I drive a taxi. I meet people I would probably not meet in my private life. These random encounters often change my perspective.
Yesterday morning was slow - because it was Sunday. I took a call out of my zone for somebody waiting in the emergency room at a hospital.
I found this frail man named Don dressed in white in a wheelchair sitting alone in the lobby. He told me he busted his shoulder when he slipped on some plastic packaging in the middle of the night and fell against the concrete wall. I wheelchaired him up to the cab and he climbed in.
We talked. I knew his mind was full of images, so I drew him out with lots of questions. He turned 90 February 28. He’s lived here all his life while ripening into a gentle intelligent nanogenarian. He told me about the forest that covered Beaverton when he was a kid. He told me about the Hudson dealership that folded in 1939. He told me about working downtown. I listened intently, because I love downtown. I love the ghosts that dwell there, and Don had been present to see many of them erected.
Don's never been married. He’s had time to do a lot of thinking. He understood me, I’m sure, better than I understood him. He survives while the rest of his people are gone. His layers of pretension have dissolved away and he appeared as we all will if we last long enough.
His spirit dwelling in his body was something like wind in a sailing ship's gauzy rigging.
We had a couple good laughs as we waited for his prescriptions to be filled. The pretty 24-year-old pharmacist was cranky at work that early Sunday morning. As she hammered her computer keyboard, I noticed how strong, agile, intelligent and bitter she was.
I dropped Don back at the concrete dwelling. He gave me a monster tip.
