I’ve moved around, a lot. Not kicked around, just trying to find some dirt that was my own, and mebbe some puzzled hands for this jigsaw heart. And in all of that highwaying, i found that, no matter the burg i plopped down in, i could get a job driving a taxi.
The organization of them all was pretty much the same – quite loose, and almost exclusively cash. Plus i’m good at talkin, and a very good driver (very good). It’s a job rife with and propped up by grift, deals, timing, and adaptability. It’s a gypsy joint, and i probably have half a million miles under my hack belt as a result.
My taxi was almost a rolling haven, i kept it clean and smelling good – burning Palo Santo and Nag Champa ( but just barely), and keeping the cassette deck fed with Billie Holliday, or the Replacements, The Ramones, the Risky Business soundtrack, or the half Tribe Called Quest/Redman slab. i had it covered, i thought.
When it was just me, or my bestest regulars, it’d be Ani DiFranco, or Willie & Waylon, or The Dead, or some cobbled together mix from bands and folk that i knew – from Gainesville, or Morgantown, or Denton, and sometimes Roanoke. In the daytime, there was always the latest issue of SPIN on the back seat.
And i had this on the dashboard.
An older black woman who’d soon become a regular finally asked me about it after the 4th or 5th trip. Most folks didn. Now, there was a St Christopher sticker on my clapboard, a wee pic of Ganesha tucked into my Hack License, and my call sign (“Alamo”) plate, too, but few saw that from the back seat.
She rode in the front. She had to.
Even though Taxi etiquette should always keep the rider in the back seat. Don’t think that they want you up there. They do not. Like the bartender, like the stripper. They do not.
I’d take her to and from dialysis 3–4 times a week, and she just wanted to ride with me. So much so that her daughter would skip the dispatch and become one of the riders who’d call me directly on my cell phone. My cell/bag phone. $200 a month and as big as a pack of hot dog buns AND a pack of hot dogs, but worth it.
But i digress.
We’d wrangle her wheelchair up to my Crown Vic, and she’d whip out this well-polished (but wheel-less) skateboard and slide across it to the seat. Then i’d fold her chair and tuck it behind mine. She’d cronch her soft ice.
And she always asked me when i was gonna get a Pete Fountain tape, and she was surprised that i knew who Pete Fountain was. She’d tell Jesus to ride with me while she was plugged in, so that i’d be the one to come get her.
“So, why is it a ghost Jesus?”
I knew exactly what she was asking about. “Well, it ain’t Jesus” i explained.
“Well,” she drew it out, diving for a taunt, “who in the shit else would be in a robe on a dashboard, watchin us?”
“That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi” i offered, not looking at her. “A Jedi Knight.”
Not even a pause from her. She was primed when she got in. She’d been planning this one. “Mmm Hmmm. A Knight. What’s he do?”
And i told her, of course,
“The jedi are guardians of peace in the galaxy. Obi-Wan is just a cool one of them. But he was struck down by Darth Vader. And, when that happened, Obi-Wan still had the determination to be a Jedi Knight, so his obligation to the greater good kept him around, but kind of like a ghost.”
And you’d better believe that i said that with a straight face.
“Mmm hmmm. That sounds nice.” was all i got in return.
The trip was a short one, mileage-wise, but traffic could stretch out the time, and even with the immunity that taxi gives a white boy, i drove slowly through her neighbourhood. Seemed a bit longer this day.
It never came up again. She still asked jesus to ride with me, but now she’d say “you all”.
Predictably, her health went south, and i quit taking her, or her daughter, anywhere. and i never got a Pete Fountain cassette.
I still have this Obi-Wan, though.
