on deadline, with the meter running

"On the day before the war started, I was being driven from Jerusalem to Ben-Gurion International Airport, outside Tel Aviv. My driver was named Tony.... 'Mr. Richard,' he said as we drove through Jerusalem's nearly empty streets, 'you are lucky you are leaving. The situation here is terrible.'... In New York, a taxi driver warned me not to take the shuttle to Washington." —Richard Cohen, Washington Post Writers' Group, February 18, 1991

"American Cab Co. driver Said Abtion, from Somalia, gave this advice to passenger George Creel: 'I think the Georgia Tech football team should take the Falcons' uniforms and play in the NFL and fire those other guys.' " —Norman Arey and Martha Woodham, Atlanta Constitution, February 3, 1991

"A bus driver in San Francisco hung a black origami dove from his dashboard. In New York, a cabdriver removed a snapshot of his son, a soldier, because, he said, 'I can't bear to be reminded.' " —Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, January 16, 1991

"A Baghdad engineer has begun driving taxis at night to earn enough money to stockpile food.... Puttering along in his cousin's dilapidated cab, he quickly confesses: 'I am weeping inside....' " —Tony Horwitz and Geraldine Brooks, The Wall Street Journal, January 1, 1991

"On the [Baghdad] radio, cab drivers seem to favor Arabic rock...." —Carl Bernstein, Time, October 8, 1990

"'You haven't been [to the USSR] in eighteen months?' the cabby who took us from the airport had asked a few minutes into the trip. 'Well, nothing's changed except there's less and less to eat." —Francine du Plessix Gray, Mirabella, October 1990

"'You mean El Escombrillo (from escombro, rubble),' the [Panamanian] taxi driver had joked when I'd asked him to take me to El Chorrillo. He wasn't joking when he warned that I might be mugged. " —Francisco Goldman, Harper's, September 1990

"[The campaign signs said] 'Everything will be better.' My taxi driver seemed to think so, but not if the Sandinistas win." —Francisco Goldman, Harper's, February 1990

"Then, on February 29th, Iraq fired Soviet-made Scud-B missiles at Teheran. 'At first, we thought they were bombing us,' a cabbie recalled. 'So did the military.' " —Robin Wright, The New Yorker, September 5, 1988

"The cabdrivers, as antic as the carnival hustlers in Petrushka, voice their spiels in heavily accented English, promising the dream of heaven (fur hat? nightclub? pretty girl?). " —Lewis Lapham, Harper's Notebook, July 1988

"I was given the best description of the revolution's idyllic nature by a taxi-driver in Managua...." —Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, March 14, 1988

"Almost every Berliner's emotional survival kit includes a wisecracking sense of humor.... An American, returning to Berlin after 60 years, asks his taxi driver to run down the events during his absence. Responds the driver: 'The Nazis came, the war came, the Russians came. You didn't miss much.' " —Jill Smolowe, Time, August 18, 1986