Taxi Rider:Tales from a Saturday night
by Peter A. Sutters Jr. Independent Writer
The night was to start much like any other as I waited for a taxi in town - sitting on a bench outside The Brotherhood of Thieves, under a nearly full moon, waiting to be picked up and brought to my destination.

Only this time, my destination was the cab itself. I was going where it went. I was to see, hear and ultimately smell what it is like to spend a Saturday night with A1 Taxi.

Right on time, I see the white mini van round the corner from Centre Street and head down Broad Street, coming to a halt in front of me.

Walking around to the passenger side, I notice the driver moving a large object out of the front seat and into the back. I open the door and the dome light reveals a young man settling comfortably back in his seat, a broad smile crossing his face as he extends his hand.

"Hi, I'm Paul," he said. I glance in the back to see Paul had just moved his guitar from the passenger seat to make room for me. I think the night has begun the right way for telling a story about it later.

"Peter," I reply. "Thanks for letting me ride along. Sorry if I'm going to be a pain."

Sutters ponders the meaning of life during a late-night serenade.

"Not a problem," said Paul, who almost instantly wanted to know the obvious question that had been nagging him since his boss, Lisa Fisher, had told him a reporter for The Nantucket Independent wanted to do a ride-a-long. After listening to my motivations, Paul settles in to a rhythm of questioning that becomes easily identifiable as one he has repeated many times before with passengers who wanted more than just a ride. We exchange routine tales that had their beginnings years before about how each of us had ended up in the taxi that night as we headed out looking for fares.

I learn that Paul is a well-known native Nantucketer who is most often called by his last name, Emack. At 21-years old, he got behind the wheel of a cab after suffering an injury that prevented him from further lacrosse playing at Whittier College in Los Angeles. He had decided to return home to take a few semesters off, one thing led to another and here he was.

Before long the cab's cell phone/hand held radio unit came alive with what would become a familiar ring and snapped me back into realizing this wasn't just another random conservation with a random cab driver. It was go time, we had work to do.

"Heeello, A1 Taxi," answers Paul.

"Yeah, can we get a cab at The Brotherhood, going to The Box," says the voice crackling on the line. The destination would be a familiar one throughout the night, as the band Miss Fairchild was playing. A bonus for the bar crowd was the local opening band, The Undergraduates.

"Yup, we'll be there in five to seven minutes," Paul answers and off we go.

We pick up a young couple clad in hip clothing. The familiar chitchat begins and we learn they are here from "the City" (that's New York City, not Boston, the couple and I agree after an exchange of reasons why that should be understood, but sometimes isn't) to see Miss Fairchild. He was in the music business and had seen the band before and it was their first time to the island.

The ride is short and fairly nondescript. Paul continues to answer the phone and coordinate with four other drivers as to who is going to pick up what fare as the calls come in.

We drop them off and head for another fare in the mid-island area also heading to The Box. Paul finds the house and three passengers pile into the cab and want to know what the deal is with two people working in one cab.

I explain what I am doing and am met with cries of horror reporters often find themselves faced with. People who, under any circumstances, do not want be in the newspaper. I tell them the names and faces will be changed to protect the innocent, and everyone settles down, relieved they will not be publicly ousted.

But alcohol is a funny thing.

While the gentleman who accompanied the two young ladies remained silent in the third row of seating, the otherwise responsible young women may have let a few "pre-game" beverages get the best of them. They are both teachers off-island but have a business in the summer on island and see a chance to get free press to help sell their wares.

"You should mention our business and how great it is," says one, laughing with glee.

"Yeah, but put that you dropped us off at the library, we were going there to do research," says the other.

Right, research, on a Saturday, at 10:30 at night.

"Sure," I say. "Let me just get your names and the name of your business."

Astonishingly, they cough up the info as they head out the door, being kind enough to spell the names and give a few reminders as to how to remember the business name.

The next couple of fares seem to blend together - one was a friend of Paul's who was leaving a house where she said she witnessed "the strongest display of juvenile delinquency" she had seen in a long time. The next was a short trip from town to The Muse.

