A comment I made on a previous post about a story Philip told me about a wildly risky "ride-and-dash" from a cab triggered a memory Kevin had of a similar occurrence. Here is his story:
Ditching taxi drivers, hmmm? I remember at least one instance where Philip "rode and ran" in Bellingham. It occurred after a visit to a girl friend he was seeing during spring quarter 1973, toward the end of our first year at Western. I don't know the young woman's name. Phil never revealed it to Jerry or me. He only allowed that she lived alone in a studio at The Belvedere Apartments on Holly Street, just north of campus. We learned very little about her. In fact, I never knew how or where they met. She may have been a student at Western though I am not sure. In any case, she was a few years older than Phil. He liked that she was older and he spoke of her fondly with a kind of protective admiration that seemed mysterious to me then. I remember that she didn't insist that he take her out on dates and that he felt relief that he didn't have to go through that conventional ritual with her. They spent intense periods of time with one another. Sometimes he would disappear from our Humboldt Street house for a few days at a time. This was unusual because during that first year we almost never ventured outside of our close circle alone. He said that she was interested in literature and that they would talk, drink wine, and prepare meals together, among other things. Jerry and I began to refer to her as "Belvedere", so when Philip would return after a night or so away from home we would ask "how's Belvedere?" He never got worked up over our kidding. He even took to using our moniker for her whenever he would announce that he was going over to see Belvedere.
One rainy night he called a cab from Belvedere’s place to take him home. He told the driver to drop him off about a block from our Humboldt Street house and then ditched the cabbie before settling up. This was becoming a fairly common practice among students living off-campus in 1970's Bellingham. The cabbie wasn't having it and he didn't give up easy. Phil ran down the street but couldn't shake the guy so he tore through some side yards to the alley that ran behind our house. He was huffing and puffing when he got to our back porch. Oh, and he was laughing that manic thrilled but slightly scared laugh.
Kevin Curran
