Perfesser Neilboy and the good old days....

Back when I started driving, there was no drunk bus. Drunk bus? Yeah. At bar time, we'd load up and haul students to the lakeshore dorms by the carload, and it was profitable. Then along came Donna Shalala who created the drunk bus. Most people in the university didn't care for her, and I can assure you the cab drivers didn't. She said that it was too dangerous for the students to find their own way home from the State st., Langdon area at bar time (I mean after all, they might step in a puddle of vomit and twist their ankle, right?), so the university had an obligation to provide bus service to the lakeshore dorms. And poof, just like that, every night driver made $50-$100 less on Friday and Saturday nights. The loss of revenue was a seven day a week thing, but on the other nights of the week it was less money.

As it stands, and has stood for a long time, if you can stumble on to a bus, the bus is free, and it will take you to the lakeshore dorms. They also have a program called Saferide, which they can use twice a month, which is basically a free cab ride, paid for by the university. Thank god we don't do those rides, I really can't stomach listening to a kid mouthing the lies about it being dangerous to walk around downtown. Send your kid here, if they don't know how to lie, we'll teach them. Where was I............., oh yeah, Neil.

Neil is called Perfesser Neilboy because he finally fucked up and graduated. Making him a PhD. He was a grad student when I started driving, which is an honorable excuse to be a cab driver. I've always liked the guy, really have, one of my favorite family members. He's really a bright fellow. Grey now, from NYC I believe, perhaps even Brooklyn, and when he talks, I'm reminded of an old TV show and a character called Gunther Tutti accent wise. He left Badger over a snit about a special needs passenger, and now drives a cab painted yellow. He claims it's the best thing that ever happened to him, and he's right. He's called Neilboy because he used to call Louie, John Boy. Louie was a nickname of a dispatcher who long ago left the business to become a realtor. His first name was John, hence John Boy. Neil was the only person who called him that. John Boy was the dispatching on my first ever day shift during the week, back when I didn't have a handle on bidding properly.

I remember it well...... I was about Park and Emerald, and some micky mouse little call popped like 600 W. Main to the square. I was on my way to the office to check in, which would have made it around 9:15 am. At 9:15 am on a Monday, that call is VERY hard to move. I, innocent that I was, simply wanted the last $1.50 of the morning (that was the fare in those days). So I started trying to bid for it. Every time I bid, Louie would answer, "Six Oh that isn't how we bid for that." So I'd try something else. When I got to Five Points (Park and W. Washington), I gave up and drove past the call back to 12 (the old old office). When I walked into the office to check in, Roy Boy was waiting and he apologised for Louie. I recall telling him I could make money in spite of Louie. He didn't need to apologize to me, it was the customer he needed to apologize to. The customer didn't get a ride. Was I bidding for it wrong? Sure, it was my second or third ever shift, but is that a good excuse to deny service to a customer? Louie was a jerk, and the tradition of jerks answering the phone and dispatching continues to this day, people complain to drivers about it all the time.

Neilboys latest sin was showing off a photo copy of a ticket Roy Boy got in Fondy not long ago. He was down at the green and white drinking, and he showed this photo copy to Ham Dinger and Dickdro. Dickdro went balistic, but he's that way, the ultimate company man, his license plate is a vanity plate that is KSA-768. Neilboys joke was that Roy Boy ought to pay $2.00/shift he works penalty for having that ticket. If we get a ticket our checkin goes up supposedly to cover the increased insurance costs.

To this day, I'd like to see Louie behind the barn, with a release saying that I couldn't be held responsible criminally or financially for the results.

My favorite thought about Neilboy is a ride I was doing short east at bar time one cold winter night. I had 3 guys in the back seat and I was passing him on Johnson st., just a little before Tenny Park. I pointed at the other red and white cab and said, "That's Perfesser Neilboy gentlemen, you may moon him if you wish." About 30 seconds later the kid immediately behind me shuddered out, "God damn, that glass is cold!!" And no, I did not take time out to wash the window.

