Driving Cab: Chapter Nineteen

Driving Cab: Chapter Nineteen

At the check out stand, I nod to a couple of drivers and wait for my trip sheet. The hip looking black guy who carries a Bible with him comes in to the little shack. I eye up his beard, leather jacket, and short boots. He has his Bible with his clipboard. We say hello and talk about Monday nights and how slow it is at the end of the month. “That Miller you carry around. Is he any good?” he asks.

“Henry Miller? Yea, I’d guess he’s the best American writer living today. Best writer I ever read.”

“Yea, there’s another driver that reads him. He tells me that he’s very philosophical, spiritual in his writings.’

“I think there’s a lot of the same kind of stuff in his works as in the Bible. I’ve been meaning to ask you about your views on religion. Miller, I think, is very Christ like in a lot of ways.”

“Yea, well we’ll have to get together and talk. Maybe we’ll run into each other on the street tonight,” he tells me just as the check out man calls my number.

The man behind the bullet proof glass gives me a late again look with my waybill. I go off to look for my cab with my thoughts sill on the interview with Radar. What, I put my application in with the district office when I was still up in Willows? Dat’s right. I interviewed with the superintendent during Easter vacation. I remember that I didn’t hear a thing from them until almost two years later. It was last November that I got the letter from the Cal-State placement office notifying me of the vacancy for a continuation high school position in San Leandro. I set up the appointment with Rader wondering if I really wanted to take the job. When I drove in the November rain to his office, I was still wondering. It’s an all white middle class conservative district. Shit we’d have to live in Hayward or nearby. We couldn’t find a duller place. You’re getting involved with the Peace Movement in Walnut Creek, getting to know Oakland and Berkeley. Why get tied up in the same kind of district that you left in Willows? I asked myself.

And in another part of my mind, I remembered running in the pouring rain across the Claremont Hotel parking lot. I took off my blue National Guard raincoat and brushed the water off my wrinkled dress pants. I found the real estate office and hesitated in front of the clear glass door. I eyed the expensive furniture and watched the water drip from my raincoat to the deep blue carpet. A young sharp looking secretary led me to Mr. Keller’s inner office. He explained that they have their own school, that I could attend the classes at night as soon as I paid the five hundred dollar tuition. No need to quit my present job. Lot’s of ex-teachers selling real estate. Handsome profits to be made. A business with a future. I’m too embarrassed to tell him that I haven’t a penny for tuition. I stammered that I would think about it and backed my way out the door stumbling over my feet as the secretary waved good-bye. You gotta land dis job. You gotta land dis job, this part of my mind told me.

I parked my Buick a half block from the school and gave thanks that the rain had stopped. As I walked up the wide steps of the nineteen thirties high school, I wondered if I should search out a restroom and comb my hair. I glanced at my watch and saw that I was seven minutes late already. It was quiet and dark in the halls. Most of the lights were out to conserve energy. I eyed the drab dark brown walls and thought of the bleakness of my own public schools. A wave of fear and self-doubt engulfed me as I peeked into an open room. A couple of high school boys stared at me and challenged my right to intrude. Dey might be my students in another week, I was thinking. My footsteps echoed through the empty halls as I followed the arrow to the main office. An elderly gray haired spinster directed me to the principal’s den around the corner.

When I opened the door to answer his, “Come in,” my heart dropped to my feet. He was an exact replica of my junior high school principal, Mr. Gilbert. The same bushy eyebrows over dark horned rim glasses, the same protruding nose, the same dark suit jacket and black tie, the same hefty paunch, the same commanding voice. I was as frightened as a schoolboy. I didn’t see the man who sat before me. I was in the principal’s office. What did I do? What’s gonna happen to me ? ran through my mind.

I sat in front of Mr. Rader like a frightened child as he made a couple light introductory remarks. “What special qualities do you have that will make you a good continuation high teacher?” he asked.

I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to answer him. I didn’t even know what subject matter I would be teaching. I only knew that I would be teaching a ninth grade class. The seconds rolled by as I groped for something to say. I pictured some of the dropouts I met at the job-corps camp outside of Willows. I pictured faces from my remedial eighth grade class. The memory of a confrontation with a big dumb junior at a high school in Pittsburgh flashed through my mind. I thought how difficult it was to work with the remedial students there.

“Well, what do you have to offer us? What makes you think you can teach at our high school?” he asked with a slight show of impatience in his voice.

“Ahhh…. Well, I guess my best quality as a ahhh teacher is de way I relate to kids,” I told Rader, and paused for a second to look at the wall behind his desk. The bookcase was filled with darkly bound books on the theory of education, and green bound district directives. “I grew up in the same kind of environment dat most of dese kids come from. I worked at de same kind’a jobs dat dere parents work at, de same kind’a jobs dat they’ll have to work at .You know, factory jobs, non-skilled laboring, I think I can really get into what dey’re feeling. Really communicate wid dem. I mean, I come from the same lower working class background dat most a dese kids come from. I think I can really get into what dey’re feeling. I know jus’ where dey’re coming from,” I said and looked at he small round hole that had suddenly appeared in the sole of my shoe.

“Why those kids would eat you alive in the classroom,” Rader said in answer to my long pause. “You can’t even look me in the eye. You look over my head or down at your feet. You don’t show a spark of enthusiasm. How can you provoke any interest in your students if you are not enthusiastic yourself? Even Mr. Shields in the district office could see your lack of projection and he’s been out of the classroom for twelve years. He marked on your application,” Rader said shifting his eyes to my file at the side of his desk, ‘Some question as to how he would perform in a classroom situation.’ I can tell by the way that you relate to me that he was right.”

He looked to my file and back to me. “Your papers showed that you resigned from your last position in Willows. Why I can just imagine. You must have been miserable there.”

“No, that’s not why I left Willows,” I whispered to myself.