OCR Text |
Show BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET Cabbie's fGho$tr Terms Him a Gentleman and a Scholar By BILLY ROSE .. The- other midnight, after 15 hours of making like Joe Execu- tlVf' I,f6li LCld,u.se a Uttle fresh air and so I sapped into a cab and asked the hackie to drive me around Central Park "How's business?" I small-talked wvPretfairV S3id CabWe' "bUt people are funny-soon as us hackles start making an extra buck they act like we was profiteering or sometlung. They forget all those years when we had to rMe the ghost in order to keen our iobs." e &nosi "Ride the what?" "The ghost," said the hackie. "That's what we used to call it when we threw the flag down and let the clock run without a cus- tomer inside. During Dur-ing the tough times there were fleet owners who would fire a guy if he didn't bring in a certain amount of business, so we used to run it up on the meter and 1 pay it out of our " 'To St. Patrick's Cathedral. And close the window it's getting cold.' "THIS STRIKES me as kind of a peculiar remark for a ghost, but I do like I'm told, and when we get to St. Patrick's the ghost gets out and I'm surprised I can't see through him like you're supposed to with ghosts. " 'I'll never forget you for what you did,' he says, 'and especially the way you did it pretending not to hear what I told you and driving driv-ing me through the park , on thi beautiful night so I could see there was. something in the world besides my own miserable problems.' "For the first time I begin to suspicion sus-picion that maybe this ghost ain't no' ghost after all, so I says to him, 'When'd you get in my cab?' " 'You know darned well I was waiting in the back when you came out of the bar,' he says. " 'That explains it,' I says. 7 didn't see you because it teas dark and 1 was kind of loaded, and 1 didn't hear you because the window between us was closed.' " 'You're a gentleman and a scholar,' says the little old geezer. Saying which he fishes out a hundred-dollar bill and hands it to me. "He starts to go away but I stop him. 'Just for the record,' I says, 'where'd you ask me to take you first?' " 'As if you didn't know,' he says. "The middle of the Brooklyn Bridge.' " a graveyard that day, and so finally I get disgusted and go into a speakeasy speak-easy for a couple of shots. "When I climb back in my cab a few hours later, I'm feeling no pain, and so I decide I might as well take the ghost for his usual joyride. And that night, Central Park is really something to see you know, full of snow and icicles like a picture pic-ture in a kid's fairy book. "After making the circuit a couple of times, I'm about ready to call it a night j,hen suddenly I get feeling I'm being watched. And so I turn around, and sitting in the back is a little old geezer wearing one of those high collars and what they call a bomber ger hat. Naturally, this gives me quite a jolt, but when guy is potted he's liable to get some pretty funny ideas, and so I figure out that this is the ghost I been riding around night after night. Brave-like, I crank open the window between us and start to talk to him. " 'How you enjoying the ride?" 1 says. " 'I'm enjoying it fine,' says the ghost. " 'Where can I take you?' I ask him next. own pockets. And BiUy we had to watch ourselves when riding the ghost or an inspector might nab us. The way I used to do it was to cruise around Central Park until I clocked enough to satisfy the boss and do you know something? The biggest tip I ever got was on one of those nights when the ride was on me." "Unconfuse me," I said. "WELL, IT WAS like this," said the hackie. "About a month after the stock market crash in '29, I'm cruising around Wall Street one afternoon, figuring that if a broker threw himself out the window I might get a chance to rush him to the hospital. But Wall Street's like |