Long Fares and Big Tips

I used to drive for Town Taxi – on the night-side – in Boston. It was a kill or be killed, license to steal, kind of job. We ferried hookers and their johns around the city, aided drug dealers in the delivery of their wares, and we constantly rode with the knowledge that we were the targets of those whose only fortune was that of carrying a gun.

A cab driver lives in his cab for 12 hours – 7 days a week, but it takes an hour to get it, and another hour to put it up. In short, a cab driver is his cab.

The city was divided into areas known as stands. You’d sit at a given stand – the closest to your last fare – and wait for the next radio call. The 14-stand was the now defunct Lennox Hotel on Boylston St.

I believe her name was Annie. We gave her that name, anyway.

Nightly, like clockwork, Annie would push her shopping cart, stuffed with the garbage bags that held all her worldly possessions, up to each cab’s driver side window.

”How’s business?” she’d ask. Her tired face – weather-beaten and wrinkled with age – showed more miles than even our own odometers. We’d give her a dollar. Each of us always gave her a dollar, but she never hit your cab twice in the same night. You might end up at the 14-stand, 10 or 12 times a night, but Annie never hit your cab twice.

She’d take the money, and her standard blessing was always, “Long fares and big tips.” She’d say it, and we’d believe it. It was tradition and superstition. If something happened to one of us – a robbery or a breakdown – all the others would say it was because he didn’t give Annie her dollar.

”How’s business? Thank ye Dearie. Long fares and big tips.” Then on to the next cab in line – always careful to only visit a given cab, once in a night.

Night in – night out, rain or shine. In the dead of winter snows, or the dogging oppressiveness of mid-summer – even during the madness that was New Years Eve – there was Annie. “Long fares and big tips.”

Annie had no home. Where she slept, nobody knew. All she owned, she carried in those garbage bags, she’d push around. Story was, the State tried to get her into a shelter of some kind, but Annie wouldn’t go. When asked – she’d simply say that the cab drivers of Boston were her only family.

Some people said that she had a husband once, and that he drove. Others would say that she was once a cab owner, but lost all she had through some kind of conspiracy – pick the one you like – the Citgo sign, the rackets, the military-industrial complex – whatever.

Annie died in the middle of Boylston Street; in front of the place, she called home – the 14-stand. A cab hit her.

Annie had no home. Annie had no ID. When the authorities went through the garbage bags, they found several hundred thousand, single, one-dollar bills.

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