Your office an empty cab.

That used to mean a yards run. You still hear it rarely, and it always means money, but I don't think we do yards runs any more.

A yards run was taking a train crew, 1-5 guys, from one rail road yard to another. Say, Janesville to Rock Springs. It usually meant you'd make a lot of money that day, hundreds of dollars.

When I started driving, the Hog was in France. He had a degree in French, and was qualified to teach French, but where an ex-con, covered with tattoos, would get a job teaching 7th graders French, isn't quite clear to me. I'm sure that like so many of us with dreams of escaping, he was combining a long vacation with a skills upgrade, and considered the trip an investment in his future. When he came back he was fluent in spoken French, though I think Du's skill's were always superior. As long as the Hog was in France, yards runs went out fairly.

It's always been the case that cheating causes hard feelings. I mean, after all, we're playing keepsies, when the supposed randomness of the business mix is tampered with there is sure to be someone who will be offended. It's not dollaroids you're stealing from someone else, the cash is real. It's never mattered who's doing it or which call(s), and I'm not the only none who gets offended. The company has always taken the line that they don't condone cheating and take steps to prevent it. Horse Pucky, I say. They have always looked the other way. Which is probably why, in the end, that we lost that account.

When the Hog came back, his expectation was that he'd dust off the throne which had been empty for a year, and resume being king of the night time dispatchers. I'd been driving about a year when this moment came. It would be a number of years before I'd become a night driver, so I only viewed this Bozo as another driver. He viewed himself as an authority figure and how dare some rookie driver with only one year challenge him or anything he did. Well, I've felt the same way when all of them came back, and they/we all come back (my longest pure absence was around 5 months). My attitude has always been, who the hell do you think you are?

The Hog did give me at least one chance to realize my mistake, and give him the proper level of respect, and ignore his cheating. He didn't much like the who the hell are you attitude.

How Piggie (the nickname he liked) cheated was inside information. Piggie loved to play pool. He wasn't very good at it, but he loved the pool hall and the game almost as much as he loved Badger Cab. It turns out that some number of Chi-Nor employees also frequented the pool hall. They'd tell Piggie when the yards runs were going to happen a day or 2 in advance. Then about 30 minutes before the call would go out, he'd wander over to the office and wait for the call to go out over the air. He was always first up. The other drivers in the fleet tolerated this because they knew the system and protesting it was a waste of time, or because they didn't know the system and didn't notice it going on (ROOKIES), but I didn't like it and said so. It wasn't until years later when Crawdaddy started driving cab that anyone found out how the Hog was cheating. Crawdaddy is also a serious pool player, also knew the Chi-Nor guys and disclosed the Hog's secret. Even after this disclosure, the company denied it and allowed this practice to continue until we lost the account.

The Hog would go on to mess with me until he was too old and sick to be a driver or dispatcher anymore. He also got Curley to pursue his vendetta's for him. This was the beginning of my years long conflict with Curley. Curley worshiped the ground the Hog walked on. If I had it to do over again, I'd act the same.

On the Banks of The Red Cedar

The Big 10 water polo tournament is in town this weekend, they're playing at the SERF. I had a guy from the Iowa team, and some girls from Moo U., in my cab. Moo U.? That would be Michigan State, and their fight song is the title of this post. When ever I get Michigan State people in the cab I ask them to sing that song. Why? Years ago, before I moved to Madison, I liked visiting East Lansing a lot. And, in fact, I hold cab permit #64 (I think that's the number) in East Lansing, but I never followed up and went back to the company to become a driver.

Become a driver? How does that work? I assume it works the same everywhere, but perhaps it doesn't. They tell you to go and get a cab permit before they'll talk to you about being a driver. So the cops checked me out, and I got a little pin with a number on it in the mail from them. I guess if I ever wanted to go home, I'd have a job waiting for me in East Lansing. Hmmmm, never thought of it before.

