Uncle Sal and the Taxi Service (Episode 30)

Uncle Sal stood on the curb attempting to hail a cab. He hated having to take the Dodge Dart into the shop. Alice said, "We'll never get a cab at this hour."

"We'll get one. I bet one of Tuck's Cabs will be by soon. I ever tell you I used to work for Tuck's?"

"No, you never did."

Uncle Sal plucked a hair hanging from the brim of his raspberry bowler hat and said, "Yep. Best taxi service in the city. Kind of a shame how I came to the job. I was having a hard time making the rent and my friend Harvey Potter told me I should get a job driving a cab. He was fired shortly after I started for not reporting all his fares. Anyway, I started driving the night shift."

He removed a tin of mints from his pocket and offered one to Alice. She declined and he continued his story. "Well, I was able to make the rent all right, but you sure do meet some interesting folks when you drive overnight. Like this one time, Tuck arranges for me to pick up this guy, real shady lookin' fella. Got a bald patch on his head because of this big scar that hair won't grow over. Tuck wants me to take this guy to the south side of town, probably one of the worst neighborhoods I ever seen. I looked that fella up and down and I thought about the address he wanted to go to and I thought ain't nothin' good gonna come of this. I told Tuck I didn't want no part of it. You know what he told me?"

"No. What?"

"'I ain't asking,' he says. So, I take another look at this fella and I get a bad feeling in my gut."

"So? What did you do?"

"What choice I had? If I refused, I woulda been fired like Potter offa Tuck's hack."

This episode featured:
Vittorio Fondazione as Uncle Sal
Opal Pierre as Alice
and
Jellybean Merengue as the tin of mints.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."

[4 March 2008]