My college tuition in 1973 was $2000 for the year. I hacked a cab for Boston Taxi to support myself. Our garage was next to the old Boston Arena. If a driver booked more than $100 a night, the payout jumped from 45/55 to 50/50. My classmate Hank Watson and I were the top earners for the company. We caught the 12am operators from the NET&T building and ended the night with a final ride for the strippers of the 2 O’Clock lounge. The drinking age was 18. Hank and I rendezvoused at 1:30am to watch the headliners finish the night.
Tuesday night was the best.
The girls got paid their commission for the drinks to the suckers.
The 3-piece band played our requests. We tipped them with our tips. IN DA GADDA DA VIDA was priceless on a stand-up Hammond organ.
One evening we stayed after hours.
Neither of us were aiming for magna cum laude.
The strippers taught us life.
My favorite DANCER was Claudia. She was a 17 year-old blonde. Marilyn Monroe could have been the mother who abandoned her to the nuns. After closing Claudia and I drank three tequila at the Hillbilly Ranch and smoked a joint with the country-western band. Hank was driving his favorite, a sister named Shaleen, to Roxbury. My first class RADICAL ECONOMICS with Barry Bluestone was scheduled for 9am.
6 hours away.
“If you want to go, then we have to go now.”
Claudia was glad to go.
She had a jealous biker boyfriend.
Ben liked showing up at the Hillbilly ranch to take his cut of her take.
I had Claudia sit in the front. Anyone sitting in the back triggered the meter. The $7 fare from Combat Zone to Forest Hills was better in my pocket than that of the greedy owner.
Claudia talked about her childhood.
Nuns. Beatings. Priests. Wandering hands.
“A-huh.” I was having trouble staying on the road. Smoking weed and tequila was a deadly combination and Claudia asked at her address, “Are you okay to drive?”
“Fine.” My head was strapped to the end of a helicopter prop.
"You want to come upstairs?"
"Another night."
I had a class in the morning and headed back to the garage ignoring the radio dispatcher. Anyone in Dudley Station was stuck in Dudley Station until the train opened at 6am. I stepped on the gas. Columbus Street was naked of traffic. My Checker cab had some tiger in its engine. I hit 70, which was too fast to stop for an Olds 88 burning the stop sign at Centre Street.
I t-boned the big car at the doors. My taxi snap-tailed across the intersection at 1000 rpm. The Checker came to a stop against a curb. The driving wheel was in my hands. The windshield had been shattered by the impact of my head. I dropped the steering wheel and touched my forehead.
No blood.
No missing parts.
The Olds 88 was bent in half.
A black man lay out the door.
I walked over to the wreck. Steam vented from the engine. People were exiting from the nearby projects. Blood was leaking from the man’s ear. This was not a good sign.
“That look like my Uncle Milton.”
“That white boy killed Milton.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” I leaned over Milton. He was wearing a red silk suit. Wilson Pickett style. “Can you hear me?”
“White boy you done kill me.” Crimson bubbled from his lips.
The crowd was going in anger. Someone had a gun at his side. I eyed him as if I were not white. He didn’t buy the lie.
This was a Mob.
Soon it would be a riot.
I stood alone.
A Boston cab drove between us. Hank was behind the wheel. Shaleen stepped out of the back in pink hot pants splendor.
“Leave the white boy alone. He’s good people.”
The crowd's indecision was detoured by the whoop of a police car. They backed away from the crushed Olds. Shaleen had done her job. Hank drove away with Shaleen in the front seat. He didn't have a class until the afternoon.
“Get in the car.” The officer behind the wheel ordered with urgency. I obeyed his command and we escaped, as an ambulance pulled into the intersection.
“I think I killed that man.”
“Not at all. And besides he was just a nigger."
"Excuse me." I didn't think I had heard him right, but Boston was renown for its racism.
"They have thick skulls. He'll live and we’ll write it up in your favor. You’re from Boston, right?”
He could tell I was a townie from my accent.
"Jamaica Plain down near Forest Hills."
My grandmother lived there. I was from the South Shore.
"Don't worry about nothing."
The next morning I made my economics class and slept through most of it.
At the end of the semester I received a C and I was never charged with manslaughter, because Milton survived the crash. He had been drinking too. The cab company was angry. Milton was suing them for damages.
The stop sign had been turned the wrong way by vandals.
"I didn't do it," I explained to the taxi company.
"Well, someone did."
They fired me without blinking an eye.
Six months later his lawyer called my house to ask me to testify against the cab company.
"I'll give you $100."
I received a check.
No one showed for the court date, but ever since that night I’ve always thought that the state should have a drunk driving hour. No one on the road but drunks.
2am to 5am made sense to me and probably Milton too.
We were survivors.
For that night and beyond.
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