Driving Cab: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Driving Cab: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Drifting black clouds cover the deep white light of a full moon. I wolf down my burger and sip my Greyhound coffee as the clouds burst open and let the moon light escape. A flood of light bathes the Catholic Church across the street. Shrouded in the fog the moon bathed church is beautiful, the stonework, the stained glass windows, the red tiled roof. It breaks the monotony of the early forties architecture of this section of San Pablo. It strikes a cord of Europe, of knights and dragons, and beautiful young maidens.

I get out of my cab to view the church more closely. How many hours have I spent here looking at the church? I ask myself. Daylight when even during the week people climb the wide stairs in twos and threes or by themselves. Often waiting at the curb after the service for a car to pick them up. Sometimes waving for a cab. Twilight, the pigeons returning to roost. Shadows of black falling over the steps. Hurrying Catholics disappearing through closed doors. Traffic speeding homeward out of the city. Dark time, the high wooden doors locked tightly from the troubled night people. No sound or light escaping into the street. The stonework itself standing sentinel.

Not a soul on San Pablo as I finish my coffee and return to my cab. I climb inside just in time to get a radio order for the phone. There are seven or eight cabs waiting for phone girls when I pull into line. There are five drivers gathered around the first out cab. I check out the other cabs, but there is no sign of Ralph. I join the drivers at the first out cab just as the girls start arriving. Back at my cab, I luck out with four phone girls heading to Berkeley.

Three pile into the back and the fourth climbs in up front and hands me the voucher. As I pull away from the curb, and into the right hand lane, a black and white pulls along side. The driver wearing shiny lieutenant bars on his collar is pointing at his hat. I look at him for several seconds before I realize what he’s telling me. I grab my hat from under the seat and slam it on my head. The lieutenant smiles and drives away.

“Why did he do that,” the longhaired slender Berkeley looking girl up front asks.

The girls in back pause in their discussion of tonight’s gossip. “If you don’t have your hat on it’s a distress signal. I guess he was checking it out. He may’a thought I was in trouble,” I tell the girl up front.

“How could he think that of a car load of phone girls,” from one of the girls in back.

“Guess he was new. I got stopped a couple weeks ago wid a girl up in Tilden Park. She was from Fruitvale. Lives up in the hills above the Warren Freeway. A park ranger put on his lights and pulled us over. It was pitch black. I don’t know how he could see dat I didn’t have my cap on. He had his red light flashing and the whole bit. The girl said the same thing. ‘How’s a phone girl going to hurt you?’”

“Well, I certainly can understand him stopping you up there,” one of the women in back says. I turn on to the Warren Freeway, remove my hat, and slide it back under the seat.

“How come if driving without a hat is a distress signal, most drivers drive without their hats like you are doing now,” the girl up front asks.

“Mostly, it’s jus’ fallen out of use. Most cops don’t bother to stop you anymore ‘cause most drivers don’t wear dere hats. Once in awhile a new cop ‘ll pull you over. When I first started driving a couple years ago, I got stopped pretty often. One night I got stopped by dis rookie cop in East Oakland. It’s pretty funny, now when I think about it, but it was scary back then.

“It was a really dark foggy winter night. Cold and damp. I picked up this middle aged, middle class white woman at de airport. I was a little miffed ‘cause I ‘d been at the ‘Port for over an hour and she was only going to somewhere above MacAruther, a four dollar trip. I figured I’d get her home as fast as I could and dead head back to de ‘Port. I’m speeding down San Leandro. I slow down to make my cut off at Sixty First Avenue. You know, dere’s nothing but vacant lots and factories. All the streetlights are shot out or broken. The fog is so thick dat my headlights barely cut through it. I can see about two car lengths ahead as I turn on to Sixty-First. I’m doing about ten miles an hour. I jam on the gas to get back up to speed, and catch sight of this black and white with red light flashing. He’s got this little red spot’s car pulled over. I wonder if they have some black dude cornered down here. I turn my head and give a long hard look,” I tell the girl and turn my head to illustrate.

“More likely they have a police officer ambushed,” from one of the women in back. “Did you read in the Trib.? The black militants are drawing the state police off the Nemitz. They speed past them and lure them off into the East Oakland streets. Then, they open fire. Machine guns and everything…”

“My eyes and the eyes of the cop meet for a second.” I continue ignoring the woman in back. “It couldn’t have been more than a thousandth of a second. When I look in the rear view mirror, he’s running for his car. He peels out and burns rubber all the way through his U. The red light is flashing and he’s bearing down on me. I jam on my brakes and at the same time realize that I’m not wearing my hat. I make a frantic grab under my seat, rip it out and pull it down over my ears as I slide to the curb. I jump out of my cab and walk towards the black and white. I can hear his shaking voice on the radio. He’s saying something about a cab driver in distress and giving our location for back up. He looks up, sees me, and realizes his mistake. He cancels his call for other units as I walk up to his open window. I can see that he’s more than a little up set with me. There’s not a sound on the street but de purring of our engines and the cop’s heavy breathing. He takes a couple of gulps and begins chewing me out.

“’You know there’s a fifty dollar fine for driving without your hat. You are putting your life, my life, my partner’s life, and the life of your fares in jeopardy,’ he tells me.

“ I explain dat I had been sitting at the airport for a couple of hours, had taken off my hat and forgot to put it back on. He tells me he should write me up for all the trouble I caused, but says he’ll let me go this time if I promise to wear my hat even when I’m sitting on the stand. I give him my solemn promise and he lets me go. His partner tells me how lucky I am that he let me off so easy, and so did my fare when I told her the story.”

The girl up front laughs and says, “Well, I’ll bet after all that you wore your hat for awhile.”

“No, I only wore it until I dropped the girl off. Dat’s the funny part. I decided to take one deep East order before deadheading back to the ‘Port. De radio had been calling for cabs deep East all night. I got a call for East Fourteenth. I’m racing toward it when I see my rookie friend coming around de corner. I grabbed my hat, jammed it on, and left it on my head the rest of the night,” I tell the girl as we both laugh.