To this point, the fares had felt the same. Paul and I were bringing people out to have a good time. They were responsible people, choosing to leave their own cars at home and have a safe night on the town. Paul even commented that it was "almost a noble" thing to do, keeping drunk drivers off the road.

It seemed the night would go on like this until the end, but in one call the tone rapidly changed.

During the previous fare, a somewhat distressed sounding woman had called and asked for a ride from Tashama Lane. No address, she said, they would be walking down the road. Not 10 minutes passed and she was calling again, pleading for a ride.

"We'll be there in five to seven minutes," Paul reassures her.

We get there in less than that and pick up two girls, who appear to be in their mid-to-late teens. As soon as they enter the cab, the tension fills the interior. They explain that we will be going to pick up another person, then head to a final destination. Not a breath later, the two return to the conversation they must have been having when we arrived.

They talk of "drama" between themselves and someone else in barely hushed tones, cell phones ring and people are told "to chill."

Paul and I sit silently and go about the business of getting the teens to where they want to go. I hope they don't ask questions about who I am and what I'm doing. If the cat gets out of the bag at this point, the situation could get ugly. We get the other passenger and head to the final drop off point. As we rock back and forth over potholes as the cab lumbers down an unkempt dirt road, we're informed that we are to drop them off much like we picked them up, in the middle of the road. It's never said outright, but it's understood that the transit was not to be noticed on either end.

Pulling away, Paul and I both exhale with relief and go from silence to a full blown recap of the ride and what the heck we thought was going on. We both agree the two may have been acting a bit out of character for teens from Nantucket, but that in our youth we may have made the same mistakes.

Following that, it's back to more of the same. Picking up people, who with each ride seem to smell more and more of booze, and drop them off. Rinse. Repeat.

Madaket Road to The Muse, The Bamboo to the Muse, The Box to someone's home. It was entertaining conservation, but not the kind worth remembering. It was now getting near last call at the bars and we gravitated, with what seemed every cab on the island, to The Box.

We pull up and see that we would be ninth in line when we get a call for a pick up. We take the short trip and instantly are swarmed by inebriated bodies, all clamoring for the first cab home. One girl can barely stand and braces herself against a parked truck. Acouple joins her, with the male being the soberer of the two, trying to figure out if this is their cab and how to get home. Just when we think we have everyone, a fourth person, an older man, stumbles out the door and falls down the stairs.

This is going to be great, I think.

It turned out that, in the spirit of Easter, they were all going to share the ride, even though they were going to opposite sides of the island, then back again.

As often happens in the winter on Nantucket, they know each other through friends, although I was at a loss to explain how the connections were made through the laughing, slurred speech and the fact three of four seemed to be talking at the same time. Still, it did look like fun and it turned out to be just that.

The older guy insisted the others be brought home first and that he was paying for all of them. We dropped off the couple, and then headed near the airport to drop him off. Then it was back into town to bring home the girl who moments before was being held up by a parked car, but was now deep into telling us her story of how she ended up on Nantucket.

By this time it was well after 1 a.m. My car was just around the corner from our last fare so I bid Paul adieu.

As I walked back to Broad Street in front of The Brotherhood where this all began, I recalled all the stories and conversations I had in the past three-plus hours. They were no more or no less important than the thousands I have had as a reporter or a bartender, yet they were not the same. They were rushed, but filled with important and precise detail. Each had an imaginary hourglass counting the time until we arrived at the drop off, by which time the stories, the jokes and lessons learned that needed to be passed on had to be wrapped up. There was no "see you later" or "I'll tell you the rest later." They had somewhere to be, and we had a job to do. But during that time, it was still a human-to-human connection by strangers, something that I find increasingly rare in the age of emails, text messages and avoiding eye contact while walking down the street.

So next time you're headed out or home from the bars, thank your taxi driver for not only getting you there, but for listening to your story.

Oh yeah, tips don't hurt either. I