Eugene Salomon - Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver

My passenger, who up to this point hadn’t said a word to me, suddenly came alive. He put down his newspaper, opened up his briefcase, and took out a notepad and a pen.

‘I’d like you to do something for me,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to tell me everything you don’t like about Checkers. I’ll write down what you say.’

Well, I thought this was fine. Someone wants to know what I think. I started in with a vengeance.

‘First of all, obviously they can’t take bumps worth a damn,’ I said. He wrote it down.

‘The gas mileage is awful. They only get eight or nine miles per gallon.’ He wrote that down.

‘Lousy acceleration.’

‘What else?’

‘Squeaky brakes.’

‘What else?’

Now I was really getting into it. ‘These dashboards are so old-fashioned. They slope straight down so you can’t put anything on top of them. You know, they stopped redesigning these cars in 1956.’

He wrote quickly to keep up with me, but if I spoke too fast he would hold me up until he could get it all down. It seemed to be a matter of some concern to him that he recorded every word I said.

‘What else?’

‘Well, the trunk doesn’t spring up when you push the button to open it. There’s no place to grip it.’

It was true. Whenever the trunk needed to be opened, the driver had to get out of the cab and pry it open with his fingertips. The privately owned Checkers all had customized handles – installed by the owners themselves, not the Checker Motor Company – on the trunks to overcome this problem.

‘Really,’ I groaned, ‘what kind of a car company makes a car – a taxi, no less – with a trunk that makes it a challenge to open it?’

‘Okay, what else?’

‘The goddamned battery is back there in the trunk where there’s no ventilation. When you start working at a new garage, they give you a big speech on your first day warning you not to hold a cigarette in your hand when you open the trunk because it might set off an explosion if the battery happens to be bad and is giving off fumes! You know, when batteries go bad they emit sulfuric acid, which is flammable. Whoever heard of a battery being in the trunk, anyway? Why don’t they put it under the hood like in all other cars?’

It went on like this until we arrived at Penn Station. I told him everything anyone could possibly imagine could be wrong with Checkers, and it felt wonderful.

‘So what is this,’ I asked, ‘some kind of taxi driver therapy?’

‘Hell, no,’ my passenger said, ‘the Chairman of the Board of the Checker Motor Company is an old childhood friend of mine and I’m having lunch with him in Kalamazoo next Wednesday. I’m going to tell him everything you told me.’ And with that he handed me the money for the ride along with a generous tip and disappeared into the crowd in Penn Station.

I sat there kind of dumbfounded for a minute in my beat-up cab. Gee, I thought, maybe someday this will result in better Checkers being made. Maybe the Chairman of the Board will be impressed with my astute observations and he’ll fix up all the things I said were wrong. Maybe something I said will really make a difference! I thought of all the people in America who would be riding around in better cars.

Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way. Three weeks later I heard on the radio that the Checker Motor Company was going out of business! And, indeed, in July, 1982 the last Checker came off the assembly line.

So here’s what must have happened: my passenger did, in fact, have lunch with his old childhood pal the next Wednesday in Kalamazoo. But unbeknownst to my passenger, his old friend was desperately trying to decide at that time whether or not to take out yet another massive loan to keep the company afloat. He tries to put his troubles out of his mind for an hour by having lunch with his childhood buddy whom he hasn’t seen in years. He wants to reminisce about the good old days.

But noooo, his old pal pulls out this goddamned list of goddamned complaints about his cars that was dictated to him by a real, goddamned New York City taxi driver – as if he doesn’t already know what’s wrong with his own cars. Later that night, after kicking the cat and screaming at the kids – or maybe kicking the kids and screaming at the cat – he decides screw it, it’s just not worth the frustration. He’s got enough to retire on anyway, so he’s going in tomorrow to tell the Board it’s all over.

And there went our beloved Checkers.

So you see, it really wasn’t my fault. If blame is to be placed, it should rest on the shoulders of that guy who was in my cab, not me. The trouble was he didn’t ask me what I liked about Checkers. If he did, I would have told him about the jump seats and the miles of room in the back. I would have told him about the flat floorboards and how, if you were driving a Checker, it would bring you extra business every night because there were always some passengers who would let other types of cabs go by when they saw you coming. In fact, I once missed getting Andy Warhol in my cab because the cab I was driving was not a Checker. Although no one was in my cab, a Chevrolet, he let me drive right past him so he could take the Checker that was behind me.

But, alas, history cannot be rewritten. The Checkers are gone. And I do apologize for whatever role I may have played in bringing about this catastrophe.

Don’t hate me… please .

Come on, don’t throw my book in the garbage can. That’s not nice. Forgiveness is an important virtue, didn’t someone say that once?

Sorry… okay?

Certainly one thing that has not changed is a scene such as this: two teenage girls and their mothers, Agogers (people who are ‘agog’) from Georgia on their first trip to New York, piled into my cab at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on a Saturday evening at 7.30 p.m., en route to the Broadway show Beauty and the Beast.

‘Hey,’ the teenager sitting beside me said as we hit traffic heading into Times Square, ‘have you ever had a celebrity in your taxi?’

‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘I’ve had lots of them.’

‘Really?!’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I once had the man who co-wrote the songs of the show you’re going to see.’

‘Wow, what’s his name?’

‘Howard Ashman.’

No response. She’d never heard of the late, great lyricist.

‘Have you ever had a movie star?’

‘Sure.’

‘Wow! Really? You have ? Who? Who?’

‘Well, I’ve had Lauren Bacall.’

No response. Obviously this girl was not a fan of classic cinema.

‘How about Leonardo DiCaprio?’ I replied, hoping to hit a home run.

‘Holy Jesus! Leonardo DiCaprio! In this cab?’ At which point all four of them began fondling the upholstery, hoping some of Leo’s charisma would rub off on them.

What is it about celebrities, anyway? Are they really any different than you and me? Well, in a sense, no. Their food goes in one end and comes out the other, just like everyone else’s (although it may start out as sushi from Nobu’s for them and a tuna melt from Frank’s deli for you and me). But the nature of the lives they are living is really quite different than any other type of person. For example…

I was cruising down Columbus Avenue one evening in 1987 when I was hailed at 77 thStreet by a middle-aged man wearing a tuxedo. He opened the rear door, but instead of getting in, he leaned forward and inspected the condition of the compartment and picked up a couple of errant pieces of paper from the floorboard. Deciding that my taxi now met his high standards, he then asked me to wait a minute while he retrieved his friends from a restaurant on the avenue. One of his friends, he said, was a ‘major VIP’.