I've been hearing some amazing scuttlebutt lately. It's all related to the new 'system' which is to be installed in all of our cabs. It is, of course, being touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's GPS, and takes plastic which will be instantly credited to my account, and has all the time calls on it, and tells the office where I am. Where I am, but not what I'm doing, since we're a zone cab and if it's cash, they'd have no way of knowing if the cab is loaded or not, unless they use a seat sensor. No meter in our cabs. But the new system supposedly will know the price of every ride immediately when the ride is entered into it.

The scuttlebutt is related to why we're getting this piece of junk, and how it's to be paid for. Regrettably the scuttlebutt makes too much sense, but the most tantalizing of it, I'm unable to verify. The part I can verify is the lie Square Pants is spreading around, but it makes sense too. The screaming of the fat man described in the previous post also fits into this like a glove.

Square Pants scuttlebutt is that checkin is going up by twenty bucks a shift in January. He told me he got it from the manager of his company who got it from Roy. Then he turned around and told Bloomie that he got the same story from me. Bloomie and I concluded that it's just the little German trying to stir up some shit, and since he's including me into his bull shit, I won't talk to him for a few months, aside from telling him he's real lucky that shit splatters. I have to assume this crap will drift back into the office at Badger, but there's nothing I can do about it. They claim it won't go up, and I don't much care one way or another. If they were to do something like that they'd end up with more holes in the schedule, make less money, and I would probably make about the same amount of money. My own seat of the pants thought is, if it was me, I wouldn't risk the holes in the schedule, and I wouldn't do it.

Last summer, Schnidley started telling me about this wonderful system. I said then, as I still say, that I don't see how it's going to improve my business or income. We came to frustration, it's VERY important that people BELIEVE for some reason. Way too important, for the good of the drivers. So Schnidley passed me off to the fat man and he started telling me about it. Why with this new system, they could provide dispatching for a cab company anywhere. Badger Dispatching? I suppose........ But if that's the case why don't they start submitting bids to manage cab companies in small towns?

How does submitting bids work? I lived in a town not far from here that owns it's cab company. In order for them to take federal funds for their public transportation system they have to provide for the needs of the elderly and handicapped. In that town they bought some Crown Vic's and they contract out the management. The management handles scheduling, payroll, hiring people, and the city sees to the car repairs, insurance, and all that sort of thing. Why would the city want to do business with Badger Dispatching? They'd have to install expensive junk in their cars, and deal with a company that is 'somewhere'. If the fat man wants to run a company so bad, perhaps he should submit a bid, surely there are many such cab business's. So, I'm sure the fat man see's himself overseeing a vast empire of dispatchers in a phone bank like setting. Silly rabbit, trix are for kids.

It seems to me, that the people in the office are forgetting who brought them to the dance. A cab company without cab drivers just doesn't make sense to me. On the other hand, Cabs and cab drivers without dispatching makes complete sense, doesn't it? The words of Bobby will always be true, 'Dispatchers are people who can't successfully drive a cab.'

You can choose your friends but not your family

This is so weird, doing this while sitting in the cab stand at the airport. But, here I am. I got myself a MacBook, and a Blackberry that I use as a modem, and all of a sudden I who have used dial-up all my life, have high speed Internet at work. Wow.

I got into it with the fat man in the office today, who will remain nameless. I'm not yet ready to publish a book, and naming him any further than fat man could be a sketchy idea. He was livid, screaming at me to fuck off, and telling me I was lucky he didn't reach me when he tried to call me at home. Yeah, right. What was he mad about? Read on, and if any of you drivers think I was wrong about this do let me know.

