Painting Rides On The Roadway Canvas

Benjamin Yeager - "Peaks To Craters Highway" - artrising.com

Death was the first of three rites of passage I attended in single day as a limousine chauffeur. The funeral was on one of those hellishly bright mornings we get in the California's central valley, with a cheery little wind teasing the leaves of the Dutch elms and sycamores of East Sacramento, the old money section where the day’s mourners lived.

I waited by the limousine for the mourners to emerge from the house. There were four of them; a widow, a brother, a daughter and a son-in-law. Their black clothing seemed odd at that time of day. Funerals should be held in the long shadows of late afternoon when the light resembles the muted shades of an Edward Hopper painting. The black clothes were blots on the morning’s fingerpaint colors, as if death was a mere dark spot being overwhelmed by light.

A wedding was next. The families were Mexican with an affinity for flash. The bridesmaids wore scarlet. The father of the bride wore a shiny maroon tuxedo and a gold necklace. The groomsmen wore long black tuxedoes reminiscent of zoot suits, but with red vests, red neckwear, and their shirttails out.

The bright morning sizzled into a hot afternoon, and there were no cooling Dutch elms or sycamores in the neighborhood bordered by Martin Luther King Boulevard. The wedding party waited in groups for the bride to show up.  She was late.

One of the groomsmen blended some marijuana into the tobacco of a small cigar, but saved it for later. Others drank from bottles of Corona beer and talked quietly. Then the wedding day rowdies arrived, their junky, pull-me-over-car weaving and tilting at high speed down the residential street, stereo throbbing, occupants flashing gang signs and shouting obscenities in two languages. One of them was drinking whiskey from a half gallon bottle by holding it over his mouth like a wineskin.

They set the tone for the rest of the run, their weaving and tilting car chasing the limousine to the church and then the reception like a sparrow harassing a hawk. The bride wore scarlet. If this was her special day, I hoped that today was its nadir and the years, if any, of her marriage would only improve.

Two hours after cleaning up the post wedding mess in the limo, I was parked in front of a new home among the stucco McMansions of the El Dorado Hills development overlooking the Sacramento Valley. I was waiting for the evening’s passengers, ten girls aged 17 and 18 celebrating a birthday, and yes, to me they were girls. I’m at an age where I can get away with calling any female under 21 a girl, and political correctness be damned.

The birthday girl’s mother hired the limousine.  I was to drive the girls to a restaurant and back, she said, adding, “They’re all good girls. I think two of them are Mormons.”

Good, I thought. Then I won’t have to shake backpacks and big purses for the telltale gurgle of bottled alcohol, which is standard limo procedure when driving partying teens unaccompanied by an adult.  I also check water bottles for the scent of vodka.  Not that I care if they drink,  I don’t.  I was a teen drinker myself.  But cops and judges do care.  If my limo is pulled over for a traffic or tail light violation, and the cops see a dozen or more  underage drunks in back, I may suddenly find myself in a career reversal.  Worse yet, young girls (and boys) tend to get nauseous when drunk.  So I play in loco parentis  to avoid mopping up stomach acid mixed with Captain Morgan’s spiced coconut rum at the end of the trip.

Another deterrent to teen drinking in the limo, or any out of control drunkeness, is pointed out in the contract, as I showed the mother. We charge $700 on the customer’s credit card if anyone in the party vomits in the car, as the car has to be taken out of service for three days to undergo an expensive deodorizing enzyme treatment. The charge is to make up for lost revenue.

The other problem I have with young women in the limo is making sure they keep their perky little tits from being exposed in the moon roof and their alabaster asses inside the windows. That sometimes happens when young women’s inhibitions are numbed by alcohol and when they are in a wolfpack of their peers for a night on the town.  Not that I'm all stuffy about such a display, but the flashing of teen T & A often leads to the limo being tailgated and dangerously sidelaned by cars full of horny young swains, which is just what my little cockteasers intended in the first place.

I do not enjoy such Hallmark Moments as a chauffeur.  I prefer to think I am entrusted with the care and safety of peoples' daughters and sisters and the bearers of the next generation; girls whose parents spent fortunes on the their upbringing.  I imagine those parents fall to their knees in prayer every night, imploring God to keep their daughters from falling in lust with some flashy young thug who drinks whiskey out of half gallon bottles, and whose idea of employment is picking up roadside trash in a court ordered a work furlough program. 

The evening light over the Sacramento Valley could have been painted by an Impressionist, but the girls were brightly illuminated by youth and good health. The birthday girl’s mother lined them up by the limo for the usual picture. All of them were pretty, all of them were nice, and all of them ready to make babies. They were at the height of their reproductive ability, and with an urge to do so that flashes for attention like neon in Vegas.  If they were another specie they would put off a musk.

