Next try

My next try for rewriting this blog as a book is going to start with the happiest cab. Everybody likes sex, right?

Over the weekend I finally saw something I wondered why I'd never seen it before. Happened like this:

I get this guy in at the airport going to west HS. He's a nice guy and I have a dead fitter to bid on at Oscars going to the square, so I bid on it and get it, it's Sims going to Genna's. This guy get's in, I've seen him before.

We get to Genna's and he's fumbling for money for a LONG time, then he starts saying he already paid me. I've always wondered when somebody would claim they already paid. Well it finally happened. Cops eventually pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and I got paid. He was doing it on purpose, and I know how it goes, a couple of drivers know him to be a dirt bag so they make him pay up front, and the rest get pissed off at the stalling act and curse him out of the cab.

Well........ John of 22 Langdon, you never ride in my cab again, pay up front or no pay up front. I don't give a damn if you'll be late for work and it's a sober ride to work that you intend to pay for or not, you don't ride. PERIOD. Ever again. John rides from 22 Langdon to Oscars, and from Sims to Genna's and from Genna's and the Rustic to 22 Langdon. And I won't simply tell the man on the radio that I won't take you, I'll forget to tell him anything, so you will for sure be late.

And to the other drivers who take this ass hole and make him pay up front, you help him steal from other drivers, you should refuse to take him. He has his act down. You've helped him develope it.

After fucking around for almost 20 minutes with this asshole John in the parking ramp under the PMI I finally get back to the cab and the consultant who'd traveled for 30 hours was still in the back seat. He wasn't in a rage. Very nice fellow. He paid without complaint. I should have given him the ride for free, but couldn't afford to.

On a darker note, Hamdinger is gone. I stopped talking to him a month ago because he stepped on a call I was up for just because he was Hamdinger. He smiled in the lot and said hello and I walked past him without speaking, and he said, "I guess you're mad at me."

Well, I was. 6 bucks is 6 bucks, and he took it out of my pocket. I wouldn't have done that to him if I was in the wrong, or if I knew he was going to get canned. Only now he's gone, and until and if he gets hired on with Mad Taxi, he's gone for good and I'll never see him again. We worked together for almost 20 years. He's an idiot anyhow. The mamasita he married will probably dump him and his life will probably fall apart. Sorry Gruber, ah............ sorry is all I got to say, you're in a lot of shit now. It kind of reminds me of a guy I knew back in '84 who got himself murdered and how all that came about, sad stories, why...............