Like By Bugs Bunny

If you could see the sky in Beijing right now, well, you wouldn’t have anything but complements to offer up.  I see a beautiful expanse that looks like a set from a Technicolor production of “Oklahoma.” This day as much as any anoints the fall in Beijing, by far and away, our best season.  This is the time I tell people to visit and though no one, to my knowledge is coming any time soon, I would certainly be proved right if they did.  

My mood shouldn’t be quite so up.  One meeting and then another were disappointments.  Pressure from all sides, absorptive.  But I’ve got a driver who’s civil and knows where to go.  And I’m home in time to beat rush hour and I got myself a new lap top after two years of delay, and ‘I’ve got a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way.”  

In Beijing we complain about the cab drivers a lot and often with good reason.  But some times these guys are good Joe’s.  We roll up to my compound, and I have it in my mind to go to the grocery at the front gate.  It’s a good kilometer from my home and it would be preferred if this gent would just wait for me for five minutes while I duck in and grab a few things.  I have next to no doubts that if I suggest such a thing, he’ll acquiesce.  I’m not sure a New York cable would be so compliant or reliable.  

Indeed, last night Holden reached New York and he’s having a conversation with a New York cabbie there in 1945 that seems to accurately reflect what we were taught New York cabbies were like by Bugs Bunny in the same decade..  Holden asks the driver to turn around at one point and go back downtown and the driver isn’t very compromising, no favors, refers to Holden as “Mac.”  No slack, in a New York cab, then or now. 

I spend a little longer than I had anticipated, multi tasking on a Skype call, grabbing cauliflower, chicken strips, pesto Genovese sauce and . . . oh yeah, a case of spring water and a case of bottled water.   The driver is waiting for me outside, patiently.  I apologize.   He blinks, nonplussed. We drive at home and like a well-trained New Yorker I tell him to “keep the change” and offer him a tip that is about ten percent of the fare.   He’s thrilled, as cabbies here tend to be when they receive what they aren’t expecting.  “Hey Mac” I tell him, “you waited for me.”