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"When you're driving a yellow cab through New York City's streets at night, sometimes you see your life in the bright lights and shadows - those you loved and those who died reflected in the streets.
"Driving in New York at night behind the wheel of a yellow cab with your cheap old radio on the dash and cassettes rattling round - Ginsburg and Gandhi - and a blue and white Greek take-out coffee cup and the New York Post."
When you've driven a cab through the good and the bad then you've seen life anew, the false and the true. You’ve lined up for the shape with your mates, white, black, yellow and brown, dollar bills in their hands: “here’s your trip sheet and keys. The cabs over there by the broken down fence, the one with the dents. Please take care”.
Now the sun's nearly gone and the sky's turning gold and the air is alive with ice fire flies. They twist in the hard frozen wind in your face an embrace of incredible silver and lace and the people sway by. Fur coats and smiles yellow cab’s on the prowl in the rhythm of Saturday night.
Sweeping up over the hill with the blond in the back her eyes wide, hair pulled back. Manhattan’s a mountain of steel and gold light in the crisp freezing night fills her with fright and delight at the end of her flight. An indigo sky and a pale crescent moon then a man in a cap takes her bags.
It's almost midnight there's a shining red light and the night's full of snowflakes and fear when your life seems unclear. He stares at your face through the glass all splattered in grime and the ice and the slime: “I'll wipe you down for a dime”. In a couple of sweeps your life comes into view. In a couple of weeks this man could be you. “Here's a dollar my friend - please take care”.
On the lower east side a man hails a ride with a punk by his side. He's as high as a kite. “Take me to one-forty-two just off Broadway and wait!”. Is this your night for fate? “There's money in it for you”. The man slams the door. Leaves the punk in the back. And your heart's in your throat. And he trudges off into the gloom.
A rock-a-billy boy says he's from Illinois plays guitar in a bar and he’s traveling far. “I can play all the hits while the people get lit, make two-hundred and tips. Never seen this before. You can stop the cab here. My bed's over there. Under the Manhattan Bridge”.
Been ten hours or more when the body gets sore when a ghost appears over there in a silver wheel chair, his ankles are bare and the snow's drifting down and the car’s swishing past, how long can he last? “Here please take a coin my friend – please take care”. And my radio's on and I’m singing along and now it's time for the news.
It's quarter-past four, can't believe what you saw you're going home to your wife is this your real life? More than ten thousand cabs on these Manhattan streets, ten thousand stories make you laugh make you weep and you’ve just heard a few. And the sky's turning red and you’re going to bed, in six hours you're be back and half beat, please take care.
Poetic. It captures some of the rhythm of driving a taxi. But nothing I know of can fully do that. The book has yet to be written. I drove for more than eight years at night over a 40 year span, beginning in 1974 and ending in 2012. I was in the Old Tammany Hall for the last meeting of the Taxi Drivers Union when the mafiosi "sold us out for a dime," destroying the union and bringing out horse-hiring again. I saw the advent of the black radio cats, and the coming of Uber and Lyft. I'll never drive again. In fact I'll never return to New York. But like you, I will never forget coming down the Harlem River Drive in a brand new Checker cab, at 3 a.m. under a full moon, with WRVR playing "Harlem River Drive". Thanks for the memories.
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ReplyDeleteHighly evocative piece. The rhythms really evoke the constant circulation through the night city with snatched impressions of strangers' lives. Conjures up one my favorite movies, "Collateral".
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