Sunday night I'm headed toward the airport, when stuff to do pops by East Town, and north in Windsor. I'm up, so the dispatcher asks me to pick. I pick the Day's Inn in Windsor. It's a lady who wants a ride to a truck stop to use Western Union. I pull up to the hotel and ask the desk clerk to call what ever room it was, and she asks me if Western Union is still open. I tell her I don't know, and I don't, why would I know that. Then I sat in the car and started to read the paper. All of a sudden this woman appears out of the door and is shrieking that when she called to cancel the dispatcher told her he wouldn't take the cancellation, she'd have to tell the driver herself. Why they do this is beyond me. When someone is going to go out and cancel in person and give the driver something, they NEVER call, they just go out and say sorry about that and hand you money.

I wasn't real pleased. The lady was pissed. The moron in the office who refused to accept the cancellation wasted my time, and perhaps my miles, because I pay by the mile for miles about a certain amount, and that amount is almost always exceeded. So I said, "Thanks a lot JJ, next time just take the cancellation and tell me 22 got my call."

He comes back with he thought it was the right way to handle it, and I tell him he thought wrong, and give him guff over the radio for around an hour. I also wrote on the back of an authorization slip that I thought that practice was BS and it ought to stop. Take the cancellation and move on, right? I put the slip in my envelope without addressing it to anyone in particular and without signing it. It's in my handwriting, in my envelope. They KNOW who's note it is, and it is BS, and it does need to stop.

Next time I'm in the office, I say to Baldy, it ought to stop, and for this reason, and he says he agrees, and wants to know which dispatcher. I tell him point blank that he's asking me to rat out a friend, and if he wants to know bad enough he can go through the stack and find out who was on the board when that call was given out. But why not simply say, guys this is a bad practice, kindly stop doing it.

If one dispatcher is doing something like that, they all know about it, and they all know it's only one guy. Of it's SOP they all know it, or if it's SOP at night.......... You get the idea. So nobodies going to be offended if Baldy says guys this is a bad idea and we don't approve of it, whoever is doing it. And I'm not sure it's just one guy. It's a night time thing, but I never paid close enough attention to notice if it's only a single guy.

And this is what the fat man is screaming about, that he'd like me to leave the company. Leave the company? He screamed a lot of stuff, and he screamed it in front of other people, in the office. Back in the day, it wasn't cool to shriek fuck off at a driver inside the office, they had to do it out side. So I finally told the fat man which dispatcher, but I also wrote a verbose letter to his boss saying it was highly out of line.

20 years ago, outside the window at 12 (12 is the old old office, addressed 12 N. Few, these days called The Pigs Pen on the radio in memory of Piggy), the fat man was screaming at me. I can't recall what his problem was that day, but he was screaming me. And because he intended to scream like a lunatic and use words like fuck, he was doing it outside. He finished the screaming with the following quote, "I'll fuck you! You won't make any money! You'll quit!" At the time, he was one of the M-F 7am-3pm dispatchers. Back then we had 2, a much simpler radio set up, and more business than today. And as all you drivers know, if a dispatcher is allowed to screw over people they don't like, they can take money out of that drivers pocket.

Roy Boy always told me he didn't mean it. Well, he did. And he's been working at screwing me over for 20 years now. I guess we'll see if these days he has enough influence to get rid of me. I don't think he does. If he did, why would he scream about it, why not just do it. Well, fat man, do you have enough influence? I think Roy's going to tell him that he needs to let it go. Roy's going to know that he'll do his utmost to screw me over, and poor Roy is stuck in the middle. Roy is a saint. Baldy can't do his job, and when Roy leaves who knows what will happen. I don't even want to think about it.

By the way, I will be going through and weeding out some of the poorer quality posts, and trying to get this back up to something people would want to read. When I was out for 5 months I just didn't feel like working on it, I guess I need my family around. And I'm seeing new material that's worthy all of a sudden. Why just tonight I told Square Pants that he's luck that shit splatters, and he is. I'll tell you all why, perhaps next post.

It's football season again!

They say that the athletic paid the school that played over the weekend 1/2 million to come and play. That represents 1/2 of that small school's annual budget. The Anex didn't even bother having a beer garden after 9:00 pm. Were there the usual cast of drunken morons out taking cab rides? Well, does a bear crap in the woods? I actually did much better than I expected, I guess I was lucky. Judging by the frown on Fast Eddies face Friday and Saturday nights in the drivers room after work, I'm guessing he wasn't lucky.

