The Taxi Ride
Greeting to all my faithful & adoring fans out there (you are out there, aren't you?). I'm sure the crickets that I'm hearing are simply outside my window. Welcome to another edition of Flashback Friday.
In today's post I discuss the only taxi ride that I took prior to being of voting age. Life was simpler back then. Now days, not many people would put their pre-teen child in a car alone with a complete stranger, late at night.
In my last post, I described that Mom worked at a tile factory. During her days working on the floor, she was offered overtime. Since there were two shifts running, the overtime happened late Friday & Saturday nights. Mom would get off at 3PM, catch some sleep, and go back in at Midnight. She would work until 8 AM the next morning. They even let Dad work weekends with her. The extra money sure came in handy.
What does this have anything to do with taxis, you may ask. One time, my folks went in to Westerville to pick up some extra hours. My brother was staying with my cousin, and I was to stay with my grandma. We got to grandmas around 11:30 PM, and my folks said goodnight, and headed to the tile factory. Grandma wanted me to get into bed and go to sleep.
I had been asleep, and had caught my second wind. I wasn't the least bit tired. I really didn't want to be awake late at night at grandma's, because it was kind of spooky (thanks Gattabout for telling me that bodies were buried in the dirt part of her basement). I really, really,really didn't want to be there. I called Mom at the factory. She told me that neither she, nor Dad, couldn't come and get me. She told me that I would be fine. But I knew better.
It was decided that a taxi would pick me up at grandma's and take me over to the factory. I remember a blue car pulling into the driveway. I remember getting into the front seat. He took me over to the factory for the unheard of price of $2.
My second wind was still blowing. I helped Mom with a few menial jobs that needed to be done. I was going strong until about 3 AM. By that time I was wore out, and I looked for someplace to sack out. My parents found me asleep on a sack of tile glaze mix.
To this day, I can still go to sleep anywhere.
2 comments:
I would say you can sleep anywhere, anytime--except in the middle of the night when someone is talking in their sleep.
Things were so different back in those days, hm, sir? I could mentally picture you sleeping on that sack of glaze mix. :-)
I don't know if it was a result of something that happened in my childhood, but Ed says I could sleep on a fencepost! LOL AND I go to sleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, too. :-)
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