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I might have been a cabbie in a past life.
It could be some kind of karma, then, given the adventures I’ve had in taxicabs in this one.
My first memory of a taxi is of one in London, the wide expanse of the passenger compartment and me, at the tender age of six, relishing the idea of riding backwards in the jump seat.
New York’s Checker cabs were all but a relic by the time I lived in the Big Apple in the mid-1990s, but I can recall fondly being in several as a youth – one ride out to JFK in stifling traffic (“they say no one’s ever beaten the Van Wyck”) with an Egyptian gentleman named Hassan stands out as the time when I learned that cabbies were largely a talkative and jovial bunch.
Cabbies in LA will sometimes hand you a SAG-AFTRA business card, or even a script. But what jumps out most vividly, unfortunately, is an evening out on the town with a few classmates back in my USC days. On the way home one of my cohorts, who shall remain nameless, opened the door as we were (luckily) decelerating and promptly deposited the remains of his imbibing onto a Harbor Freeway off-ramp. His friend, previously unknown to us before that night and intentionally never invited again, proceeded to make derogatory remarks about the driver’s apparent sexual preference. Liberal guilt kicked in mightily for me that evening, and I handed the patient driver a generous tip – only to glance out of the corner of my eye and see the same fellow now relieving himself on the rear tire of the vehicle. Double the tip.
Sickness and cars have a way of following one another. Once in Tokyo, after combining interesting forms of quasi-Japanised-Italian food with wine, cognac, beer, and whisky, I’d long missed the last train home and opted to take my chances on a late-night taxi. Not that security was the issue – far from it, especially in a society such as Japan. The problem was that at those hours, the price was generally twice the meter, or more. Luckily I had a friendly driver (a former trucker from the North) who’d taken pity on me as a ‘poor gaijin’ in Yen-rich Tokyo, and, despite having to stop along the way for me to get rid of the questionable meal, he not only didn’t double the meter but gave a considerable discount.
This stood in stark contrast to a driver we’d encountered in Seoul. He’d started the ride with the meter on and functioning properly, then waited until we were nearly midway into a long, dark, and very polluted tunnel before announcing that the meter was broken. Oh, and the new price would be about four times what we’d paid on the outbound ride. Rather than take our chances walking through the tunnel, I said nothing, then ordered him to drop us off at the US embassy, which was around the corner from our hotel. My friend Steve jumped out of the car and grabbed the attention of a well-armed Marine at the embassy gate, who came over right in time to see me paying the standard fare (what’s right is right) to the driver. Knowing his scam had backfired this time, the cabbie walked away muttering words that I am quite certain were not an invitation for dinner.
This story notwithstanding, taxicab drivers are largely an honest bunch. Though depending on whom you catch and when, some are more willing than others to take liberties with standards.
A driver in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad, still the USSR) once refused to depart for the airport until we’d paid him in hard currency – then proceeded to go into the hotel lobby and purchase a bottle of vodka in the dollar store. Said bottle was open before the car was in gear, and its contents hardly intact by the time we’d (scarily) reached the terminal.
Perhaps it’s Communism that’s driving cabbies to drink. Last summer in Cuba, our late-night ride to the airport was an adventure of dark country roads, flashes of lightning, and bass beats of “I Like to Move It” as we swerved all over the highway.
Music and Communism mixed questionably for me on a rainy Saturday morning in Guangzhou. Late for my flight, I stupidly encouraged the driver with an added gratuity to get us to the airport ASAP. Red lights be damned, we were curbside in less than ten minutes – ten of the more disturbing minutes in my lifetime, techno music blaring loudly and increasing in both volume and intensity as the cab would pick up speed.
Thoughts of impending peril weren’t so much racing through my mind on the cliffside drive from Fira to Oia in Greece’s idyllic island of Santorini – I was having far too good a time. Some of the fun came at the expense of one of our traveling mates, whose multiple phobias were kicking in on this hairpin-laden drive of stunning vistas. “I wonder if anyone has ever died on this drive,” I wondered out loud. Stan was cringing. “Oh yes, many people,” retorted the driver, sending Stan into the fetal position, eyes shut until the vehicle was firmly in ‘park’ once again.
But I’ve digressed. Cabbies are an honest bunch, I was saying.
A Bangkok tuktuk driver, upon hearing my destination, looked up at the sun and gave a firm “no” – apparently the heat of the hour, combined with expected traffic, didn’t fit into his plan for the day.
A cyclo (rickshaw) man in Nha Trang, who’d probably suffered more than his lot in life but continued the battle nobly nonetheless, leaned over to me at one point, looked around to make sure inquiring ears were out of range, and whispered, “communism is a terrible thing.”
And, more domestically, a cab driver picking us up at the Minneapolis airport showed his disgust for the low fare (we’d parked our car at a property less than 10 minutes from the terminal) by saying he had to get a “scumbag ticket” from the dispatcher, so that he could take us to our nearby destination and reclaim his place in line.
Years later I headed off such a potential insult in Milan (where surely it would have included multiple hand, arm, and facial gestures) by acknowledging the “problema” I was creating and tipping in advance to get to an airport hotel whose driver was on siesta.
At least he knew where the hotel was. A Hong Kong cabbie had no idea what we were talking about – even when we wrote it out – when we asked to be delivered to the newly constructed JW Marriott. Only after some radio communications with colleagues, enunciating each syllable in a pseudo-Cantonese “Ma-li-Oh” did he finally get confirmation of the location.
He could have done worse, with a pair of just-got-into-towners. Such was the scam at Prague’s central train station, where cabbies in solidarity were asking for – no, demanding – five times the appropriate fare. We finally phoned friends who arranged for a car service to take us at a fraction of the price.
My best taxi experiences have come in Scotland. At Glasgow’s bus terminal on a rainy evening, in a taxi queue that was emptying slower than a new bottle of ketchup, I was chatting it up with a local couple who’d just flown back from their honeymoon. Not only did they insist that I take their cab when it finally arrived, the woman held the door open while her new hubby helped with my suitcase. In other locales this could have had the makings of a scam, but in Glasgow it was absolutely genuine.
An Edinburgh cabbie was taking me a short distance to a hotel – he took pity on (as opposed to taking advantage of) the fact that I was new in town, flight delayed, and was unclear as to how to navigate the way especially at night, giving a cheerful “if these wheels are turnin’, that means I’m earnin’.” Pity the poor lad, as we then hit something in the street that punctured a tire. His priority? Finding me another driver so that I wouldn’t be delayed any longer, and then refusing to take any money.
And our hired driver in Grenada, after having to make a diversion to retrieve his cell phone which had somehow gotten lost along the way of our island tour, made up for the delay by buying us some bananas alongside the road – delicious with the nutmeg still fresh in our hands from the previous stop.
So despite the adventures, I make sure to tip cabbies well. Theirs can be a thankless job, that much time facing all sorts of demanding and upset passengers while having to negotiate traffic and terrain.
It’s good karma. You just might be a cabbie in the next life.