This Saturday is Moo U. A snafu resulted in me getting taken off the schedule, and Dickie said he didn't know if he could find a spot for me.

Part 2

So, I'm getting wheeled out of Denny's, and I have no clue what happened. The last thing that was happening was this guy is telling me for the nth time about sending people home to die because he couldn't save them.

I spend most of the morning in the emergency room. I can't walk, my knees were over extended and I'm not going to be able to walk, even with crutches, for a few days. It will take 3 weeks for me to be able to walk without crutches, and over 2 months to walk without thinking about it like a normal person.

They say no driving for 6 months. I go to this quack for follow up treatment, and he says here take this drug and come back for a blood test. I go back and he doubles the dose. He tells me that I need to find Jesus, and implies that if I do, perhaps Jesus could help me get my driving privileges back sooner. It would be months later before I would discover that state law only prohibited me from driving for 3 months.

About 2 months into taking this stuff, a capsule catches in my throat and burns a hole in the skin. Then the next days dose sticks in the same place, yuck! So, I decide to stop taking the stuff for long enough for the cold sore like spot in my throat to heal, almost expecting trouble. Nothing happened. So I decided to see what would happen if I just stopped taking the stuff. Very smart move, it turns out.

The doctor keeps pushing harder on Jesus. Last time I saw him, he said to me, "How old are you?" I told him and he said I didn't even look 10 years younger than that, "You may live a long time, perhaps 25 or 30 more years. And if you don't accept Jesus as your saviour, he's going to torment you, and make you struggle, you'll suffer, and he'll just keep making you struggle and be miserable. Now do you really want to suffer for the next 30 years?"

Needless to say, that was the last time I'd ever talk to him, and NO I did not find religion.

The neurologist I saw said there's nothing wrong with me.

My diagnosis: Jesus told that old lunatic to poison me and he did. Which is why he was so sure he could help me get driving back early if I found Jesus.

Jesus freaks, for the rest of my life I will consider all of the very dangerous people. More dangerous that Islamic extremists.

Ain't life wonderful!!!

Ah, the soap opera continues............ Yesterday at around 11:30am CST, Roy Boy called me and told me I'd passed my reinstatement drug test. I'm back, I can drive a cab again. I told him how good it felt to call him Boss, and know that he is the boss, not just my old friend who I've called Boss for years.

I wasn't expecting a drug test. I don't like them, or trust them. I'm not sure if I would have taken it earlier if I'd known I had to do it. It didn't come up until I gave Dickie my first set of shift add slips. About 2 hours later, I picked up the phone and Dick expressed his shock that my phone actually got answered and had me hold for Roy. Roy came on and told me that when you're gone for more than 90 days, you have to take a drug test to come back. I sighed and said I'd take care of it right away, and less than 48 hours later, I had my results. Finally, I'm free to get back in a cab and wonder why I'm wasting 12 hours of my time to make fifty bucks like all the other drivers who have been struggling for months. This morning, Saturday, is the first morning of being free again, and struggle or not, and the founders of New Hampshire were right, "Live free or die", is the only way to live.

How the whole thing happened and played out:

Years ago, I was referred to this old doctor by his sister in law. He was a nice enough old man, and had a classic practice, 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 1 receptionist. So, for years he was my family doctor. When I first went there, he had me fill out a questionnaire which is normal for a new patient, and there were a bunch of religious questions on it that were kind of annoying, but the guy is a doctor, so he's a professional, right? I mean, my long time friend, The Rod, is religious but he's still a cab driver, still a professional, and I can still talk to him as a cab driver to another driver. So, I do my best to fill out these religious questions on this quacks questionnaire, and I come to one that is, "Why are you here?"

