Spider Man

The guy got in at three a.m. wearing a Wo Hop t-shirt. This was interesting because who would have thought that Wo Hop, my favorite all-night Chinese joint on Mott Street, would ever be the kind of place to have a logo on an article of clothing? And what kind of person would boastfully display it on his chest, as if to say, "You want dumplings? My Wo Hop dumplings will scrub the floor with your stinkin' Golden Monkey dumplings. You got that, lucky boy?" 

So it had to be properly acknowledged. "A Wo Hop t-shirt! Wow, you don't see many of those!" I exclaimed even before he could tell me he wanted to go to Astoria.  "Yeah, man, Wo Hop rules," he replied with a happy-face smile and a certain half-here, half-there demeanor that told me immediately that he was a jolly drunk who was ready to expound. This would be a fun ride.

"I love that place," I continued. "For one thing, its location. You drive down Mott and there's that dog-leg to the left and late at night the street is as slippery as ice from a garbage truck spillover and it looks kind of creepy like a scene from a Bogart movie at four in the morning, and it's so dark and deserted, but look, wow, Wo Hop is open."

The guy was right on it. "Yeah," he joined in, "you do down those stairs and there'll be, like, five Asian guys sitting there looking at you like what the hell are you doin' here?"

"The Chinese mafia." 

"No doubt! No doubt, and they keep lookin' at you like you're a cop and before you can sit down the tea kettle arrives and in like thirty seconds you've got your wonton and a minute later there are the egg rolls and the duck sauce." 

"And the mustard sauce." 

"Yeah, and the mustard, man, and then a minute after that the dumplings show up and you're in piggy heaven, man!" 

"You like 'em fried or steamed?" 

"What?" 

"The dumplings - fried or steamed?" 

 "Oh, yeah, fried, definitely, mucho on the soy." 

"Mmm, so good!" 

Pavlov-like, I could feel my saliva glands kicking in. Damn, those dumplings are good and, as I steered the cab onto the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge, I started thinking maybe I should shoot down to Chinatown after I dropped the guy off. There are times when it's best to just give in to the dumpling urge. Mucho on the soy. 

"Hey," I said to my passenger as a thought came to me, "have you ever ordered anything particularly freaky at Wo Hop? Don't they have some really weird stuff on the menu?" 

"You mean like octopus or something?" 

"Yeah." 

 He thought about it for a moment and smiled. "Oh, yeah, snails." 

 

"Snails?" 

"Yeah, snails in black bean sauce." 

 I laughed. "Oh my God," I said, "you ate a snail?" 

"Shit, yeah, I ate a bunch of them," he replied, still smiling. 

"Ewww, I don't think I could eat that," I said. "Isn't a snail an insect?" 

"No, no, a snail's like a mollusk or something. It's got a shell, like a clam. You eat clams, don't you?" 

"Uh, yeah." 

The guy had a point. 

"How was it?" 

"Oh, it was delicious, man. You stir it up with the rice. Really good, actually." 

I had to admit that, since it wasn't an insect, I could see myself trying it someday. I draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to eating insects, though. I wouldn't get very far on The Fear Factor. 

"What was the weirdest thing you ever ate?" I inquired. It was a logical question to ask at this point in the conversation. A goofy smile came over his face. 

"I ate a tarantula once," he said. 

I was stunned for a moment as my mind's computer tried to process this information. Did he just say "tarantula"? Yes, he did. Isn't "tarantula" a huge, hairy spider? Yes, it is. There isn't some chocolate bar or energy drink called "Tarantula", is there? No, there is not. So what he's saying is that he ate - that is, he put into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed - a huge, hairy spider? Uh, yes, that's what he's saying. I looked at him again in the mirror. The goofy smile was still there. 

"You ate a tarantula!!!???" I all but screamed. "Are you serious?" 

"Uh huh," he confirmed, with a just perceptible trace of pride in his voice.

"Oh my God! How did that happen?" "I was in Thailand and these guys I was with, we went into this restaurant and it became like a dare thing. So one guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', then another guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', and it was like I wanted to show them that I was as crazy as they were." 

"So you ate it." 

"Yeah." 

"Did they cook it?" 

"Yeah, they fried it in some sauce." 

"Isn't a tarantula poisonous? What about the fangs?" 

"Yeah, they took that shit out before they cooked it." 

"You hope!" 

"Right!" he said with a dumbass-me laugh. "So how did it taste? Don't tell me it tasted like chicken."

"Actually, it did taste like chicken." 

"That's funny," I replied, Groucho Marx style, "cause I once ate a chicken that tasted just like a tarantula." 

The joke went whizzing by his head and on into outer space without being noticed. After couple more minutes of tarantula talk, we arrived at his apartment house on 30th Avenue. He paid me the $12.30 fare and threw in a $2.70 tip - not bad for an insect-eater - and stepped out of the cab.

"I once ate a centipede, too," he called back as he started to walk off toward his building. 

"Was that in Thailand as well?" 

"No, that was in Mexico." 

