i drove a cab in Manhattan for a while. On a rainy night , i picked someone up on Queens Blvd going to Beth Israel on first.His wife was pregnant and they loaded my 96 Caprice with enough luggage to spend a week in Europe.She was no lightweight either, I kept thinking triplets or a small dairy cow was cooking in there
The shocks were shot so you can imagine how low the rear was sagging. Get to about Greenpoint Ave and the lady starts kicking the seat and he starts to scream. I pull over and turn around to them both yelling at me that the baby is coming. I get in the center lane and stop, I had the lights timed so if i hit them at 60-65 mph, i would get to the bridge in 5 minutes
I take off down to the bridge, bobbing and weaving, normal cab driving. There is a portion of that road that goes over a huge expanse of railroad tracks and when i get to the bottom at 65 the ass end bottoms out hard and i hear a boom. I keep going , she feels fine and i am still in time with the lights. I am seeing a bunch of sparks flying out the back end. I fly over the Queensboro Bridge and make the light just turning yellow at the bottom.It is a left turn only to go down second. As I make the turn, I see those sparks again in my r/s mirror. I am ignoring it because now i have the Manhattan lights in my favor to get downtown. I do notice people on the corners staring at me as i fly by.I get to Joint Disease and make the illegal left down the one way street to Beth Israel. I get to emergency and ask one of the ambulance guys to get a wheelchair. We finally get two ton Tessy out of the car and i tell the guy i will unload his stuff and leave it with the ambulance guy. It was a false labor because as we were prying her out, she was not in pain and was telling her husband where a good deli is in the area. I get to the back end of the car to off load and there it is........my r/s 1/4 panel lying on its side ,smoking and burning on the edges. It seems the idiot that repaired the car from another wreck a couple of months before did not put a new 1/4 panel on. He banged the metal into the inner structure and welded chicken wire to the side.He put several layers of newspaper and bondo and contoured it the way the other side looked. It was being held on by 5 welds by the time i got to the hospital. We could not stop laughing. The husband came out and looked at the car and nearly had a cow
I got a nice tip though
I cut off the remaining welds and laid it up against the side of the hospital and took off. I know i hit the milk truck i passed while going over the bridge with it because when i went by him ,he was laying on his horn. I took out two parking meters when i made the left down the one way because i remember hearing a bonging sound and crash. I took the tunnel coming back into Queens, muffler dragging, tail lamp hanging and bouncing off the bumper. I drove for another 4 hours and dropped it at the yard. Did not say a word and the next week, walla, the 66 car had another paper mache 1/4 panel on it. I miss driving a cab
