I'm heading out the door at 4 AM. I call 411, looking for a cab company to take me to the airport. They can't find the listing. I ask for another company, and get connected to a dead line. I'm done with telephones. I walk out to the main road, figuring a cab has to come by sooner or later.
It's 4 AM in South Philadelphia. There are no cabs. There are hardly any cars, for that matter. Except for a pickup truck pulled up by the corner store. The man looks at me as I'm standing on the corner with a heavy-looking suitcase, scanning traffic that isn't there.
"You need a ride?" he asks.
I quickly analyze the situation. If I get mugged, I only lose a bunch of clothes I don't really like. If he kills me, I either go to heaven and I'm in the clear, or I go to hell and get to kick his ass after he dies. So it's a no-lose situation. He tells me to throw my luggage in the back and hop in. I can hear a little bit of a Yankee country drawl.
We're going toward the airport, and I notice a car seat behind me. He explains that it belongs to a 2-year-old redheaded girl. She gets the hair from her mother, he says... her mother who has MS.
He shows me a couple of heavy pocketknives, part of his collection. One from Florida. He used to live in Fort Lauderdale. He knows about my high school.
I tell him I'm flying to South Carolina, and he tells me about riding in an airplane for his birthday, a little four-seater droning around the Pennsylvania countryside. I think to myself that I would rather be riding home to my family in a Cessna. I have these thoughts pretty often.
We take the exit into the airport, and he asks me to watch the signs for him. "I don't read," he says. "Never bothered to learn."
I thank him at the curbside and leave a twenty on the seat, twice what the cab fare would have been. As I get in line for check-in, I realize that it's coming out of my student loans. But that's no big deal. I'm pretty sure this qualifies as an educational expense. And I hope he buys the biggest turkey in the world for tomorrow.