\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s the Federal Building?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNinth Street.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Pick-Carter<\/strong> <\/span>Hotel?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Hollenden House?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDowntown — St. Clair.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople want to know where their hotel is,\u201d he said. He hired me. He worked for Universal Cab, a division of Yellow Cab. I drove welfare recipients with vouchers to hospitals, and workers to Republic Steel Works #4.\u00a0I didn\u2019t drive rich people; I thought I was going to drive rich people but it was mostly poor people. I picked up one rich guy, downtown.\u00a0He said, \u201cSeverance Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked, \u201cAre you Claudio Abbado?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you know!\u201d he said. I told him I\u2019d seen his photo in the Plain Dealer <\/em>that morning. Afterward, I told a friend John I had driven \u201ca conductor from Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo why did he come here?\u201d my friend said. John’s favorite expression was \u201cCleveland is the armpit of the nation.” (This was in 1970.)<\/p>\n My taxi-driving job went downhill after Abbado. A cabbie told me to carry a bat. He said, \u201cA bat isn\u2019t a concealed weapon. It\u2019s legal.\u201d One time I thought I was being followed by robbers.\u00a0I got boxed in around St. Luke\u2019s Hospital and escaped by going in reverse. Maybe I was imagining it. I was skittish. To understand, you have to have been around in 1970.<\/p>\n My cab<\/strong><\/span> stalled at Fairmount Circle.\u00a0The engine smoked.\u00a0I left the cab and hitchhiked back to the Noble Road garage. The supervisor said, \u201cYou mean you left your cab, son?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI knew I could get back here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean you left your cab unattended?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n Dead end.<\/p>\n The taxicab supervisor, smoking a stogie, asked me, \u201cWhere\u2019s Charity Hospital?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said. \u201cWhere\u2019s the Federal Building?\u201d \u201cNinth Street.\u201d \u201cThe Pick-Carter Hotel?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \u201cThe Hollenden House?\u201d \u201cDowntown — St. Clair.\u201d \u201cPeople want to know where their hotel is,\u201d he said. He hired me. He worked for Universal Cab, a division […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27237"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27451,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27237\/revisions\/27451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"taxi](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/taxi-driver-2-202x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"