Green Taxi From Oakland Part 2

Another oddity stands directly across the street from the station. A one room shanty with a steeply-sloped moss covered A-frame roof with a large front window running its small length. About a 20 foot by 20 foot structure that I discovered one day was a barber shop. Run by a Greek immigrant. A chalk board sandwich board-type sign stands just to the right of the glass front door and appears to be kept outside permanently, as some of its pricing information has been washed away by the perpetual British drizzle, and other notations, such as services offered, are actually out of date and no longer available. I spoke with the tiny Greek man, a youngish looking 35, who simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “I no longer can give shampoo.”

The Green is the small centerpiece to the hill, not unlike what the lake provides for the park. The two little patches of lawn, bisected by a busy two-way street, are home to Christmas Festivals, Caroling Parties, outdoor produce markets in the spring and summer, and the occasional impromptu game of football (soccer for this Yank) between impetuous boys while their mums and dads get a mid-day bracer of anti-freeze at the nearby corner pub, The Kings Head.

Perched defiantly on the northern most corner of a busy round-about, 50 feet from the Green, The Kings Head is a major cornerstone in this little slice of London’s pie. As with many pubs in London, it is a gathering place that is far more than what we Yanks might call a bar. Most serve food for lunch and dinner and have separate rooms for private parties, and do a particularly brisk business at Christmas time with office parties and family gatherings. The Kings Head sports an attractive, impressive three story edifice that overlooks the Green. Its spire spikes the dusk sky in dramatic fashion, looking sinister against the backdrop of scudding dark clouds and a darkening sky. It looms castle-like over this little enclave that is home to so much money. Though not as old as many of the pubs in London, The Kings Head does not try to be what it can’t. Its interior is more modern, without offering the charm that comes from walking into the interior of a thick-beamed ancient pub that is well over 400 years old. The wealthy Winchmore Hill clientele seems to approve of the more modern set-up, as The Kings Head remains one of the more profitable pubs in all of London.

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On a rainy Wednesday (honestly, you can plug in your own choice for day of the week before ‘rainy’ and not be inaccurate) in late December in that oddly soothing week between Christmas and New Years, Waldo and I decided to use a different entrance, the one on The Bourne, to enter Grovelands. It was a misty, foggy morning with limited visibility and the air so thick it was like walking into a sneeze. As we peered through the ornate gates, the gloaming was so thought-provoking, I pulled the little notebook I always kept with me out of my overcoat pocket and scribbled some brief, immediate thoughts and ideas and words. Maybe they would coalesce into a story idea later, maybe not.
Once through the narrow open gate, I unleashed Waldo and watched him dash off as if shot from a cannon. It usually took about 100 yards before he realized he was destination-less and he would stop his full sprint suddenly, turn to look quizzically at me and wonder why I had not followed his mad dash. Usually, he would sheepishly start back toward me as if in retreat.

Usually.

Not on this 28th day of December, 2012.

He went into point.

Visibility was such that I had to walk up to him to see what had his sudden attention. He rarely focused his body physically in this fashion unless an approaching hound was big and intimidating. It usually spelled trouble for him and, by extension, me.

It took me a minute to get to where he was crouched and poised, staring into what appeared to me to be only thick fog. I squinted my
48-year-old eyes, then decided to look obliquely.

And in the distance, on a green expanse that in the spring and summer is pressed into service as a golf driving range but currently unoccupied by small white dimpled orbs, I see an odd shaped large object. Almost box-like. Painted green. Kelly green. At least it appears as such. I start toward the oddly shaped object sitting in the middle of the grassy field.

Waldo followed, probably even more curious than I.

As I approached the object, it became larger as the shroud of fog became thinner. And it was indeed a box, shaped about 12 feet high and 20 feet long, and painted a brilliant green, probably the shade of green the grass I was standing on would look like in May.

The bizarre, incongruous placing of this object so starkly out in the middle of a field where virtually no one could miss it made me wonder. I reached out to touch it. Plywood. Rough cut. Was this thing just dropped from the sky? Thoughts of New Mexico and aliens flitted about my brain pan.

Reality came bashing back into my psyche, as it always does.
You’re in London, north London, you big lug. The Brits like their ghosts, but they’ve been battling the Irish for years, the Brits hate green. This may be a boxed bowel movement from the IRA, but it probably has a more logical explanation.

