Читать книгу Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver - Eugene Salomon - Страница 23

Now here’s something I can’t blame on the mayor. In fact, I hate to admit it, but it may have been my fault: the Checkers are gone. The beloved Checkers – these were the taxis you see in any movie set in New York City between 1956 and about 1990. Built like tanks, they had extended room in the back, flat floorboards with no uncomfortable ‘hump’ in the middle, and two folding ‘jump seats’ that enabled five adults (or twenty midgets) to sit back there. These vehicles have become nostalgia items for anyone who grew up or lived in New York during those years.

Most people don’t know that the Checkers were manufactured by the Checker Motor Company, which was not a subsidiary of General Motors or any other conglomerate, but was an independent company on its own. Located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, nearly all the cars that rolled off that assembly line were specifically built to be taxicabs. To make it easier for taxi fleets to replace broken parts and to keep costs down, they stopped redesigning the Checkers in 1956. So the Checkers looked like they were old cars even though they may have been relatively new.

But the Checker Motor Company had big problems. After the gasoline crisis in 1979, many taxi fleet owners switched to Chevrolets, Fords and Dodges. In the highly competitive world of automobile manufacturing, Checker was losing ground and by 1981 was barely treading water.

How was I to know that an innocent conversation between myself and a certain passenger would provide the coup de grâce for these fabulous cars? I’m asking you in advance to please not hate me. Okay, here’s the story…

In the second week of July, 1981, I was driving a Checker cab that was owned by my friend Itzy at a garage called West Side Ignition. At West Side Ignition they had a saying: ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. And if it is broken, don’t fix it.’ So when I’d bring the car in for an oil change and mention to Itzy that the shocks were basically gone, Itzy would tell me that as long as the cab was in running condition, to hell with the shocks, just go out and drive. Apparently ‘running condition’ meant that your condition would be better if you were running instead of trying to drive the damned thing.

Anyway, I was driving this Checker when I was hailed by a middle-aged suburban Workerbee in a business suit who looked like any other commuter on his way home from work. He asked me to bring him to Penn Station, a fifteen-minute trip, and he settled back into his seat and opened up a newspaper. It looked to be an uneventful ride until, about two blocks from where we’d started, the cab ran over a particularly nasty pothole.

Now, the Checkers were strong cars and they had a reputation for being indestructible, but they didn’t exactly give you a smooth ride. When we hit the pothole, the cab kind of went KA-BOOM, and I found myself momentarily bouncing up and down on the front seat. In fact, the car had taken the pothole so badly that I felt a need to apologize to my passenger.

‘Sorry,’ I said with a laugh, ‘I guess they don’t make them like they used to.’ Not that they really made them any differently than they ever did. It was just something to say.

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?