Transport: Taxi Tours

Many an expansive toper, eager to visit a sick, old, or girl friend, has hired a taxi for an inter-city journey. Sober folk also occasionally take long cab trips. Spinster Catherine Bruen of Brewster, N. Y. has made two round-trip taxi rides to Bellingham, Wash. Homeward-bound from Mexico City last week were 76-year-old Emily Curtis Fisher of Norwood and three other Massachusetts ladies who chartered a sedan and driver from Jack’s Taxi Service for the journey. Extraordinary as these treks may seem, they were topped by a trip which last week ended in Manhattan and will go down in taxi history as a classic for both driver and passengers.

On June i, Joseph N. Carnaggio was sitting in his privately-owned cream & yellow Plymouth cab in front of Washington’s Dodge Hotel when he spied a pair coming down the steps. Driver Carnaggio asked if he could take them anywhere. “How does one go about seeing the U. S.?” asked the man, with a British accent.

Driver Carnaggio said that a good way to begin was a tour of Washington for $5. The couple, who revealed that they were Mr. & Mrs. Francis J. Smith of Watford, England, agreed. During the two-hour trip Carnaggio interspersed his sight-seeing lecture with many a remark about the beauties of nearby Virginia. Upon returning to the hotel he easily sold the Smiths on the idea of a $75 trip through Virginia. Three weeks later the trio turned up in Manhattan, having been to Mt. Vernon, Arlington, Yorktown, Jamestown, Charlottesville, over the Skyline Drive to Gettysburg, Pa., then north through Harrisburg to Montreal, Ottawa, then south again through Lake Placid, Albany, Saratoga Springs, Mirror Lake and West Point.

For their taxi odyssey the Smiths paid a 25¢-a-mile rate and Carnaggio’s hotel expenses. They put up $1,000 bond to permit the cab to enter Canada, followed Carnaggio’s suggestion to detour and see the Dionne Quintuplets. In Manhattan they stayed a week at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Then Carnaggio put them on the Berengaria and Mr. Smith peeled off $625 plus a bottle of Mischief perfume, which he manufactures. On the trip the Smiths lost a Voigtlander camera. To show his thanks, Driver Carnaggio bought a new one for $30, mailed it to England. Then he headed back to Washington, where he cashed in one more time by charging news-photographers to take his picture.

Said he for nothing: “They had one of the best times an Englishman ever had in America. . . . They’re coming back in a couple of months with their son and daughter. I’m going to take them to Yellowstone and all out West on that trip.”