
I left the house at around 6pm Friday evening. Porkchop—my girlfriend’s dog—was with me in the cab. I was taking him to stay with friends so I could drive the busy weekend nights without having to go back home to feed and walk him while she was out of town. At 6:30pm, just past Hubbard’s Cave downtown, the traffic in my lane stopped suddenly and a second later a BMW SUV rear-ended me. The impact pushed me forward a few feet but not enough, thankfully, to hit the car ahead of me. Then time pretty much stopped for the next few hours.
Porkchop jumped onto my lap as I slowly looked back and around to see what had happened. A young man—Indian or perhaps Pakistani—ran over from the BMW to check if we were alright and to apologize for what he’d done. Over the two hours we’d end up spending together he apologized many times over. Traffic began to flow around us again and he asked me what we should do, that he’d never been in one of these before. I told him to call the police. They told him to pull off the highway and wait for them to file an accident report. We drifted slowly toward the Augusta exit, taking care not to collide with cars trying to fly by us, away from work, toward their Memorial Day weekend. I doubted very much that there’d be much to celebrate in my case.
We came to rest at the bus stop on Milwaukee, just past Augusta. I didn’t get out of the cab, just stayed there with Porkchop on my lap, looking straight ahead, seeing the ruined weekend quite clearly. I texted my friend Nick to cancel the cab ride we’d scheduled then called Ruth to see if she could come get Porkchop, seeing as I wouldn’t be getting to her house anytime soon. The driver of the BMW kept coming up and trying to talk to me with little success. The dog being there probably saved him from a black eye. After about fifteen minutes of sitting there, I watched him hustle a woman in a colorful dress from the back seat of the BMW into a cab. I hadn’t even noticed until then that he’d had a passenger. He came back to me, put down the cell he’d been talking into, and said that his insurance company needed my information. I told him they could wait until we filed the police report.
More time passed. He kept calling the State Police and not getting anywhere. He suggested we go to the police station up Augusta and file a report but I needed Ruth to come pick up Porkchop before I could go anywhere. She showed up about half an hour later. I could hear the BMW’s mashed in bumper scraping against its front left wheel as he followed me to the police station. Upon arrival it took a few minutes for anyone to stir enough to take notice of us. When an officer finally shuffled over, she asked where the accident occurred and immediately said it wasn’t their jurisdiction—interstates are for the State Police—then shuffled away without another word. The State Police had told us to come here and file a report. It’s good to know our law officers know the law this well. All the while BMW guy was trying to make small-talk. I had to tell him as we walked out of the station that we weren’t gonna be friends, that I’d try to be polite but that he’d ruined my whole weekend and he’d be better served to can the chitchat. He backed off after that.
After calling again and determining that the State Police weren’t showing up anytime soon, we exchanged insurance information and went our separate ways. I think he apologized again and I felt proud of myself for not saying what I really wanted to say to him. My next stop was the Yellow Cab garage on Elston. The manager took pictures of the damage and listened to my account of the accident. Because of the holiday weekend there was nothing more to be done until Tuesday. He said to go to Wabash—the company’s headquarters—first thing Tuesday to file the insurance claim, but for now, to go to the cashier and get a replacement cab.
I’d lost about three hours of my Friday night—some of the busiest hours of the week—and between that and the prospect of driving a beater around for who-knows-how-many days while the Scion was in the shop, there was little wind left in my sails. I wandered distractedly around the cab lot trying to match up the numbers on the car keys to the sad, remaining specimens left to choose from. Crawling into a Crown Vic after being spoiled for over a year by the Scion didn’t exactly inspire greatness but I did what I could to salvage the rest of the night and ended up a little over break-even.
I lost several more hours when the Crown Vic overheated Sunday in the 97° conditions. I willed it back to the garage all the way from O’Hare. The cashier wanted to give me a replacement for the replacement but none of the potential candidates looked hearty enough to survive the afternoon so I just sat and waited for them to fix the one I rode in on.
****
I didn’t know how long it would take the shop to get to #429 because the holiday left them with a skeleton crew. When I stopped by Tuesday to get insurance information to take to Wabash, the shop manager told me it might not be done until the weekend because he had to pull the whole rear-left quarter panel off. It was a twelve-hour job. I thanked him and drove the replacement jalopy to Wabash. The secretary there gave me forms to fill out and then I sat and waited. And waited. Many other drivers came and went with a variety off issues and concerns—some of which were addressed while others were not—before my turn came up. In a cubicle, just behind the secretary’s desk, I was asked to sit down and tell my story in detail. I did so while watching the man struggle to input the words into his desktop. He had to backtrack every third word to correct misspellings and run-ons. It was an excruciating, glacial process. Then, after another hour had passed, he murmured that I was free to go.
It’s likely that the company will take $100 out of my deposit while the insurance companies work their dark arts. I’ll get it back eventually but no one will compensate me for all the work-time lost. An auto accident is ten times worse if you have the misfortune of being a cabdriver. It’s as if now that I’ve decided to quit, the job is reminding me afresh of all that I won’t miss; telling me not to let the door hit me on the way out.
I don’t think that’ll be a problem.




