When I was 8, my family went to New York over spring break. We flew Delta, on a red-eye, so I think I slept most of the way.
We landed at JFK and my dad hailed a cab to take us to our hotel. I think the driver reminded me of George Burns because he looked to be about 90 years old and smoked pungent, juicy cigars, one right after the other. He was nice enough, though, and garrulous, engaging my dad in conversation up in the front seat right away.
Weirdly, as it turned out, the same driver had driven my dad around NY before! Multiple times! My dad took business trips to NY somewhat frequently at the time, and the cabbie claimed to recognize my dad by his tendency to always be the first off the plane (airline connections often allowed us to pick our seats). And I guess the cabbie always tended to be first in the waiting line at the taxi stand, so the coincidence, seemingly so random, was somewhat plausible.
(I mean, since I was all of 8 years old at the time, I may be getting this all wrong, but that is exactly how I remember it. Seriously, maybe he just saw different Asian guys at random times and didn’t notice any differences between them; but my dad rolled with it, even saying he recognized the cab driver as well, so it’s never occurred to me to question it.)
The old man talked a lot, but not in a boring or irritating way. I wish I could remember any of what he said, but mainly I just remember finding his cigar-smoking both gross and intriguing. At that age, I’d never before met anyone who smoked cigars, and he was pretty hard-core, and spit brownish…spit…out the window every once in awhile.
By the time we got to our hotel, he’d appointed himself our ‘official’ cab driver for the rest of our short stay in NY. At the beginning of each day, at a pre-arranged time, he’d wait in front of our hotel (which the doormen complained about, I remember the cabbie telling us) and drop us off wherever we needed to go before carrying on with the rest of his day, taking other fares, doing whatever cabbies do. I think he tried to engage my sister and me in conversation once, but of course we were both too shy to respond. It’s too bad, because I remember recognizing how cool he was, and it would’ve been the polite thing to do to acknowledge this.
And his cab was nice, one of those old-timey round yellow cabs with the wide seats, which I liked better than the plain, angular ones with seat belts. Even though the thick stench of cigars made even the back seat somewhat unbreathable, by the final day of our trip, when he drove us back to the airport, I’d grown used to it, and found it less and less unpleasant. And all these memories are tied to the stink of those cigars.
Cheers to you, old cab driver man!
Filed under: memory
