Freaky Weirdness

I think it's safe to say that I'm not what most would describe as the typical cab driver. Number one, I am "the best cab driver EVER." Two, I hear enough horror stories from passengers about other cab drivers whose rude behavior, foul attitudes, and questionable driving skills have left them with elevated blood pressures. Unfortunately some of those other hacks drive for the same company, so I often find myself apologizing to the customer for the dud they got before. Three, I speak English.

I'm a nice guy; it even says so on my personal calling card. I don't know if so many other cab drivers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East or Africa are just plain unfriendly, or if their lack of a full grasp of English makes them reticent and therefore seemingly rude, or worse, if the language barrier has caused so much rude treatment from passengers that they no longer give a shit any more. All I know is that, as a taxi passenger I experienced such a lack of service at times that I had to shake my head. When I started driving a cab, I got it into my head that I would never treat passengers like baggage and, so far, I think — I hope — I haven't wavered from that.

Little Old Ladies and Fair Damsels
Good news: one of my passengers is in love with me. Bad news: she's 83 years old.

Early on in my cab-driving career I picked up Rose. The instructions for her fare, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are fairly particular: no phone calls, no mini-vans, "must be on time-SHE HAS TO MAKE IT TO DIALYSIS!!" The first time I picked her up — at 4:00am — she stood on her walk just outside her door and apologized for her slow speed, and commented that she had suffered a mild stroke some months before, and still had some difficulty walking, and she didn't see in the dark so well. So I walked to her and offered her my arm. Every time since then (I have missed a few, getting sent by the dispatcher on other calls before I could position myself in Rose's zone in time to get her fare from the computer) it has been the same scenario. I pull into the driveway of the house where she lives with her daughter, positioning the car where she has the least distance to walk. She is always, ALWAYS waiting at the front door for her cab and is often already making her way down the driveway by the time I get to her and offer my arm.

Few of the other cab drivers who have received the order for her fare have ever done that, but rather have just sat in their car and waited for her to get there. Others have helped her as I do, but, she says, those drivers have quit or otherwise disappeared.

Rose's is an extremely short ride; it's less than a mile from her home to the renal center where she has her dialysis done, and the fare is only $3.80. That pisses off most cab drivers. I go out of my way to make sure I get the call so that Rose is taken care of properly. She's Italian, and was delighted to learn that I am half Italian. She has promised to portion off some of her family's approaching holiday meal for me to take home with me, and she has told me I'm in her will! She has said to me repeatedly, "You are with god," or something like that, in answer to which I just bite my tongue and smile. It's not that I fear to upset her or that I don't want to start an argument, but rather that I fear she might be carrying a rolling pin in her bag. She might be a frail old woman, but she is Italian, so she probably has a few good swings in her, and, despite the macular degeneration, no doubt has excellent aim!

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This morning I had dropped off Rose at the renal center and made my way toward the shopping center where I normally sit and wait for the computer to assign me my rides, about 10 miles away to the northeast from Rose's renal center. Around 4:20am, perhaps not quite halfway there I was on a wide stretch of main arterial roadway approaching a pass beneath an interstate highway. There I saw a most peculiar thing: a car straddled the center dividing curb, its emergency flashers activated. As I neared the car the thought ran through my mind: How the fuck did you get THERE? The dividing curb is, at the very least, eight inches high. At the nearest intersections on either side of the bridge, the curb is much too wide for the car to straddle, so I had no clue how the car got there.

But then I realized the car was probably stuck. There were no emergency vehicles around, so I decided to stop, if only to make sure that the driver was unhurt and had called anyone for help. I pulled in front of the car and into the narrow end of the nearby left-turn lane, activated my emergency flashers, and got out of my cab.

As I approached the car, a very attractive young woman got out from the driver's side (into the opposite-direction traffic lane!) and approached me. She was holding her mobile phone to her ear and was frantic and near tears as she tried to explain to me what had happened.

After spending the evening in Chicago, she had driven a friend to his car at a nearby commuter train station in this far northwest suburb, and then headed toward home in a west suburb about 20 miles to the south. She told me she was simply exhausted (though she admitted having had a couple drinks early the evening before, I didn't smell any alcohol on her) and in unfamiliar territory. She made a left turn toward the underpass, but misread the intersection and started heading east in the westbound lanes. She had quickly realized her error and, thinking she could hop the median, she attempted to do so, and got hung up on it, with the underbelly of her car resting on the concrete shelf about two feet wide.