"Why are you here?", is asking for some religious answer, I'm sure you can all imagine the hoped for responses. I answered it, "Because nothings killed me yet." I mean, isn't that the truth? So, we argued over it and I finally said, "Nothing has killed me yet. No accident, no pathogen, nothing has killed me yet. I will be alive until I die, and not a day longer. That is reality, is it not Doctor?" He didn't like it, but he had to let it go there.

I always ask any doctor or dentist if they'd prefer to not have me as a patient. I extend this question to all professionals I do business with. If you don't want my business, I REALLY DO NOT want to be your patient or client. Make sense? It does to me. But I guess there are legal obstacles to a doctor or dentist saying they don't want your business, and in this Mickey Mouse society, hopefully someone in government will come to their senses someday and change it so they can decline any patient for their own reason, but as of now, they have to take you if they're taking new patients at all, it would seem. If I had it to do over again, I would have excused myself from his exam room on that horse pucky question, paid the bill, and never looked back, but if I was bright, would I have 20 years experience driving a cab?

The drivers out there all know that anyone who gets in the cab and immediately says, "I'm a Christian!", will be nothing but trouble, even The Rod would agree, though he'd say they're not a problem for him.

In the beginning, the receptionist would make a massive deal out of saying she'd pray for me. She says that to everyone. Perhaps she has some fantasy that she's really a doctor too, and she does it with prayer. In the beginning, I'd politely say, I'd prefer that she not pray for me and if she was unwilling to respect my wishes, do it silently and don't tell me about it. Then the doctor would want to put his hands on me, have her put her hands on me too (all the hands together), and all of us pray that I'd recover from strep throat. Reluctantly he'd give you an antibiotic for the strep throat too, just in case. I progressively got less tolerant of this nonsense, if nicely asking that you don't do this only encourages you, it will become a demand, and it will cease to be nice. After years of this, I came to feel that I'd been too ugly about all this.

Recriminations over discouraging people who want to be religious have been around for thousands of years, I'll describe this further in the future if anyone asks. I once came across the most fascinating debate of this subject in the Talmud, which I'd be willing to share if anyone asks, but won't bore the rest of you with it. Anyhow, I found myself feeling like I'd been a little too hard on a nice old man who happened to be my family doctor, and wanted to get right with my conscience.

The doctor has for years and years had a bible study group that meets in a restaurant on the west side on a weekly basis at 6:00am in the middle of the week. What could it hurt? I'll go a couple of times, it'll make him feel good, and I can feel like I made up for being a jerk. There's nothing wrong with reading fantasy, it's when you start believing it, that it becomes a problem. I went about 3 times every 2 months over the winter, and figured I was close to done with it when it happened.

It was late winter, and I was preparing to become a summer time day driver. I was driving 3 nights a week, and one day shift a week. I was a day driver in the beginning. Getting the feel of the day shift is critical to surviving these days, when 50 bucks for 12 hours is not uncommon. My day shift was Tuesday, 4:00am-noon. The jet lag on Wednesday was tough, but by the end of April it would be 5 day shifts a week, and that would make it worth it.

Then came the second Wednesday in March. I got a late start, and by the time I got to Denny's, the last people, except the doctor, were leaving. He was once again going through his story about being a young doctor at Chicago Memorial, and how 1/2 of the people who came in, were impossible to save, so he sent them home to die. I'm pretty stupid, so I never saw the horse pucky in this. Think about it. Then ask yourself, if you see the sneaky, cleaver little double meaning of it. I asked the neurologist who signed off on letting me drive again, if he ever had such conversations with his patients. He frowned darkly, and asked me for that doctors full correct name and where practiced. I doubt it's acceptable medical practice to share things like that with patients. But I digress............ To get back to that Wednesday morning, next thing I knew, I was being wheeled out by the fire department. That was the end of driving a cab for the foreseeable future, and thus began the long, unwanted vacation.

I'll finish this in part 2 or part 3, I'm out of time for today.