Jack takes us on a typical Sunday night cab ride through the streets of an early seventies Bay Area.

“….-faith, in it’s essential meaning, denotes a convection, a certainty, that a higher interpretation of life exists, and as a consequence, that the transformation of man is a possibility.” Nicoll



Driving Cab-Chapter One





Sitting in my cab in front of the Durant Hotel, I can see for blocks in both directions. I marvel at the panorama of people passing by. Young barefooted-longhaired boys in faded denim with beards flowing in their faces walk with young girls breasts bouncing against faded blouses towards Telegraph. Bicyclists puff up the hill toward College Avenue. Students with books under their arms, professors with serious faces, young activists in army surplus fatigues, hipsters with tilted hats, flared pants, and boots parade by. In the crowd that passes there is youth and age, male and female, black and white, rich and poor. Only the middle seems to be absent, home for Sunday evening dinner. I roll down my window and breath in the moist air blowing off the Bay. I listen to it riffle through the leaves. The smell of charcoal broiled burgers and fried onions mixes with a faint odor of grass and exhaust fumes.

I focus my attention on a shapely young girl who gets out of the flow and poses in front of the hotel telephone booth. Her beautiful tanned smooth face draws my attention. Her lips are moist, pouting, and full. There is a look of expectation in her dark brown eyes as she leans toward the booth and cocks an ear. I run my eyes down her body and rest on the yellow and red patches on the ass of her skin tight Levi’s. Tucked at her waist is a fully stretched gray and maroon sweater. Her small round breasts nestle against the soft wool. I settle back in my seat and watch her stroke her arms and rub her hands across her belly. The phone rings. She enters the booth and closes the door. I wonder if she’s trying to score some dope. In less than a minute, she emerges with a look of pure satisfaction on her face. As she pauses outside the booth, I see that her bikini panties rise about a full inch above her jeans. She moves toward Telegraph. I watch in the rear view mirror. Jeans so tight that she can hardly walk, she waddles up the street, now possessing all the sexuality of a duck.

The airport bus pulls in behind me. Half a dozen passengers emerge. Sliding out of my seat, I start towards the bus. A heavy-set middle-aged man in business suit and tie breaks from the other passengers. He opens my front door and throws in a leather bag. ”Where you headed?” I ask

“The Western School of Religion. Know where it’s at?” he returns and climbs into the back seat. Behind the wheel I turn to tell him I never heard of it. Before I can speak, he hands me a map that shows it’s a couple dozen blocks up the hill. As I drop the meter and check off the stand, I’m thinking he doesn’t look at all religious. I’m wondering if he could be a teacher at the school. I’m thinking I might be able to draw him out and see what the established view of religion is.

“Creative Evolution. What other kind of evolution is there?” my fare asks in a cheerful voice. I look at my copy of Bergson’s book on the dashboard and wonder how I can answer him.

“There’s no other evolution. Nut’n but creativity,” I answer trying to match his voice. Maybe he is religious, I tell myself as I stop at the light and try to figure out which way to turn. I think of Bergson’s description of the varied theories of evolution: the mechanistic theory, the finalist theory, the religious theory with God as the prime mover, Bergson’s vital impulse…. How can I put it to him, I wonder.

“What’s his thesis?” my passenger asks.

“Kind ‘a hard to put it into words,” I answer and make a right hand turn. “I guess, basically Bergson is trying to show how the life force entered matter. Ahhh…. How the life force entered material substance and moved in a constantly expanding direction towards a more complete awareness…. He tries to show how matter is just a vehicle through which the life force travels on its way to… I don’t know, a more compete consciousness….” I see in the rear view mirror that my fare isn’t listening. I trail off and try to think of a more exact way to express my thought as I make another turn and look for my street. I should’ a gone left back there, I tell myself.

“Boy, the fares must have gone up since my last time here,” my passenger tells me. It only cost a dollar fifty from the bus to the front door last time. We’re at a dollar fifty already,” he says.

“It’s just around the corner,” I return hoping I’m right. We ride in silence the last four blocks listening to the click of the meter. I turn the flag to off as soon as we hit the driveway, but the meter makes one more click stopping at a dollar eighty. When I open the back door and pocket his two one-dollar bills, I’m a little pissed at myself. A perfect chance to see what someone connected with the church thinks about religion and I blow it, I tell myself. As I pull away from the curb, I remember that searching out the thesis is the prime question of all graduate school reading. He wasn’t interested in Bergson. He’s probably not even into religion, I tell myself.

