I'll be down to get you in a taxi, honey

Summer is here, and with the coming of summer a man's (or woman's) fancy lightly turns to thoughts of travel.

Thoughts of travel immediately brings to mind conveyances; namely planes, trains, automobiles and, all too often, taxis. Taxis rattle me. Mostly figuratively, but sometimes literally, since I have traveled by hackney in Mexico, LA, and my hometown.

As a digression, my hometown cabs are really crappy. One taxi company has a monopoly and the fare prices are outrageous, since there is no competition. The cabs themselves are derelict, and so are some of the drivers. I mean, how secure is the person who has been at a bar and decides to take a taxi home, who enters a conveyance being driven by a guy who may be more loaded than he is? But, a digression, as I said.

Otherwise, I have taken taxis in Victoria and Vienna, Waikiki and Winchester, Richmond and Rome, and I still find the experience unnerving.

Part of my problem is the concept, I think. Here I am, a stranger in a strange town, sometimes even in a strange land, stepping into a vehicle that is being driven by a stranger, who is taking me to a strange hostelry or eatery. On any insecurity scale that runs from one to one hundred, that is about a ninety-seven. About on a par with a late night stroll in a rougneighborhoodod, in my esteem.

Another insecurity lies with the driver himself -- or, herself, since a lot of drivers are female these days. Actually, I prefer female drivers because I think, maybe wrongly, they'll be less likely to rip me off on the fare, and will drive more sensibly.

Nothing against cabbies as such. I think they have a dangerous, and often thankless job. Would you like to welcome into your vehicle every manner of drunken obnoxious asshole in town when the bars let out? But, I still have a problem, because I know nothing about this person. What if he is a drunkard or addict? I know that if my job called for me to haul assorted jerks, creeps and perverts through town late at night, I would want to be a drunkard or addict.

What if the pressures of his work have become too great and he has decided that he is going to shoot the next person who hands him a fifty for a ten buck ride and then demands exact change, and then tips only ten percent?

What if he is dishonest and decides to take you the 'long route' in a strange city? If you haven't been to the place before, you have no way of telling.

I confess I've only had this happen to me once, which makes for a rather decent report card for cabbies, considering all the taxis I've taken down through the years. It was in Galway, Ireland that somebody tried to run the long-route scam on us. We were traveling from our hotel to a quaint pub we had discovered out walking earlier in the day. The pub was about three miles distant from the hotel, but it escaped us once we were in the cab that the ride was taking quite a long time, and that the three miles had seemed more like nine. It was definitely not an 'as the crow flies' journey.

"Dat'll be ten pound,"the friendly driver said at journey's end.

"That'll be five pounds,"said another traveler in our party, "And you know why."

"I know why," said the cabbie, with a hangdog look, who took the fiver without argument.

Our companion, you see, was a vacationing Miami cab driver and he knew every scam in the book, including the old circuitous route for the rubes one, even though he'd never been in Galway before.

As far as the world's taxi systems go, it is almost a cliche to suggest that London boasts the best in the world. A cliche it may be, but it happens to be true. Not only are their drivers more capable and astute than the average double PhD, the conveyances themselves are masterpieces of design. These big old diesel Austins offer sufficient headroom for the gentleman to wear a topper, and the rear seats are commodious enough for an especially amorous couple to actually "complete" an assignation within the cab in relative comfort and, more importantly, utter privacy, since the driver cannot see into the back seat. There is also a soundproof glass panel between driver and passengers, and the driver will politely knock before sliding it open. He is, after all, seeking permission to enter what in some cases is a bedroom. Frosting on the privacy cake is the fact the rear window is smoked glass.

The cabs themselves are pristine. They are washed every day, are in top mechanical condition, and if a particular cab receives so much as a scratch, it is taken off the road until the vehicle is repaired. The driver keeps it that way for two reasons. The first being, he would lose his hackney licence if it fell into scruffiness, and secondly, he paid a small fortune to purchase the thing. Added to which, there is no way he wants to throw away a rigorous training regimen that saw him master every street, road, mews and cul-de-sac in one of the largest cities in the world. His training alone took three years. Many aspirant cabbies never make the grade.

Another virtue of a London cab ride lies in 'conversation'. The drivers do not force conversation on one. Thus, the passenger is never forced to make small-talk with a stranger.

London cabbies are also scrupulously honest. There is set limit on how much tip they will take, and if you try to press more coinage or notes into their hands, they will politely return the excess.

An incident that to me attests to their honesty involved an evening in which my wife of the day, myself, and another couple were going to dinner at a particular Kensington restaurant. We gave him the name of the restaurant, and told him the street. He set forth. He drove around, and around, and around. He could not find it. A considerable period of time had passed.

"What was the name of the street again?"

"Beauchamp Place."

Still confused, he called his dispatcher. The dispatcher was nonplused as well. The cabbie asked us to spell the street. We did. A look of enlightenment crossed his face.

"You mean Bee-cham Place," he said. "I don't know why, but that's the way it's pronounced. Tell you what, I am going to shut down the meter, go back to your hotel. Then we'll set out again and the meter will be running then."

We suggested that seemed a little unfair on him, as he had taken up so much of his time.

"Not a bit of it," he said. "I'm supposed to know where everything is."

Cabs in other cities in the world seem to fall into categories significantly inferior to those boasted by London. Los Angeles cabs are very scruffy, though most drivers seem pleasant enough. Ones I've ridden in are also devoid of interior door handles, just so deadbeats don't bail out rather than pay the fare. Hawaiian cabs are quite pleasant, and the drivers often put one in mind of Poncie Ponce in the old Hawaiian Eye TV series.

A cab driver in Vienna once tried to accuse me of having some sort of a role in the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I assured him I had no part in the matter, but was tempted to ask him, as he was a certain age, what sort of association he'd had with Adolf Hitler in the old days. I refrained, however, I wanted to get to my hotel.

I know sometime over the next few months, I'll no doubt be forced to take a cab again, somewhere, and it probably won't be so bad as long as I don't get that guy my wife and I once had in Victoria, who was behind the wheel literally three weeks after having arrived from Russia. Nice enough guy, who literally had no clue as to where any of Victoria's streets were. We ultimately had to direct him back to our hotel. But, he was acclimatized enough to our ways that he expected a sizable tip along with the fare. We gave it to as a gratuity for the entertainment he'd provided by his confusion.