In the final weeks of school last spring, the school bus was held up on the very day Mabel’s class was off on a day-long field trip to the aquarium in Norwich, with me as chaperone. We could see the turmoil; a different bus had broken down just down the street from our stop and was blocking every other bus on the route.
So I called a cab. First time we’d ever all had to take a cab to school.
So I rattled off the name of the school to the driver. “Do you know Jepson?”
He replied “I know Jepson. I mean, I didn’ t know Benjamin Jepson, I’m not that old. But I know Jepson school.”
That was my introduction to Al the PLR cab driver. I knew him from his occasional calls in to the PLR morning show, of course. But I wouldn’t have placed him as our cab driver if he hadn’t told me flat out that he was “Al, the PLR cab driver.” Because that’s the kind of amiable, loquacious guy Al the PLR cab driver is. He knew that Benjamin Jepson was a well-known music teacher in town, nearly a century and a half ago.
All I know is that Al soothed our hectic morning by being so friendly, so chatty and so confident that he’d get us to the field trip bus in time.
We pulled up with moments to spare, and Al idled while I rushed Sally into her class and Mabel stalled her teacher.

It’s the same attitude he brings to the airwaves in his cameo appearances on the Chaz & AJ show. Nice to know there are cab drivers out there who love to be cab drivers, who are born—driven, you could say—to be cab drivers, and who are there when you need them.