You know it’s crazy I’ll tell you it’s crazy™
The limo ride from the United Center in Chicago.
The Blackhawks game has just let out. It’s a zombie zoo of pedestrian traffic. Teary eyed hockey fans leave the arena like fire ants being burned by a flame.
It’s a torrential storm of human sadness as drunken, die-hard hockey fans lumber into the cold thankless night.
Why so glum?
They just witnessed an excruciatingly painful loss to the St. Louis Blues in a shoot out.
Great game. Physical. Exciting. For them? The wrong team is sipping champagne.
So we move with the tide of sad sack humanity; 20,000 moping, overweight Chicagoans, slowly trudging away from the epicenter of their despair.
“Where do way get a cab?” one of our group asks an usher.
He points to the darkness on the edge of town.
All I see is faces coming at me.
A sea of faces. A wall of faces. Black Jerseys. Red Jerseys. White Jerseys. It’s a tidal wave of fans abandoning ship.
I listen to a conversation that intersects my personal space.
“Well at least we got Da Bears.”
It sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit.
“Hey which way to the cabs?” another in our group asks a cop with a checkered hat.
He points to magnetic North.
It’s like a Three Stooges episode as we follow the mass of humanity into a somewhat questionable neighborhood a block from the arena.
There are eight of us walking aimlessly, planning our night. We are sort of looking for a cab, and sort of just walking.
We are about 3 blocks from the United Center when a street huxter intersects our navigational beacon.
“You want me to find you a cab?” he says.
Some one in our group entertains the query. Others grumble that he is going to rip us off.
But since the flow of pedestrian angst is flowing in one direction, we keep walking. We are now a group of 8 plus one street huxter who proclaims that he is our cab liaison.
I like the idea of getting help to find a ride. What I don’t like is the rapidly decaying look of the neighborhood he is leading us into.
We are now four blocks from the stadium. The brilliant lights of the stadium are now hard to see, blocked by buildings and trees.
With the light there was a sense of safety. Without the light, in the dark, lead by a street urchin, there is a sense of foreboding.
Suddenly, as if the Gods of Urban Undulation are watching over us, we stumble upon a jet black stretch limo.
The street huxter, bangs on the passenger side window.
The dark glass smoothly lowers revealing the driver.
“These fellas need a limo. How much?”
The limo driver is of Middle Eastern descent. He’s wearing a dark uniform typical for a driver. His words are soft and I cannot hear over the din of traffic.
Our group looks at each other suspiciously. We are 8 people which is at least 2 cabs. So far we have seen NO cabs. This looks like a promising deal.
Like deer grazing on the side of the road, illuminated by a hunter’s spotlight, not sure whether to run or standstill, we let the street urchin negotiate.
One of our party steps into the fray. He listens to the terms. I never do hear what transpires.
Suddenly our friend waves us into the limo.
“Let’s roll boys.”
And like that, a new moment, a new adventure is upon us.
A limo. Wow. How fun. How unexpected. My adrenaline surges like a crock pock percolating all day on the stove.
I go in first, followed by my teenage boy.
The limo is long and we have to crawl on the seat toward the front. I sense the noise level increasing as 4 more adults pile into the vehicle.
I take my seat behind the driver. I cannot see him. There is a partition and dark glass separating the compartments. I notice that the glass partition has an opening about the size of a bible. Through this square hole I can see the driver’s area and see out the front windshield.
The inside of the limo is standard fare. Blinking disco lights in the ceiling. There is a bar area across from the seats. There is a stereo control unit at the rear where we entered the vehicle.
The seats are long and the windows are dark.
“The Intercontinental Hotel” Someone hollers.
And like that, we are moving.
There is a sense of excitement.
A moment ago we were cold and bewildered, being lead by a questionable street denizen. Suddenly, we are high rollers making our way back to the Miracle Mile.
The mood is upbeat and happy. Our group of 8 fills the limo like so much epidermal buckshot rammed into a muzzle loader.
My 14 year old is beaming ear to ear.
He says he has been in a limo before, but I don’t know when.
Either way this is a cool adventure for someone 50 no less 14.
I look at the other teenager, all of 18. His eyes are bigger than the hockey pucks the Blackhawks just let sail into the net.
We talk about the game. We laugh out loud. We talk about old stories and stories on the horizon of our weekend.
Somebody tosses me a beer. It’s a Bud Light. It’s luke warm.
I pop the top and take a swig.
Liquid Magic.
I look out the smoky window before me. Instead of bright lights and high-end shopping, I see graffiti lined benches and seedy alleys.
The darkness and the unfamiliar location is unsettling.
I’m not the only one to notice.
