Radio Days

I had to bring my car into the "tire shop" last Sunday morning before heading off to work at the library. There wouldn't be time enough for me to hang out in the waiting room, smelling the rubber treads on display, soaking up the tv football reruns, with my head in an Us Weekly while they determined how they effed-up their tire diagnosis the first time and made amends.
There being no courtesy shuttle service from the shop, and no timely bus to catch on Sunday, I stepped outside and called a yellow cab so as to get to work in 15 minutes.
Standing there on the corner, the perennial grumble-loop that runs through my head in such situations began rolling; "...goddam glorified slurpie-slurpin suburban hick-tropolis waste of my freakin life..."

The cab pulled up and an extraordinarily ordinary gent behind the wheel who looked to be a retired hardware store owner was listening to Broadway musical selections on the radio. Turned out it was a syndicated show that ran for only two hours on Sunday
and my driver was storehouse of Broadway history and a passionate admirer, in particular, of Lerner and Loewe. I was able to throw in a bit of trivia he didn't know - that in the movie of My Fair Lady, "Freddie", Eliza's boyfriend, was played by Jeremy Brett who later became the quintessential (in my opinion) Sherlock Holmes on British mystery TV. We had a quick, exclamatory gabfest about the great Broadway composers
we loved and agreed that the output of the last 40 yrs sucked.
When I alit from the cab it was a beautiful, breezy day and there was a spring in my step.
I skipped the elevator and tap-danced backward up the stairway....