Coming down the hill, I catch the magic of the trees that line the streets of Berkeley. I forget about my fare as I become wholly absorbed in the deep green foliage. In the late summer evening sun, the green leaves sparkle with hallucinating sharpness. The fullness of the leaves makes the branches invisible. Massive green living shapes soar over my cab. I feel a strong urge to get out of my cab and dance with the living green creatures that pass overhead. I slow down and start for the curb. Time lets go for a second. But, my urge is stifled as I hear “One-Two-One inside,” from my radio,

I turn up the volume and ease my foot down on the gas pedal. The blood bank is starting to move. Better get over there, I tell myself. I forget the trees and weave in and out of traffic as I race toward College. Coming up on Alcatraz, I see a cab waiting on Claremont. I put the pedal to the floorboard, but the light turns red. Slaming to a stop,I watch the other cab beat me to the stand.

Parked behind the first two cabs, my thoughts return to the Berkeley trees. It was when I was in grad. school that I first began to see the trees again, saw them like when I was a kid in Philly That was what… four years ago? I ask myself.

It was more than thirty years ago in Philadelphia, myself answers

I lean back and close my eyes. I remember a thunderstorm in Philadelphia. As I watched through the front room window, the wind ripped through the leaves of the gigantic elms at the side of the doctor’s house across the street. Water streaked down the red and brown bark and flooded the gutter. Branches swayed and crashed with the roar of thunder. Broad green leaves dropped prematurely to the ground. The rain fell with such force that it blanketed the trees from view. Then, in the blink of an eye the storm was over. I stood outside and smelled the damp freshness. I tasted the last drops of the storm and saw the white of broken and twisted branches. I felt a pang of sorrow for the trees, but knew that the tree felt no sorrow. It would stand watch over other storms.

The first out cab moves into the blood bank. I pull up and listen to the next cab spot. Safeway shoppers across the street hurry to parked cars. The last rays of sunlight send diamonds sparkling from the green foliage that lines the curb. I remember the same play of light outside the campus library. Day after day walking across the Berkeley campus I was more drawn to the trees than to my fellow students. I see that no two are alike. As I pass the trees day after day on my way to and from the library, they lose their names and give off only their uniqueness.

The cab in front of me gets an order. I move to the first out position and call in. It was almost two years ago when I discovered that trees have roots. Yea, it was in Walnut Creek when I first started driving cab, I tell myself. I remember sitting in the backyard and watching the wind play in branches of the walnut trees. I listened to the rustle of the dry branches and few remaining leaves. I saw black walnuts in outline against a gray sky. My eyes ran down the trunk and instead of stopping at the ground I realized that the roots covered the entire yard. I was drawn as deeply into the earth as into the sky. And it flashed through my mind that it is this rootness that differs the plant from the animal world. The plant world is fixed in a very limited range of mobility. It has no reason to move about getting its energy from the sun and soil. Water comes with the rains. Because it is rooted it is easier to see the plant world in its true perspective as a part of the whole. In looking at a field of grass stretched out and waving in the sun, it is not difficult to see the individuality of each blade, and at the same time see the unity of all the separate members. In looking at a forest of trees, one can see the forest and the separate tree. We can visualize the vastness of our planet with the plant world joined in totality. It is more difficult to put the animal world in his same perspective. Harder to see the most mobile of all animals, man, as an integral part of the whole. Because we are in constant motion, because we have no roots, it is easy to believe that man is separate from nature. When I ask myself what roots join man to nature, my answer is that it must be spiritual roots. It is through his spiritual roots that man is connected.

“One-Five-Eight inside,” the dispatcher says interrupting my thoughts.

“Inside,” I answer, and hit the ignition key. With one part of my mind I picture a trip to Martinez or Livermore. With another I visualize a shoot down to the hospital up the street. Parking in the narrow alley I hurry to the side door and hit the button. A buzz unlocks the door. There is no one behind the counter, but the manila envelope is lying face up. I peek at the address and see Castro Valley. My heart skips a beat of joy.

I can be to the ‘Port before eight o’clock, I tell myself as I hit the freeway entrance off College and push it up to sixty. From the curve of the ramp as I turn off Grove, I see the whole East Bay stretching westward. The last glow of sunlight lightens the dark waters that flow from San Rafel to Hayward. The stark gray skyscrapers of San Francisco are dwarfed by the ring of hills that circle the Bay. High above the earth against a background of blue are white puffy clouds rides the moon. What a night, I tell myself as I push it past sixty.

