On the Road Again

It felt like a cross between a surreal experience and an up-front perspective for reality TV.  I was at the garage, and getting handed the keys to a cab, and walking out to the lot to initialize my meter.

It'd been a while ... like twenty-two years.

But, as they say, you never forget how to ride a bike.

Then it was out onto Northern Boulevard at 3:30 in the afternoon and after a few blocks, catching the ramp for the Queensboro Bridge's upper level.  It felt good, in an odd way, to be taking the wheel of a cab again.  Hey, I had done it!  I listened to the hum of the four tires on the bridge as the Manhattan skyline got larger and still larger.  Then the illusion of the open road fell away and I exited, swinging sharply eastward along 59th Street, stopping at the light so very briefly and keeping an eye out for fares and, seeing not one, pacing my way up First Avenue.  Just like old times.

For some reason I had expected to get a fare right away, and I didn't, and that was good because I didn't really want to.  I just wanted to glide around for a bit, like a Sunday driver, and it was a Sunday, July 1. Even before crossing the bridge I'd told myself I would take the day on the slow side.  I didn't care how much money I made.  I just wanted to experience the whole thing again, to get safely through the shift and see how long I could comfortably drive before my body tired.  Even when I was a medallion driver all those years earlier, I'd have to really push myself whenever I came back after taking a month off from the job -- bringing along several candy bars to be ready to deal with my body when it started to shake within five or six hours.

It took me several blocks to find a passenger, a guy who'd just bought an air conditioner at one of the large home-appliance stores.  He hoped we'd be able to store the box in the trunk, but I couldn't figure out how to spring it open -- my garage hadn't shown me the basics of the vehicle (having focused instead on my knowing the meter and information box), and that'd plague me for the first hours of the shift.  Fortunately, the guy said, "No problem, I'll just slip it in next to me on the back seat."

He lived in Queens so we headed right back across the bridge and then a long, long way up 21st Street, crossing Broadway, crossing Astoria Boulevard, going under the swift road to the Triborough Bridge.  Arriving, I told him the fare total and got ready to take his cash.  But moments passed and I realized he was processing his credit card in the back.  This was a new experience for me.  We hadn't had that facility in the 1980s.    Then my info box showed it was validated and I pressed the "C" on the panel, completing the deal.

I lucked out on the next fare, picking up a guy just a few streets down, who wanted back to Manhattan, near St. Patrick's Cathedral.

So there it was -- I was back into the mode.  One fare after another.  Not too fast, not too slow. 

Second Avenue sloped down through Midtown like it always had.  Swinging downtown through Times Square was a little different -- gentrified, infested with pedestrian malls, trying to look like social-democratic Europe when in fact being the hotspot of runaway capitalism -- in any case, I could deal with it.  The history of Times Square was a succession of changes.  Look at the old movies, you'll see, Camel cigarettes' smoke-ring and all. 

I got through the first two hours.  I was proud of myself.  In the fourth hour I pulled over and found a spot at a taxi stand near the Dil E Punjab Deli, at 170 9th Avenue.  I was looking forward to this, I had staked out the place; it was a hangout, and a respectable one, for Indian-Pakistani-Bangladeshi cab drivers, taking a break from their hacking while in Chelsea.  It was a nice meal.  Three vegetables, rice, bread, a little sweet and a beverage --highly recommended! -- and I ate it at my leisure standing up.

A driver there showed me how to work most of the interior instruments of my cab, so, like other drivers, I now could get the lights on and handle the essentials.  Some forty-five minutes later another hack pulled alongside me and asked me if I was aware my off-duty light was on.  I wasn't.  I must have screwed up the works when I had first tried to put on my night lights.  I hadn't noticed a fall-off in fares, but I was grateful for the help.

Six hours into the job my body still felt good.

For a while during the evening, things slowed.  I went down Seventh Avenue, across Christopher and up Eighth without a fare.  Then I did it again, and the second time around a black guy hailed me on Christopher near Eighth. 

"Will you go uptown," he asked.

"I'll go anywhere you want," I said.  "Where exactly do you want to go?"

"I wanna go to East Harlem," he said, and after a slight hesitation asked, "How much will it cost?"

"I don't know," I said, and didn't, having not made the trip in two decades, at a time when the fare rate was a lot different.  "You probably know it better than I do.  The cost will be whatever the meter shows."

"All you drivers are the same," he said.  "If I don't know what it'll cost, how can I know if I can pay for it.  You all just want to set me up to rip me off."

"I can't help you there," I said.  "Would you like to get out here?"  If so, you don't owe me anything."

He stared at me, got out and slammed the door shut.  Nothing broke, so that was that. 

My next fare was another black man.  He wanted a midtown hotel and was a model passenger.  That was good.  I didn't want to play hard with my racial psychology too early in my return to hacking.

I put in the hours and it was just basic work all the way through.  Everything considered, things were a bit tame, nothing like the edginess of the '80s, but I knew my observations were still premature.

In my ninth hour I got a long, long ride out to Queens.  Three people, with one bringing the other two home before we got to her address.  It was a hefty fare -- about $65 -- and I was worried she'd pay me with a credit card.  Anything over $25 meant they'd have to sign a receipt, and I hadn't done that yet and wondered if I knew how.  No worry, she paid in cash, with a nice tip.

Already being in Queens and in my tenth hour of a maximum twelve-hour shift, I decided to call it a night.  I got back to the vicinity of my garage and gassed up the cab -- $35 right outta my pocket.

Then to my garage, printing out my totals and handing them in, and settling accounts with the dispatcher.  If I figured things correctly, I made only $100 on the night, less than I thought I had.

Still, I wasn't disappointed.  Things had gone smoothly.  I got the subway back to the West Village and stopped in at my neighborhood bar for a nightcap, where Greg, the bartender on duty, treated me well.