August 27th, 2008
“Son of a bitch, you’re running up the meter!”27 comments
August 20th, 2008
"Hey bro, remember me? You wrote that story about me in the paper."3 comments
August 13th, 2008
“It’s the Californians, man, the Californians are the worst.”15 comments
August 6th, 2008
The middle-aged man I picked up at Vendetta is in a hyperactively verbose lather ...0 comments
July 23rd, 2008
When I step into the obese old woman's apartment5 comments
July 16th, 2008
The obese old woman at Fred Meyer has a bad hip and a wheelchair...8 comments
July 9th, 2008
“...I need to take a shower first and wash all of this blood off.”6 comments
July 2nd, 2008
“So I’ve got these two women in the back of my cab who just refuse to get out...”8 comments
June 25th, 2008
“My friend’s getting divorced, and he’s really drunk,” says the bartender...8 comments
June 18th, 2008
There’s nothing like a good Friday night, and I’m referring to the money.3 comments
[April 23rd, 2008]
“No, really, I believe you,” I tell the old man.
We’re parked in front of his home. He occupied the ride here with a hostile soliloquy about what a huge asshole he is, how he’s been barred from dozens of bars, and that he’s an asshole because he drinks, and he drinks because he wants to forget all the people he killed in Korea. Then came a series of proclamations about his toughness, the number of medals he’d won, the laziness of my generation, etc.
He’s just paid me and said that I don’t believe him, and I’ve told him that in fact I do. He seems to be having trouble processing that information, so I say, “You must’ve been at Chosin, right?”
Speaking the name of a battle has a visible impact, and he begins to start a number of stories, but is unable to finish any of them before jumping on to the next. He’ll start to talk about Marine legend Chesty Puller, or the time he gave all of his men BARs, or about the Australians, and then he’ll trail off.
He goes on for 20 minutes. I’m not worried about the orders sitting on the board. I can only think about how much it must’ve fucked with his head to kill that many people. And to kill them not because he had any natural inclination to kill, but because he was a poor Indian orphan, and the Marines seemed like a good deal.
I stifle an urge to scream as I drive away.
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RECENT COMMENTS ON ““No, really, I believe you,” I tell the old man.”
Poor Injun orphans
Kill Commies in Korea:
Freshmaker missed it.
I will admit that I was in a bad mood when I wrote the comment above. Usually the negative comments make me laugh and I admire Night Cabbie 3 for dealing with the negative, positively.
This vignette puts me there in the cab with him. I've had random moments like this one myself, and tried to write them.
God, if anyone asks why I love Portlandians ... I, too, apologize for my outburst. You've got a full cab, NC3. Some of us are works-in-progress, but we're big tippers.
