’t care if you miss your flight.   You had your chance with me, and you know damned well I do good work. So you think your time is more important than mine? It’s not. You’re just a self-entitled twit, living on Manufacturer’s Suggested Daylight Time. Fuck you.

I’ll be busy driving someone who’s punctual to the airport…   in a nice, clean, comfortable cab…

…a cab that was there to meet them on time.

Four a.m.

scritore — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:26:37 +0000

I roll my cab out of the garage shortly after four a.m. each morning, and I have a profound love/hate relationship with the hour.   At four a.m. the all-night drunks and the druggies have gone to ground and most of the world’s random reprobates are now hidden away behind their locked doors.   The people of the morning rush are, mostly, still in their beds, or maybe showering, or quietly fondling a lover or spouse. The point men of the rush are sipping coffee from a mug.   I’ll visit each of them in a bit.

For now, though, I’m alone in my cab… my laptop and my dispatcher’s disembodied voice are my company.   Sometimes I’ll have an order right away so I drive the quiet streets; as often as not, no one wants a cab and its driver at four a.m., so I wait. Those mornings, when I have only thoughts to occupy me, I loathe four a.m. Then, the hour proves to me that I’m a fool chasing an arbitrary errand, a mortal creature investing unrecoverable minutes in… nothing.   An order to fill is a better thing at four a.m.

In October, there’s often a mist or a shallow fog over the Rocky River valley at four a.m.   I sometimes drive my cab into a convenient earthbound cloud, and I don’t want to emerge.   The mist is a comfort, an obvious return to my mother’s womb.   But if I’m driving, there must be an order, someone who does want a cab and its driver.   And so I drive, the mists are left behind, and I tell myself that I’m really not a fool after all.   After all, someone wants me at four a.m.

When I’m driving at four a.m. I’m often entertained by racoons and opossums crossing the streets, returning home, having accomplished a night’s raid.   Cats scamper from yard to yard.   Skunks are about, sometimes seen but always smelled.   Deer will pause in the unlikeliest places and stare at me as I pass.   I think they’re wondering, after we’ve taken everything else from them, after we’ve built houses and offices and stores wherever they try to live, why we won’t at least leave them four a.m.

There are no dogs to be seen at four a.m. because dogs are sensible creatures.

I’ll pass trash cans at the curb, proud of their owners’ efficiency.   Only the efficient have their refuse at the ready at four a.m.   I’ll pass an upended newspaper rack and wonder how many beers were required to make that idea seem a creative endeavor.   I might even see an abandoned pair of jeans in the road, because at four a.m. the police will not harass a loitering pair of jeans.

Of course, I’m really not alone at four a.m., the world really doesn’t ever stop.   Bakers and nurses and bus drivers and flight attendants from the Vegas red-eye are about.   My fellow cab drivers are prowling, too.   But at four a.m., I feel the most alone, each and every morning.

Addresses

scritore — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:49:23 +0000

Addresses.   Simple things, yes?

Among the reasons I’ve chosen to spend my closing years driving a cab is that it’s a simple endeavor.   No employees to manage, no legal department, no returns desk.

You need a ride?   You call a taxi company and order a cab.   Maybe you’ll get my cab.   If you do, I’ll hold the door for you.   I’ll load your groceries or luggage or your wheelchair.   I’ve paid for the gasoline, and I’ve paid for the insurance.   The cab is mechanically sound, I can assure you.   All you need do is settle into the back seat and tell me where you’d like me to take you and all of your things now stuffed into my trunk.

”Where can I take you?”

A simple thing…   a destination…   what did you see in your mind’s eye when you ordered your ride?   You did envision a result, some conclusion to this exercise, did you not?

This does not occur to some people, this concept of destination, result, conclusion…

”Where can I take you?”

I realize that the question is properly worded “Where may I take you”, but that’s stilted verbiage.   The use of “can” in place of “may” or even “might” shouldn’t be so dissonant as to cause paralysis in my passengers, yet often enough it does precisely that.

”Where can I take you?” is, at least once each day, met with a confused silence or a shuffling of papers in a woman’s purse.   Men who are confounded by this question do a search-every-pocket routine.   Destinations, it seems, are timid creatures that hide in shadowy places, elusive, reticent.

”Where can I take you?”     “To see my sister”     “And where is your sister?”     “At her house.”

”Where can I take you?”     - uncomfortable pause -     “I’ll be right back.   I left it inside…”

“Where can I take you?”     “They didn’t tell you?”

”Where can I take you?”     “The same place as last time.”

“Where can I take you?”     “Walgreens.”     “Which one?”     “In Lakewood.”     “There are two in Lakewood… which one would you like?”     “The one with my prescription.”

   and, the one that really doesn’t fly…

”Where can I take you?”     “I’ll show you…”

No, ma’am and no, sir…   you will not show me.   For a dozen reasons and then a dozen more, you will not show me.   You will tell me, and then we will proceed on our merry way, you relaxing in back and me driving you in style.   You will not show me.   You will not show me because of the good chance that you don’t really know how to get where you’re going, while I, had I but an address, do.   You will not show me because of the even better chance that you’ll tell me to make a turn when I’m seven feet from the intersection with a tailgater carefully examining the cab’s rear bumper…   and then, mid-turn, you will decide that it was actually a left, not a right.

You will not show me because we use a zone system to determine fares, not a meter, and I am disinclined to meander about the countryside when I am only allowed to charge you x for the ride.   You will not show me because “I’ll show you” is one of the most popular destinations for people who rob cab drivers.   And finally, you will not show me because I’m legally obligated to take you to the place you specified at the outset of the ride.   If I do not do that, then I have kidnapped you.   Legally.   It’s true.   So, you will not show me.   You’ll tell me, or we don’t go at all.

”Where can I take you?”   “The Key Tower on Publlic Square.”

There now… that didn’t hurt, did it?