Car Wars
- Michael Jay Tucker's explosive-cargo
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Okay, last time I had us standing on the street outside Hens and Hops in Dallas. We were waiting, patiently, for the Uber I’d called. I had specified our location. It was on the Uber map. I was watching the icon of a little car getting closer and closer. So, everything was fine.
Except...it was hot. This was Dallas in summer. That means it was warm. As in, oh-my-God warm. As in, Satan’s Armpit Warm. As in freaking HOT. As in, please, please, please let the Uber get here SOON and have its air conditioner dialed all the up to Frozen Beef and Arctic Tundra.
But, no problem. It was on its way, right? I turned my attention back to my phone. There was the icon of the car on the little map. It was making a turn. Then it was making another turn. Then it was on our street. Just a few yards away. And...and...and...
...it went the wrong way.
Wait. What? Yes. It had turned off the street and was headed somewhere else. Ah...
But, it stopped. Hooray. I was turning around. Terrific. It was coming back this way. Three cheers. I saw the Uber on the street. I’d asked for a minivan so it was hard to miss. Yes! There it was! It would be here in just a few seconds. And then we get in and get cool. And...and...
..it went right past us. Didn’t even slow down.
Argh. I tracked where it was going. Oh, of course. Or curse. I had specified that the driver was to meet us outside the restaurant. But, somehow, he’d gotten it into his head that we were at the front door of the hotel across the street.
About the photos: I don’t have any photos of Ride-Share cars, or their drivers. So, instead here are some odds and ends. First, a couple of shots from our recent Thanksgiving trip to a ranch outside of Llano, Texas. Terrific sunsets! Next, a photo of Martha at breakfast a few days back.
I mumbled some choice remarks that I will not attempt to reproduce for fear of melting my keyboard. I told Martha and Judy that I’d be right back, and leaving them to watch the luggage, I trotted across the street ...sweating like a pig, except pigs don’t really sweat, so sweating like, well, me...and found the Uber and its driver parked in the shade of the hotel awning.
He saw me coming. “I say,” I said to him. “We are around the corner.”
“Around the what?” he asked.
“The corner,” I answered.
“You’re around the corner?” he said, parrying my thrust.
“Just, as you say, around the ...corner.”
“Oh,” and without saying another word, he hopped into his car and, leaving me standing on the tarmac, headed up the street...
...in the wrong direction. He went around the corner all right, but in the other way. I saw him come to a stop at a distance. I again ventured some words, mostly in idiomatic Sumerian, and which mostly had to do with storm gods dropping well-deserved lightning bolts on certain heads attached to certain Uber drivers.
I dashed after him. He looked at me when I arrived. I smiled at him. Or at least I offered him an expression that involved a great many teeth. “My party,” I said, pointing down the street, “is there.”
“There?” he said.
“There,” I said.
“Where?” he added.
“You see the two women...standing on the sidewalk...in front of the restaurant...with the pile of luggage? That’s them.”
“Oh,” he said. And, again, before I could say another word, he made a U-turn and was off down the street...leaving me to follow, on foot, in the heat. By the time I caught up with them, he had opened the back of the car and was throwing our luggage into it. At least he was efficient.
Soon after that, we were on our way to the Hertz location at the airport. And, indeed, the car was nicely air conditioned. And the driver, once we’d gotten past all the location problems, was skillfully making his way through the insane(!) Dallas traffic.
So, we said to ourselves, now that we’d gotten THAT little glitz taken are of, we were on our way. No problem. No sweat. Cool as cucumbers. Maybe even cooler. Say, frozen cucumbers. With shaved ice fillings.
Say...?
Where have I heard all that before?
More to come.
***
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