The Cab Ride

I was running late as usual so I hailed a cab.

I hopped in the cab and said, "Penn station please."

We get to Seventh Avenue and there's a lot of traffic.

He says, "Where are you going?"

"Penn station," I said.

"No I mean where are you going from there?"

"Oh, Boston."

"Is that where you're from?" he said.

"Yeah."

"I've never been to Boston."

"It's nice."

“I’ll give you a ride, he said ... I'll take you for $100.00."

I actually thought about it for a minute. The train would cost me a little over $100.00 roundtrip but a ride would be easier and faster. I thought yeah, that could be fun, a road trip with a complete stranger in a cab. Nobody would believe it. It would be the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. We'll become such good friends that we stop off at a mall and get I.D. bracelets that have our names engraved on the front, and on the back we'll engrave our initials and "friends forever." Maybe we'll get married and I'll live to tell my grandchildren about it.

"Grandma, how did you and Grampy meet?"

"Well I was on my way to Boston for a wedding. Going home for weddings kind of became an involuntary hobby of mine at the time. It got boring really fast. The hour long masses, Ave Maria, blah, blah, blah, she's dressed in white, she looks beautiful because all brides do, they exchange vows, it's the best day of your life (so I'm told), then you get to the reception and you hope it's not a family style dinner because it's awkward for me to ask a complete stranger to please pass the gravy. But this particular reception is buffet style although that's not the "pc" term for a buffet at a wedding nowadays. Now they’re known as "food stations."

My friend, who was getting married said, "We don't want to have a sit down dinner because we want there to be more time for people to dance. So we're going to have food stations. There's going to be a pasta station, a meat station, a seafood station and a salad station."

Now you're sitting at a table with your friends and you've finished your hors' deuvres. "Can you excuse me please I have to go to the meat station."

'What?” says a friend.

I said, " If you're looking for me I'll be at the meat station." Then after everyone hasn't had enough to eat and they run out of food the band starts playing. There are only so many times you can do the electric slide before you become too good at it and people get jealous. I'll show you kids how to do the slide some other time.

Anway I got in a cab to go to Penn Station when your grandfather offered to take me to Boston himself. I couldn't resist. He was so dopey and sweet. He was obviously in desperate need of an adventure. He was sick of driving the streets of the city, tired of the noise, the demanding, obnoxious customers, the young drunk upper eastsiders who harrassed him latenight and sometimes even threw up in his cab.

I knew I could give Ernest the opportunity to get out of his rut if only for a night. So I said, "Sure, you can take me to Boston on one condition. I get to drive."

We switched seats, I started the meter and headed for the Triboro bridge, which when I first moved to New York thought was pronounced Tribboro until someone corrected me. We followed the signs for New England. We never did make it to Boston. We kept heading north. We ended up in New Hampshire for the weekend. We went to Storyland, the Alpine Slides, Santa's Village, and we saw the Man in the Mountain. We took a tram up Mt. Washington. We asked for the children's fare because we felt like we were 12 or under all over again! But they wouldn't play along. We had so much fun. We had a wicked good time.

So after this daydream of telling my non-existent grandchildren this story, I thought come on Deb, be serious. You have to be realistic about this. However, if I take him up on his offer, I wouldn't have to worry about getting a ride home from the train station. This time I could be proud and call my dad from a payphone (on his calling card), "Dad I won't be needing you to pick me up at South Station tonight. I've got a ride."

How cool would it be to pull up in the driveway of the house where I grew up in a yellow cab? Pull up to that green duplex which is on a dead end, the last house on the left, the eye sore of the neighborhood, where the bushes are never trimmed and almost cover the house, where the lawn goes unmowed and has grown so tall that you can't walk on it but are forced to walk through it. I remember my friend Glenn from highschool dropping me off one night and laughing "We'll wait to make sure you get in ok, I've got a weed wacker in the trunk if you want to borrow it." The yard that has become a junkyard according to some neighbors because it houses two cars and one motorcycle, which my father plans on fixing one day. The Maxima has been there since I graduated high school in 1987. He's owned it since I was about 12. The house I lived in for 18 years with my mother and sister until my father asked us to leave because he moved in next door with his new wife and son. And after a year and a couple of restraining orders we realized we just couldn’t all get along under the same roof which was divided by a paper thin wall. The house that I used to love but now hate staying in every time I go home because nothing is the same yet nothing has changed.

So now the cab driver and I are driving up the hill approaching the dead end and there I am in all my glory pulling up the bumpy, unpaved, driveway in a yellow cab and on the side it says NY Taxi #2N37, $2.00 initial charge, .30 per 1/2 mile. I'm arriving in style in Woburn, MA all the way from the Big Apple.

My thoughts drifted back to the cab driver as we got closer to Penn Station. I took a good look at him. I still had a few minutes to decide whether to take him up on his offer. Suddenly I pictured myself mysteriously disappearing somewhere in Connecticut. God, I would hate for my life to end in Hartford, Connecticut of all places. What am I thinking? I don't know this man from a hole in the wall.

So I said to the cab driver, "Thank you anyway for your offer but I just dropped my dog off at Run Spot Run and if I knew I was going to be taking a cab to Boston I would have brought her. Maybe next time.

Ernest gave me his phone numbers, one of them a beeper number. It's good to have a cab driver's pager # in case of emergencies. I've never used it but I still have it. I've held on to it for some reason. My father holds on to cars he'll never fix, I hold onto numbers I'll probably never use.