Wednesday
It's a funny thing, driving a cab. You do it, but you don't think about it. You're better off if you don't think about it too much. But people keep asking... "I bet you've got a lot of stories...". Well, not at first I didn't. I drive in Oakland, CA. The dayshift is largely old ladies... going to the beauty shops, and the doctor's offices... but there're plenty of lunatics that slip through... Yeah, I guess I've collected some stories over the years. But, is it anything that the public wants to hear? It's not usually Hollywood style happy endings... It's usually gritty bits of weirdness... and if people really enjoyed that sort of stuff, then we'd all be down in the trenches, rolling along the avenues in cabs, risking our lives in search of amusing anecdotes... despite the fact that any city police force's Intro. Course for a new cab driver points out that it is the most dangerous job in the country. Period. More dangerous than being a cop, or a fireman, or even a fucking 7-11 night manager. It is the most dangerous job in the country. That's not to say it doesn't have its
share of amusements.
Like, car crashes. Now, I know what everyone reading this is thinking... 'You sick puppy, there's nothing funny about a car crash. It's a very serious thing, an issue that needs to be addressed, something needs to be done about them, yada yada yada...' Yeah, maybe you're right. But I don't think so. I've laughed at plenty. I remember one morning, it was another of those slow, idyllic Oakland Sunday mornings. I was sitting downtown at a BART station. Not to say that there was much point to that, since it was about 7:30 in the morning, and BART doesn't start running until 8 on Sundays. It was just a place to sit and read. Needless to say, when an order came up on the radio, I jumped at it. It was just around Lake Merritt. No sweat. I don't remember where exactly I was going, I just remember rounding the lake, and then seeing it. Right there, in the number 3 lane of the 13th St. bend into East Oakland, was a car... on it's side. "Uhhh..." was all I could say. I mean, it's one thing to see a
car on it's side, and rescue workers all over the place rescuing, and police
sirens blocking off traffic, and fireman idly swinging their hoses in preparation...
screaming victims bleeding all over the place... gawking bystanders laying
odds on someone or other's chances of survival...
This car, on the other hand, was just... there. It was calm, serene... like it was exactly where God had intended it to be. Except, it was on its side. Not even its roof, its side... parked in its own special way right in the middle of the lane. There was no smoke. There were no flames. It looked perfectly fine, except for the fact that it wouldn't've gotten much traction with no wheels touching the ground. I just slowed down, and gawked. There was no sign of any woe-begone owners trying to figure out what to do... no sign of any police trying to figure out how to tow it away for blocking a lane of traffic... just the sound of the seagulls squawking around the lake, looking for fish. So I shrugged, and drove on. And I just laughed.
Then there are the cars that somehow wind up hopped up onto the medians and other assorted traffic control islands. There's nothing quite as satisfying, once you've gotten past the traffic back-up they cause, as watching a tow-truck driver scratching his head while he tries to figure out just how he's gonna hook up the car of some idiot whose car's undercarriage is hung up on the broken stump of a decorative island-tree. Sometimes you even get to see 18 wheelers that've managed to get hung up on an island while trying to get into a shopping center to deliver string beans or rhododendrons or whatever it might be. Of course, all of these fun-loving sights draw the police and other authorities... but they're usually casual affairs. On the other hand, the afternoon when I drove by the lake and spotted a car that'd somehow managed to drive into the lake... well it was a mighty formal looking affair. It looked like it was a Cadillac, though I suppose it must not've been quite new enough to have the 'Northstar' system, or whatever the superior handling system thingie is called. Of course, it was hard to tell, glancing at it through the crowds of motorcycle cops, firemen, and EMTs... not to mention all the gawkers. But then again, who can blame the gawkers? On a nice sunny, warm day, what could be better than taking a stroll around the lake and maybe watching as the rescue boys try to figure out how to pull a car that's deep enough in the lake that you can't even see the side mirrors? Come to think of it, I would've liked to have been there to watch the tow truck driver scratch his head wondering how he was gonna hook that one up. And, of course, there're the evenings when I'm driving someone home from the BART train stations, cruising up Fruitvale, for instance... and glancing out of the corner of my eye (to watch for motorcycle cops with nothing better to do than hang out by the side of the road with radar guns, don't you know), when I suddenly spot a small crowd gathering around a car that's crashed through the front window of a Kragen. "I guess he found himself a good parking place..." was all I could say to that. "Yeah, must've just happened too, there still ain't no cops around." agreed my fare that night.