Other than one moonroof tit exposure, the girls were noisy but well mannered. They had chosen a Mexican restaurant for the birthday dinner because the boyfriend of one of them worked there.  He’d promised them free sombreros.  They emerged from the restaurant after dinner in their south-of-the-border headgear looking like blonde banditos ready to rob a stagecoach. They may not have been drinking anything stronger than Pepsi, but they all had the high spirits of party animals who’d just slammed down three vodka shooters apiece. 

"Theeeere’s our cute little limo driver!,” one shouted. “Take us to Reno!  How much does it cost to go to Reno,  Mr. Limo Driver?"

It would cost them their innocence, maybe their very souls, and at least one thousand dollars in advance, the standard fare for a limo run to Reno and back, including time spent waiting for them to lose their shirts or win a fortune.  I would also need the written consent of everyone’s parents, guardians or adult church elders. Written endorsements from the county sheriff and district attorney might help, as I would be driving a limo-load of underage and presumed virgins across state lines, but I only quoted the $1000 estimate and left out the other requirements.

“Awww,” she said.  “Does it have to be in advance?  Can‘t we make some other arrangements?”  That caused a ripple of giggles among the girls.

My mind leaped to obvious male fantasy of being buried under a flesh colored heap of naked teenaged female attention, but I was just too damn tired to engage in double edged banter about what those other arrangements might be, let alone experience them, sadness.  Plus I’m a skinny old bat who’s learned that while age may sometimes bring wisdom, it also brings regret and a lack of cooperation in certain nether regions of my being. 

I held a door open for them and smiled and amused little smile, a tacit signal that it was time to go home.  Let someone else paint on the roadway canvas for awhile.


Comments:

You know?  I've never ridden in a limo - and your stories, descriptive as they are, don't make me want to ride in one now. However, there's a stretch limo with a phone number on it, that I see practically every day. I may just call for an estimate.  -- Beaty

 

The standard rate for a 12-17 passenger Lincoln Town Car or Cadillac Escalade varies from $75 to $125 per hour with a four hour miminum, plus at least a $20 tip for the driver if you are happy with the ride, even though the limo contract states that the gratuity is included. It isn't.  The driver gets anything from minimum wage to $9 an hour and that's it.  The company maintains that it pays the driver 20% of the fare, which amounts to the same thing, and drivers, like food servers, survive on their tips.  -- MB 

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We ladies get a LITTLE more well-mannered in limos as we age – usually because our disapproving, stick-in-the-mud husbands are sitting next to us! Left to our own devices, we still drink a little too much, are a little too loud and giggly, and require the limo driver’s amused little smile to signal us to "get the hell out, your hour is over". We banter a bit with the driver beforehand and during the ride to whittle down the fare if we promise to keep all our clothes on, as nobody wants to see that on us anymore, and we’d hate to put him in a compromising position. Irrevocable proof of our saintly qualities, I think. -- Sandy

Sandy and her drinking buddies live in Alaska. That alone is an incentive to keep one's clothes on. -- MB
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Loved the images of the bridesmaids and groomsmen in flashes of scarlet, and laughed knowingly at your descriptions of the hijinks of the vatos in the "pull me over car." I could see the exuberance and allure of the Mormon girls - thank goodness you're a sensible man with a good head on his shoulders! : ) -- Tab A

You overestimate me with kindness. -- MB
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Another one hit out of the park. You're the Albert Pujols of blogging, I tellya.  -- Sum

I had to look up Albert Pujols.  Turns out to be some baseball guy on Sum's favorite team, the Saint Louis Blue Jays or Buzzards or somesuch bird name, and I appreciate the compliment.  But I seem to have struck a nerve.  See below.  -- MB
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Hey! Hey now!  We are NOT the St Louis blue jays or whatever!  We are  the  CARDINALS and we WON THE WORLD SERIES THIS YEAR  AFTER BEING DOWN TO ONE STRIKE, TWICE!  Awesome team, great to be living in St Louis during this incredible baseball year.  I am usually not much of a baseball fan, but this year's Cardinals championship season was one for the history books.  And by the way, Albert Pujols tied Babe Ruth and some other historic dude for three home runs in a World Series game. -- Eve

Babe Ruth?  Didn't he invent a candy bar or something?  -- MB

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Loved this one too!  -- Julisari

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<3 your stories, Tomatomike -- Pirate & Pearls

I heart you for hearting them.  -- MB

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Dear Mike, this was my earliest Christmas present. I did not save it. I sat right down and read it and was late for dinner at a friend's house. It was worth the scolding. If u feel another xmas present coming on, please send it along, I love reading u. Hugs, Fay

<blush> -- MB 
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Your pieces always make me think -- never just chuckle or smile a few seconds or even just sit and see how it all fits in my head. Nope. They make me think. It's one of the best things about your writing, in case you didn't know - but I suspect you do -- Zoey
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Why aren't these in a published collection again???

Sloth. -- MB
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Hey Tomatoes-For-Brains!  Whattsa matter? Run out of ideas? Can senility be far behind? -- ZipLePrune
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Probably not. -- MB
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