Rico Rodriguez

I was going through some old files looking for a photo from 2003 and ran across an old journal entry of mine entitled "Manila adventures," written fondly 11 years ago.  It amused me so much that I decided to include an excerpt here and pay tribute to a man whose name I've never forgotten.

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As [my friend Janet and I] left the embassy we were so fortunate as to be picked up by an animated Filipino driver named Rico Rodriguez.  Taxi drivers in Manila are their own cultural phenomenon, eager to share their lives and enter yours, trying to elicit your name, address, business, and marital status, and asking such probing personal questions as:  “You are virgins, yes?”  (To which an entire carload of us girls stammered, “Uh…uh…yes?” -- unsure if we wanted to give such personal information to a complete stranger, but also not wanting to give the impression that we were loose.  Later, we realized that the driver was probably just asking if we were unmarried.)  

But of all our taxi drivers, Rico Rodriguez was by far the most entertaining and exhausting.  Despite our hedging, he managed to force out our names, informing me that my name is the name of a famous racehorse in the Philippines.  (I guess I have a lot to live up to.)  He asked all the standard personal questions (“Do you want to find a Filipino lover?”) and gave us important cultural information (“They are the best.”).  He also did his best to convince us that he was a celebrity, being the traffic announcer on the local radio station.  Rico even demonstrated his skills for us, rapidly intoning fictitious traffic news in his most important official tones, holding an imaginary microphone in front of his mouth with one hand as he drove (quite wildly) with the other.  Of course, besides street names, we understood none of it, since it was all in Tagalog.  But we managed to clap and cheer when he paused after 10 minutes, perhaps too enthusiastically, because then he took another deep breath and went at it again for another 5 minutes.

He also told us over and over again, “You remember me, my name is Rico Rodriguez, I am taxi 110.  You call this number 333-1001 and you ask for me, and I come right away and drive you!  You remember, my name is Rico Rodriguez!  Also, if other taxi drivers give you trouble, you tell them you know Rico Rodriguez from the radio station and they will not give you trouble!  Remember, Rico Rodriguez!”

Towards the end of the ride, he said to me, “S, what is my name?”  I said, “Rico Rodriguez!”  He let go of the steering wheel with both hands for one long, frightening moment and clapped uproariously, laughing with mad joy as though I had performed some amazing stunt rather than just repeated the five syllables he had been shouting at us nonstop since we had entered the cab.  “Yes!  Yes!  You will remember me, Rico Rodriguez, ok?”

If you run into my friend Rico Rodriguez in Manila, tell him that the Korean girl from America named after the racehorse still remembers him.