Jen, as she told me her name, didn't know what to do, so I helped her to calm down and told her she needed to call a towing company. She looked up the nearest on her internet-enabled mobile phone, and was told a truck would be there in about 30 minutes. She kept voicing her wish that we could just push the car to a point where her front tires could get traction, and she could just drive off, but I showed her that her driver's side rear-wheel wasn't even touching the ground. Unless the Incredible Hulk happened to drive by, there was no way we two were going to make that car budge.

I told her that, if a policeman happened to show up, she shouldn't tell him that she was "simply exhausted," but to just stick with the "unfamiliar territory" part because, even if her car was drivable, he probably wouldn't let her drive home if she was indeed that pooped. I then told her that I would stick around to wait with her and, if she couldn't drive the car home, I would take her.

Some passer-by must have reported an accident because, just as the tow truck arrived, so did no fewer than four cops: two Cook County Sheriff's deputies, one Illinois State Police trooper, and one local municipal cop! At first they believed there had been a crash, but after I told them, and then Jen told them that I had come along shortly after her mishap and offered to help her, I actually saw one of them gesture toward me and heard him tell her, "He's a nice guy."

See?

The young driver of the tow truck made his assessments, called his supervisor, made some more assessments, and determined that he didn't have the right kind of truck to get the car off the curb. The local cop called another towing service, and told us it would probably be another ten minutes until that one arrived.

After the deputies and the trooper left, the local cop stuck around to keep traffic clear of our area while we each waited in our cars for the tow truck. As I was in front of everyone, I noticed in my rear-view mirror that the cop was talking to Jen through her open driver's side window. He was fairly young, so I figured he was making time with the beautiful young Jen. Hell, I would've were I he. Him...?

A few minutes later I heard a soft knock on my window. It was the cop, telling me that he had instructed Jen to get in my cab after her car was squared away, and to have me take her home. I told him that I had already offered, and that I would cut her a break on the steep fare the trip would be, not wanting to take advantage of her, and all. At least not financially.... OOPAAHH!

He told me that she was to go home, and that if she told me to take her to her car, I was to call the police and let them know. Great. Conscripted snitch.

The flatbed tow truck driver arrived and within 15 minutes had Jen's car off of the median and on his truck. The cop said that the car was being taken to a nearby auto dealer where the tow truck driver would leave instructions for their service department to assess any damage to the undercarriage and make sure it was roadworthy.

Jen said that the cop had told her that if she directed me to where her car was taken, he would arrest her! The poor kid was embarrassed, exhausted yet certain she was okay to drive, and fearful of confronting her uncle and his wife, with whom she lives, the latter whom is the co-signer with Jen on the car loan.

I entered her address in my GPS and told her to just try to relax on the drive and maybe take a nap. However, on the way we got into a conversation. She's 25 years old, a student in her final year of a management degree at a local university. We got to talking about the suburb where she lives with her aunt and uncle, and I asked if she grew up there. She said, "No. I grew up in the south suburbs."

"Really?" I asked.

I grew up in the south suburbs, in a town so far south and to the edge of the same huge county that holds Chicago — Cook County — that when I mention Chicago Heights, I assume no one has heard of it, let alone knows where it is. So unless I'm talking with another south suburbanite, I simply refer to my childhood roots as "the south suburbs."

"I'm from the south 'burbs. Which one?"

She said it with the confidence of a long-lost child, certain no one was ever going to find her. "Chicago Heights."

It was our good fortune that we were stopped at a red light at the moment. In mild shock I slapped the steering wheel. "You're kidding me!"

"What? Why?"

"Did you go to Bloom [High School]?"

"Yes...?"

I reached my right arm back behind the passenger side front seat and offered my hand.

"What are you doing?!"

I couldn't find the word, "alumna" in my vocabulary, so all I blurted out was, "Alma Mater! That's my Alma Mater!"

It was her turn to be shocked. What a freaky, weird coincidence that she could be stranded so far from her home in so unfamiliar a place, and the one dude who comes to her rescue, himself so far removed from the place of his roots, is from her home town!

"Oh, wow! This is so strange!" She took my hand in hers, warm and soft, and squeezed gently.

We shared a few of our individual memories from "da Heights" — as it is not always affectionately referred to — and our mutual sadness at its slow demise, a once hale and hardy, thriving burg, now a dying patient withering away to skin and bones, pocked with sores and cancers and important things missing.

I got her home, charged her $25 for a $56 fare, in return for which she authorized a $30 charge on her debit card.

The incident ate up most of my morning, precious Monday hours ripe for airport rides for good money. But sometimes doing something nice for someone, or doing something for someone in need is worth more than any amount of money I could have made in those hours. Bonus that she was über-cute. Double bonus that we're homies!