“Hey driver! You know we’re going right the Intercontinental Hotel, right?”
I see the driver through the bible sized square in the partition. He doesn’t look back. Instead he says “shortcut” in a thick Middle Eastern accent.
“What?” someone in the back asks.
“Shortcut,” I say my eyes growing wide.
Then like a yard being aerated, somebody plants the seed that will feed our nervous minds.
“I think we’re going to die. He’s leading us to slaughter.”
We laugh, but the thought lingers.
“Might as well be drunk” some one shouts tossing out more luke warm beers.
I look at the neighborhood. It’s still dark and dangerous. It feels like a crime scene about ready to explode upon us.
Suddenly the limo stops. It’s jarring. It’s unusual. It’s startling. None of us are sure what is happening.
Through the bible square I see the driver exit the vehicle. The driver door is open.
THUNK!
There is a bang on the side of the limo.
I see the teenager’s eyes grow wide.
“Did we get hit?” someone asks.
I honestly am not sure.
I look through the hazy windows and see garbage cans and dumpsters and graffiti. This neighborhood is an underarm sweating dirt and poverty.
Suddenly the rear door jerks open.
The sudden blast of cold night air and light startles my buddy sitting by the door.
I watch his face through blinking disco lights. From my vantage point in this narrow submarine of death, I can only make out some of the activity.
“It’s the limo driver,” someone closer to the entrance says.
Huh?
What’s going on, I wonder.
The limo driver is standing above my friend, ominously, peering down. His piercing Middle Eastern eyes fixed on the occupants in the rear seat.
Is this when we get rolled? I think to myself.
“I am the limo driver” he says in an awkward and unexpected introduction.
My friend in the rear seat is holding two beers and looking up at the Middle Eastern man. My friend is confused.
I wish he would drop a beer just in case he has to protect himself from the Shiite attack that is poised to break loose.
“I know you’re the limo driver,” my friend says calmly trying to diffuse what feels like a tense moment.
“What’s wrong? Why did you jerk my door open?”
The conversation is lost somewhere between the Middle East and Middle America.
The moment is a little tense.
He moves to the rear of the vehicle and pops the trunk. My buddy is confused. The look on his face makes me nervous. My thoughts are racing. What is the limo driver doing? Is he going for a hammer, a gun, a hack saw. Is he going to sell us into white slavery? Is he going to cut us up into carp bait and toss us into the Chicago River?
The group is more than a little nervous as the man rummages through the trunk, clunking loudly.
I keep waiting for a posse of voo doo henchmen to show up from the periphery of darkness and pull us into the street. I imagine being robbed at gun point and one by one having our testicles cut off as souvenirs he will hang from his rear view mirror.
Then I see his form move toward the door.
I tense up.
The limo driver leans in, his arms full of icy cold beers. He hands them to my friend who is pleasantly startled by the charity.
Beers over bullets any day, right?
The limo driver slams the door as suddenly as he jerked it open.
He climbs back into the front seat and slams the street missile into gear.
VROOOOOM.
We continue our tour of Chicago’s inner city slums.
It’s nefarious to say the least, but the good will gesture from Anheuser Busch helps to alleviate the fear.
But that doesn’t stop some in the limo from opening the GPS on their smart phones.
“Are we heading back to the hotel?” someone asks aloud.
Everyone’s head is on a swivel. Nothing seems familair. While we are hopeful this ride will end well, some of us wonder if we are about to pull into a back alley full of henchmen ready to shove knives and razors against our throats.
If this was South America we would have already had to ask for proof of life.
The teenage boys are a little bit nervous looking to their fathers for reassuring glances
And then as quickly as the darkness had washed over the limo, the bright lights of downtown Chicago fill our eyes.
It’s like sunshine on a rainy day. There is a sense of relief that comes with the knowledge that we will see another day.
In 2 minutes, the death limo pulls up to the Intercontinental Hotel.
It is an impressive building, standing proud and tall in a city that is proud and tall.
Suddenly the door jerks open.
This time it is a brightly attired doorman wearing a hat and long tails.
He looks in and says ” good evening gentlemen.”
From death and mutilation behind the dumpster we are suddenly celebrated guests of a four star hotel on the miracle mile.
Like that our moment is over. We exit the limo high-fiving holding beers awaiting our next adventure.
We pay the Middle Eastern limo driver who smiles and nods quietly disappearing back into the limo of death.
It pulls away, turns the corner and disappears, searching for its next frightened fair.
“How do you like that?” I ask my 14-year-old son
“That was so cool,” he says. “Kind of weird but cool”
He’s right. It was weird but a good weird. The kind of weird that stories are forged around, the kind of moment that lasts a lifetime.
Life’s Crazy™