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I have had, in my time, a few memorable conversations with police officers. As you might imagine, most of those talks occurred through a rolled-down car window as I sat parked on the shoulder of this or that street or highway, and the discussions were not always entirely cordial. I do recall one conversation demonstrably different from the others, and I enjoyed that one quite a bit.
Mid-morning on a sunny weekday in the early autumn of 1970, when I was twenty-one years old, living with my mother and siblings in Annandale, Virginia, and driving cab for Arlington Yellow, I was sent by my dispatcher to a newish, tallish apartment building in Clarendon, to pick up one passenger, a man. He was waiting when I arrived. He looked to be somewhat older than I, a good-looking, fit fellow, you would probably agree, with neatly trimmed hair, no hat. He was a white guy in slacks, light-colored dress shirt with no necktie, and a two-toned windbreaker not entirely zipped. He opened the right rear door of my cab, a few-years-old Dodge, climbed in, and asked me if I knew where the police impound lot for towed vehicles was. I did not, but he did, and he gave me an address. I knew what it was near. I flipped the flag down on my meter and off we went.
My passenger, like most of my passengers traveling without a companion, was glad to talk, and this fellow had a little story to tell. He said he was a D.C. police officer. He had spent the night, first time ever, he said, in his girlfriend’s apartment, in the Clarendon building where I’d picked him up. He’d parked his private vehicle in a parking stall designated for visitors but had not noticed the signs warning that vehicles found there after two a.m. would be towed. He discovered those signs at six a.m., when he was ready to leave for work. He went back to his girlfriend’s apartment, called his precinct in the District, reported his situation, and was granted time off to recover his vehicle. Things could be worse, he told me.
This taxi ride, as I mentioned, occurred mid-morning, so traffic was light, and we were moving along at a pretty good clip when my passenger directed me to take a certain turn that did not sound right to me, so I told him the route I intended to take instead, but, by the time I’d told him, argued with him, we might say, a matter of seconds, really, I’d by then gone past the turn-off he had suggested, and I was pretty much committed to my original plan.
“Oh, fine, then, that’s okay,” he said, speaking of my putting a greater distance, a slightly greater time, perhaps, on my meter. “It’s only pennies,” he sighed. As he said it, I glanced over my shoulder and saw him lift both his hands, palms up in meek resignation as he added, with a sad smile and a quiet chuckle, “Ah, well, what can you do? It don’t do no good to cry, so ya might as well just laugh and live with it.”
No, indeed, it don’t do no good to cry. The proverb proclaimed by the policeman was not particularly profound, but I have thought of those words now and again, and they have sometimes been something of a comfort, especially when I have had to have other little chats with less easy-going officers of the law.
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