Probably.

I pressed on the board in front of me, the horizontal piece of wood about 20 feet long, heard a click, and pulled my hand back.

I had to jump back and pull Waldo away to avoid the wall of plywood falling on us. It came down and gave a soggy slap as it landed on the muddy grass.

I stared at what was suddenly revealed.

I stared some more.

W T F…?

Waldo sat placidly beside me, completely unaware of the impact this was having on me.

What was revealed as the huge piece of plywood slowly cascaded to the grass was at once almost indecipherable, yet also simplistically obvious.
A London taxi cab, its famous, iconic shape purposeful and obvious, and painted Kelly green like its plywood coffin and, and this is where I would have sat down if there had been a chair.

Festooned on the front driver’s door was an Oakland A’s logo.

Really?

The Oakland A’s? An American professional baseball team?

Baseball was not even played in this country.

As if that total disconnect was not incongruous enough; Oakland, California was my home town.

Fuck it. I sat down on the damp muddy grass.

Waldo was sniffing the logo, as if the paint was fresh.

Was it? Turns out it was a magnet.

I looked around. Not another soul in sight, though the fog kept visibility to about 100 yards. I don’t believe in aliens or things of that nature. I subsist in a world of logic and reason and pragmatism. Not a dry, scientific approach to life, just a practical, utilitarian, even cynical way of looking at things.

What now stood before me was testing the strength of each one of my fundamental psychological tenets.

It was the ‘Oakland’ angle that had me most perplexed. What were the odds? Almost incalculable, even in London where they will place odds and take a bet on virtually anything.

And why paint a cab that color and adorn it with the logo? And then put it here, like it was dropped out of the sky, behind and under a total of five equally green plywood walls?

This was only the second time since we’d been coming to Grovelands that Waldo and I had used this particular exit. Had we not, I would not have come within 500 yards of this, and thus never seen it.

I heard the sputtering of sticky lifters on the engine of a Cushman cart that the staff used to drive around the park. I could hear it but not see it. I would certainly see the driver before the brown Cushman, as all park employees wore lost-at-sea bright yellow jackets. I watched and waited, turning to where the sound of the misfiring motor came from.

Waldo had moved to the other side of the cab, out of my line of sight. I heard the creak of plywood, a second of silence, and a muted thump and then Waldo yelped in fright and pain. I sprinted around the other side and pulled the fallen wood up and off of him. He was rattled but unhurt. As I was about to pick him up, the piece in front of the cab fell away, then the roof of the structure slid off the top and landed at my feet while the piece at the back of the cab plopped harmlessly to the soggy turf, splattering muddy rain water 10 feet in the other direction. The wood had fallen away like a magician’s trick coffin after being sawed through, in almost perfectly-timed sequence. It was as if the cab went through a quick, well-timed strip tease.

Now the cab was unadorned, unprotected and, oddly, looking even sillier without its enclosure. It still looked shockingly out of place.

The park employee pulled up about 20 feet away on the stone path and stopped. He had on the requisite bright clothing and a dark brown leather cowboy hat. He did not look pleased.

“Hey mate, what the hell you doin’? You can’t park that thing there.” He started to walk toward me. Waldo gave a low, guttural growl and I watched the row of hair that followed his spine rise ominously. I hooked my index finger under his collar.

I waited until he was within earshot so I didn’t have to yell and said, “It’s not mine. I just came upon it about ten minutes ago. I have no idea where it came from, or who put it here. It was enclosed in these pieces of ply wood.”

The guy looked skeptically at me and took a circuitous route around the cab. I’d noticed there was a matching A’s logo on the front passenger side door as well.

He finished his loop and stood on the driver’s side and watched me over the roof of the cab while he fumbled in his jacket breast pocket for a walkie talkie.

Of course, when I say ‘driver’s side’ and ‘passenger’s side’, I am speaking from my American experience. In this case, here in England, where I stood facing the right side of the car was where the steering wheel was.

After turning a dial on the side, which resulted in scratchy static sounds, he finally got a person on the other end. I couldn’t hear what he said.

Finally he finished the conversation and walked around to me. Waldo eyed him warily but did not growl.