I drop off my soft envelope of blood at Memorial Hospital and hot foot it for the airport. I’m surprised to see no cabs at the Hilton back up stand, and head straight inside. At the inner stands, a flood of L.A. commuters hit the airport doors. I pull in first out and jump out to open my trunk. Three sales executives in dark suits, wide ties, and colored shirts approach my cab. I stack their look alike luggage in the trunk, and ask, “ Where you headed?”

“Boatel, Jack London Square,” says the one who climbs in front.

“Boatel,” I answer and drop the flag. Spurting into traffic I listen to the click of the meter.

“Listen,” says the guy up front turning to face his associates. “We can go over the paper work later in the week. Hubbard, if you can arrange to take the Mott’s to dinner tomorrow night if might help to cement the deal. Blaine you and I might be able to meet with Hanson tonight. If we can get him alone…. You know how much influence he has. Fully wine and dine him. All the best places. You know what it means if we pull off this deal….”

“I don’t know, Walter. There are some legal aspects of this thing that are still somewhat ambiguous. I think I ought to spend a few more days going over these aspects while you and John do the footwork.

“No, we’ll get the paper work ironed out later. What we don’t clear up this week, you can clean up later after the deal is in the bag. Now, first thing Monday morning….”

My fares continue to talk business acting as if I don’t even exist. I watch traffic and think how much alike they all are these sale’s executives. I think of another team that I picked up when I first started driving cab. I was working on a short story then. I had the main character, George, say in response to them, “Open your eyes you dead ass mother fuckers. You’ll never even know you’ve been in Oakland. Wining and dining and never tasting the food or drink. Your whole being tied up in pulling off some fucking deal. So conditioned by the corporate image that you are completely cut off from the magic, mystery, magnificence, and movement of life. What can I tell you? How can I open your eyes? I’m screaming my guts out to you and you can’t hear me. Come alive you weak eyed mother fuckers. Money isn’t everything. It isn’t anything if you’re dead to the world around you. Come alive you corporate corpses! Come alive you walking dead!”

I laugh as I turn off the freeway and head for Broadway. My passengers are quiet now. Planning strategy inside their heads. I catch a glimpse of George turning over in his grave as he listens to the words I put inside his mouth. And I wonder what it is that keeps us rooted to one spot that keeps us from flying away with our dreams if it’s not conditioning. There are two sets of roots then, I tell myself. Spiritual roots that join us to all else, and the deep roots of conditioning that keep us fixed in one place.

I help my fares with their luggage, write up their receipt and pocket my dollar twenty tip. As I pull out of the motel driveway, I hear the dispatcher give off an order to the cab on One-O-One.

“One-Five-Eight,” I say into my mike.

“One-Five –Eight,” the dispatcher answers while I make a U on Broadway and head for the stand.

“One-Five-Eight on One-O-One,” I answer.

“Spot,” he tells me. I shut off my engine, fill in my waybill, and settle back to relax for a couple minutes. A young college couple makes their way to the Bow and Bell. I look at my copy of Creative Evolution on the dash, and wonder I should read or just sit and watch the action. Another boy and girl walk toward my cab. I watch small round breasts press against the girl’s dress. I lower my eyes to her ass as the couple passes. My eyes rest on the girl’s long slender legs, and I wonder when my turn will come to enjoy the nightlife of Oakland and San Francisco. It takes money. And you can’t have money and freedom at the same time, I tell myself. Other couples and foursomes walk by and I ask myself where their chains are. Before I can answer, the dispatcher gives me an order for the
Four-Sixty–Five-Club. A
God-dammed shot down, I ‘m thinking as I pull off the stand.

The bar maid sits waiting as I walk into the noisy, crowded bar with my hat in hand. She still bears a trace of past youthful beauty. Smiling, she waves to a chorus of goodbyes from the bar. I hold the front door open and watch her short black dress slid up a thigh as she lowers herself into the seat. I’m hoping that she lives up in the Berkeley hills somewhere. She explains that she’s just coming off a twelve-hour shift, and tells me “Port-O-Call around the corner,” as I flip the meter. When I open the door to let her out, she apologizes of the short trip, and lays a smile and a half dollar tip on me.