So the guy had the distinction of having eaten disgusting, multi-legged creatures on two different continents. 

He disappeared into his place and was gone and I turned the cab back toward Midtown, the urge to go to Chinatown having somehow suddenly left me. The thought came to me back on the 59th Street Bridge that had this guy told me all this and had not been just a passenger in my cab but instead was, say, a friend or a coworker, I would always think of him, before I would think of anything else he might have done in his life, as the guy who had eaten a tarantula. Let's say he had once done something great, like spending two years of his life in the Peace Corps. I would think of him as the Peace Corps volunteer who had once eaten a tarantula. Or if he had once rushed into a burning building to save someone's life, he would be the guy who had rushed into a burning building who had once eaten a tarantula. 

Sometimes it's just better not to know.

 

********

But then again sometimes it is better to know. Like knowing that when you click here you'll suddenly find yourself at Pictures From A Taxi. And no one will try to talk you into eating a bug.

J. Fred Coots

Bloomingdale's had the best Christmas windows this year, I thought, because of the originality and delightfulness of their concept. They took a Tony Bennett CD of Christmas standards and created windows for several of the songs, depicting visually what is being suggested by the words and melodies. Then they set up speakers and played the Bennett renditions so passerby on the sidewalk could not only see the scenes in the windows but could also hear the tunes that were their inspiration. It worked well.

One of the windows was of particular interest to me - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - because, amazingly enough, I once had its composer in my taxi. I say "amazingly" because this song was written in 1934 - it's been around forever - and it wouldn't seem possible that a taxi driver in 2008 would have ever had the person who wrote it in his cab.  But it did happen early one evening in July of 1983.

I was cruising down Lexington Avenue looking for a fare and turned right on 69th Street. A doorman from a luxury high-rise hailed me and directed me into the driveway of his building. Waiting at the entrance were an elderly couple. The gentleman was rather frail and was assisted into the cab by the doorman. Their destination was the New York Athletic Club, an old-school establishment on the very exclusive Central Park South, about a seven-minute ride.

I love it when I meet people who are well up in age yet who are still active and enjoying themselves. Here was just such a couple. They had a pleasant air about them and I could easily tell that they were both  conversational types. I had been driving a cab for about six years at that point and that was plenty enough time to be able to perceive the talkers from the leave-me-alone-and-just-drive-ers. So chat we did.

As I recall, our conversation began on the subject of the New York Athletic Club. Since it's called an "athletic" club I naturally assumed that athletic activities of one kind or another would be occurring there. But my passengers, although they were certainly out and about, let's face it, they were well beyond whatever "athletic years" they may have enjoyed. So I said something along the lines of, "The New York Athletic Club? What are you going to do, work out?" This, of course, was meant as a joke and was taken as one. Whereupon I was informed that the NYAC has on its premises an excellent dining room and that was their specific destination.

Nevertheless, the subject of athletics had come up and this led to some talk about tennis, which led to some talk about John McEnroe, the tennis player who at that time was the biggest star of the tennis world. And in conversing about McEnroe I brought up the subject of his infamous temper and then I inadvertently said the "secret word".

And the secret word was "pout".

As in...

You'd better watch out,

You'd better not cry,

You'd better not POUT,

I'm telling you why...

Groucho Marx used to have a quiz show in the '50s called "You Bet Your Life." One of the gimmicks of the show was that if any of the contestants happened to use the "secret word" in conversation with Groucho, they'd automatically win a hundred dollars. And if this happened, a "duck" with a cigar in its beak (Groucho always had a cigar handy) would suddenly descend on a string along with musical fanfare.

Well, it was as if I'd been a contestant on that show. I had said the secret word - his word - and the gentleman in the back seat suddenly told me, in what appeared to be a complete non sequitur, that he was the person who had written the song "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" and that his name was J. Fred Coots.

Santa Claus is coming to town -- in a taxi! -- in this Bloomingdale's window.

I, of course, was fascinated and delighted to be so informed and this led to a brief conversation about the song and about his career. He had been what is known as a "tin pan alley" composer, had written hundreds of songs, and many Broadway shows as well. One of his songs that I was familiar with was a hit for Pat Boone in the '50s called "Love Letters In The Sand".

When we arrived at the New York Athletic Club I got out of the cab and came around to help him out, as he was well into his '80s and needed a little help in the taxi-extrication process. He put his right hand into my own and I hoisted him up a bit so he could get his legs into the proper exiting position. And the thought occurred to me as I did this that the hand which had written this song - so much a part of our culture and something which has brightened the lives of millions of people for decades - was in my own. It was an honor, really.

His wife, who also struck me as a lovely person, came around and gave me some motherly advice as she began walking toward the NYAC entrance. "Don't drive late at night," she said under her breath, as if this was something no one else should hear.

Here's a video I took of one of the Bloomingdale's windows while Tony Bennett's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" was playing for the benefit of anyone who happened to be passing by...

I think of that ride every Christmas season.

********

And I also think this: why not click right here for Pictures From A Taxi?