I was just sitting there, third cab in the line, smoking yet another cigarette. I was just minding my own business, trying to figure out what the lazy tongued drunk dispatcher was mumbling over the radio, when I suddenly heard a nasty grating crunching grinding god-awful noise. "Hmm?" I remember wondering, and for some reason I checked my cigarette to make sure it wasn't making the noise. I guess all the advertising saying how evil they are is starting to get to me... Needless to say, it wasn't my cigarette. But, as I stared at the cigarette, I caught sight of a fountain of sparks cruising by the window along the street. The sun was just starting to set, which made it all the more beautiful, except of course, for that goddamned gravelly grinding thunder that was coming along with it. "Hmm, that don't seem right..." I thought to myself. So, what do I do? I lean my head out my open window to do a double take. What the hell? It didn't sound like a gunfight. No, it wasn't a gunfight at all. It was just a guy in a pick-up, with a boat on a trailer... with only one wheel! The one wheel seemed to be rolling along nicely enough, but meanwhile the end of the axle nearest me was just dragging along the street and throwing up a shower of sparks maybe four feet high in its wake. "Hmm... I hope dude doesn't have far to go like that..." I thought to myself. It was another second or two before I spotted a wheel bouncing through traffic on its way to the other side of the street. "Ohh good, he does have another wheel..." I couldn't help muttering. Dude made it about another 20 yards up the street before realizing that something was wrong and pulling over. Ignoring the fact that the rear corner of his boat was still blocking a third of the right lane, he made a quick round of the car and the trailer to figure out what'd gone wrong. Meanwhile, the errant wheel bounced off the bumper of a car in the far lane of the oncoming traffic and spun up onto the far sidewalk. I just laughed. The cabbie next behind me in line seemed to be amused too, as he got out to come up to my car and asked "Can you believe this?" I just shrugged, "Sure, why not?" Meanwhile, dude seemed to have spotted his wheel. It'd bounced up onto the sidewalk, but rather than fall over it'd made another go at spinning back into traffic. Another car hit it a glancing blow though, which knocked it back onto the sidewalk where it finally fell over and lay. I couldn't hear dude swearing over the blaring horns of the traffic trying to work its way around the protruding boat and trailer, but he had to be. Meanwhile, across the street, an older guy looked down at the tire that'd suddenly jumped up and fallen over in front of him, and then looked over at dude. And then he smiled, like the same thing'd happened to him back in the day. "What happened?" asked the cabbie next to me. "Mmm, looks like dude lost his wheel..." I guessed, pointing at the wheel across the street. Dude was making his way across the street by now, aided by the fact that so many cars were having to stop to figure out what the fuck was causing all the nearby cars to stop. The old guy on the other side of the street was a real helpful sort too. By the time dude made it across the street, the old guy had picked up the tire for him... and he even helped him roll it back across the street. I just watched, as the two of them paused for a minute in the double double yellow lined island in the middle of the very, very busy San Leandro St. They were patient, chatting casually as they waited for a break in the now chaotic traffic for their chance to get across. "Maybe they know each other?..." suggested the other cabbie, who, now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure if I'd ever seen before. "Maybe... maybe the old guy's just got some tips about what went wrong... Maybe same thing happened to him before." I suggested. "I doubt that." answered my new friend. "Yeah, I see your point." I admitted, somewhat reluctantly. Hell, I'd never even heard of something like that happening. Unless I count the time a friend of mine was driving over the Richmond bridge and one of the wheels of his big beat-up 4x4 pick-up fell off and he went sliding along the guard railing for a quarter mile before the truck finally decided to slide to a stop rather than go over the edge. "Then again, maybe he has seen that sort of thing happen before..." By the time dude and his new friend had gotten back to the trailer, a fare hopped into my car. I don't remember where they went. I just remember that dude was still working away, trying to get that wheel back on, by the time I got back. Come to think of it, he was still at work on it an hour later, when I last saw him...
Looking back on it, I can only think of what another fare said the other day. I'd picked him up on an obscure street off 38th Ave., and I was turning onto another side street to wind my way to the freeway, when a lady came flying down the narrow street at 40 miles an hour or so... all dude said was "We're in Oakland."
I can still remember that shower of sparks sliding by.
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