“I have to ask you to stick around. My supervisor’s gonna be here straight away. He’s got some questions for ya.”

I nodded. “Sure thing.”

We stood in an awkward silence until we heard a similar sounding malfunctioning Cushman engine. The fog had raised some and visibility was now probably 300 feet.

The supervisor, sporting the same jacket as the guy next to me, pulled up behind the first Cushman and parked. He surveyed the situation for a minute, then climbed out and walked over.

Apparently, the guy next to me had told him I was a Yank, because the first thing he said was, “I don’t know or give a rat’s ass what they do in the States mate, but you can’t park a fucking cab in the middle of Grovelands Park. And why the hell did you paint it that ghastly shade of green? And who the hell are the Oakland A’s?”

I sighed and glared at the underling next to me, who was grinning like an idiot, which I was willing to bet he was.

“I can only answer one of those questions, mate,” and I loaded that last word with as much sarcasm as my American cynicism was capable of.
“First, I already told this guy the situation. It’s not my cab. I have no idea how it got here. I just stumbled upon it while walking my dog. I’m not a taxi driver. And I like that shade of green.”

The supervisor, whose name and title, ‘Nigel Collingwood, Park Supervisor’, was stitched in flowing pretty black script on the left breast of his yellow jacket, eyed me speculatively for a second.

”And the question you can answer?”

“The Oakland A’s are an American professional baseball team that has won the world championship four times since 1972.”

“Can’t truly call it a ‘world’ championship now, can we mate, if jolly old England isn’t involved.”

“Our athletic standards kinda keep jolly old England on the outside, if you get my drift.”

“Oh do they now? Rather fascinating defense of exclusion.”

“We’re getting off the subject, Nigel. Do you need me anymore?”

He pulled out a small spiral bound note pad, flipped open the cardboard cover and touched the tip of his pencil to his tongue.

“Name?”

“Reggie Jackson.”

He nodded, dutifully jotting it down. “R e g g i e?”

Confirming his American baseball ignorance, I told him simply, “Yes.”

“How long before my mate Colin here came along had you discovered this thing?”

The awkwardly-worded question seemed irrelevant, but I wanted to get out of there, so I decided to cooperate. I’d found it increasingly easy to fuck with Brits. When they would quickly ascertain I was from the States based on the manner in which I spoke, to a man they immediately assumed an air of superiority. I made up fake names, jobs, vacations, adventures, you name it, and they would swallow whole whatever I told them. I would literally out droll them. I found their arrogance both unearned and rooted in insecurity.

“He rolled up about ten minutes after Waldo and I found it.”

Nigel made an exaggerated motion to look at his watch and wrote down the time. He would be a tiresome chap to work for. I was suddenly more sympathetic toward the smirking smug Colin beside me.

“Why did you pull down the pieces of plywood?”

“I didn’t. They fell away. Maybe it was the wind. One of them fell on Waldo, then the final three followed suit almost immediately.”

He grinned. “You mean like a magician’s box when he’s done sawing through it?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“How long you been in England?”

“I don’t see how that is relevant.”

“Bloody hell. I’ll decide what’s relevant.”

“Six months.”

“Where in the states you from?”

And I committed my second tactical error of the exchange, the first being lying about my name. “Oakland, California.”

He raised his eyebrows and stared straight at me.

“Would that be the same city as this here baseball team?

“One and the same.”

“Small world, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?

“Shrinking every day. I was stunned at the irony. Still am.”

“Irony? Sounds like more of a suspicious coincidence.”

“Nothing suspicious about it. If I left the damn thing here, why the hell would I stand around and wait to be caught?”

“There’s that. But this ‘Oakland’ thing is rather hard to ignore.”

“It is strange, but I simply can’t explain it. Look, you aren’t the police. I’ve got nothing more to help you with. We’re gonna take off.”

I leashed Waldo up, who’d sat placidly watching the conversation between the supervisor and me, and we exited the park.

When I got back to my flat, high above The Kings Head where I had the whole third floor to myself for 1350 quid a month, living under the gables, I called my best friend Chuck back in the Bay Area. He was the only guy I knew with the resources, imagination, and willingness to bust his hump for such a practical joke. If this was not his doing, then I was truly flummoxed.

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