Happy New Year!

In 30 minutes I will take off for work. I wish every night of the year could be as good as New Years Eve. It's like shooting fish in a barrel as they say. The essence of making money in a cab is to keep it full. Tonight mine will be full for 12 hours straight, and only if I take a break to eat or something like that, will it not be full.

I've written 2 chapters of the book now. I sent both of them to a friend in Canada named Laurie. She claims the first one is a good read. I submitted an excerpt from the second chapter to a first page contest at a web site called webook, www.webook.com. I'll let you all know how it turns out, I think I just flushed 10 bucks but who knows.... They say they guarantee that an agent will read it. Agents are out to make a buck. I was VERY careful to make it a good read, and Laurie has said that many of my adventures are good stories.

I chose the first New Years story, for those of you who haven't read that post, that would have been 3:15 am, 1/1/89. Imagine 12 guys in tuxedos rolling around in the snow fighting, in the middle of the street, in front of a serious dive of a bar. What's that Italian guy's name, Felini? I've always said driving New Years Eve in Party City is a lot like watching a Felini movie.

Anybody who wants to review what I'm at this point calling Chapter 2, if you leave me an email, I'll send you a copy. I ask the following in return. Give me an HONEST critical opinion. If you like it cool, but even if you do, please, please, please, help me make it something that will hook a publisher. If you think it's merde (thats french for shit, excuse my french, get it?), tell me it's merde, and if you're really kind tell me what's wrong with it.

When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me I should write books. I knew even then that she didn't like me, and it pretty much took her death last year to actually prove it beyond any doubt, but I knew it back then. If she told me I should write a book, to me it meant I would be terrible at it. But she was judging what was coming out of my mouth. She was listening to the story.

An actor who got a fairly long ride the other day was a real good audience, and liked some of my stories. He said it was all about the story. How true is that? Well, I was told in Comparative Literature that there are only 7 (if memory serves) fundamental stories. The most recent is the sidekick template, and all the sidekick stories are knockoffs of the same template.

That makes Car 54 Where Are You, and The Hobbit variants of the same story, right? What makes the story then, is how it's told. Life is strange, the world is strange, and maybe I do have chance. Maybe my mother was telling the truth, which she actually did on rare occasions. For the record my mother loved my brother, was indifferent about my sister, and seriously didn't care about me. Anybody wants to know, I'll share the reasoning behind all that. I've compared notes with my dad's older sister, and it's how it is (was, my mom and dad are both dead).

10 minutes to get dressed, let the dog out, feed the dog, and hit the road. Wish me luck. I'm excited. New Years Eve is a blast to drive a cab.

You've got to see this picture

http://paneerkadhai.blogspot.com/

It's the picture of the little boy and little girl. When you finish laughing, and I'll tell you about a car accident or 2.

I've been in enough accidents in cabs that I don't recall them all, I'm sure. 21 years is a long time. They teach you things about people and driving, so perhaps if I tell you, you can learn without an insurance claim. First off, convince yourself that there are people out there who will get in an accident intentionally. The last one I was in, the pavement was slippery, traffic was heavy, and this woman in this ratty Volvo station wagon passed me in the right lane zipped in front of me and with turn signal on slammed on the brakes. She claimed she needed to go to the bank. Bull! When the cops were done she didn't go into the bank AND she had a court track record for suing people like insurance companies. She wouldn't dream of doing that to another car like hers.

Black ice will do the job real nicely too, you need to watch for it. What is black ice? After a big snow fall like we had a few weeks ago, there are big snow piles all over the place. On a nice warm winter day with sunshine and upper 30's, some of that will melt, and that pool of water will be smooth, invisible ice within an hour of sunset. I was sitting at a stop sign at the corner of Index and Stewart, and bam. Guy lived close by, no ice there when he went home for lunch, and he in general drove too fast and aggressively. Moral of story, YOU Babba, you must watch for it because he won't, and don't stop where he can hit you. 3 accidents/tickets in 3 years and you're gone these days.

Bottom of hill in any kind of storm but especially in snow. I was waiting for a passenger to come out of this apartment building on Park st., and I saw this car start coming down the hill in my lane. Why isn't he changing lanes to go around me I wondered. NOW I mentally watch for 2 seconds and start accelerating away, go around the block, and come back. I watched in my rear view mirror as he kept coming down the hill. He couldn't be wanting to plow right into me, could he? Complete moron, an engineering graduate student from Taiwan, he'd never driven on a slippery surface before, locked up the brakes at the top of the hill, and slid all the way down the hill and plowed into me. The black lady in the back seat said, "I think I hurt my elbow. No it's my shoulder........." I cut her off right there and said, "Merry Christmas ma'am, Merry Christmas."

I've had more than one person hit me head on while they were looking over their shoulder. I thought this one ass hole in Middleton, on Parmenter st., was going to drag me out the window and start pounding on me. He hit me in the northbound lane while traveling southbound, and he's mad at me? Boy was I glad to see the cops show up. That cab was totaled too.

And an accident that wanted to happen but didn't last week was this complete idiot who stopped on the beltline. In a perfict world it would be acceptable to chase the guy down and strangle him. It's slippery, real slippery in spots, and he's coming at a tight circle ramp way to fast so I decide to let him zoom by, but I want off there too, so I put on my turn signal. So he slows down right on my rear bumper. I slow down, he slows down, we got to walking speed and I'm looking at a car coming on fast, as in 50 mph in my lane so I floor it and pull over on the left side of the ramp. Well, now Mr. Polite goes past me. What's his plan? Oh, he's just being a safe driver, and being polite, and he'll kill somebody doing it someday.

I had a couple of black kids in the cab and a metro and I was waiting for to make a left turn at First and Wash (washington), and you know how people will floor it to run the very last of the yellow light? Well, I started to make my left turn, looked at a fool coming the other way doing just that and decided to let him come and I'd wait for one more light. Unfortunately the guy in the car behind me had to tap me just then. Awwwww, SHIT!!!! With a metro in, I've got to get the cops, no choice. Now with this 3 in 3 years business, I'd chance going on and letting everybody forget it. The 2 black kids in the back seat were acting real nervous for about 10 minutes, then all of a sudden that changed. The one kid started shouting, "My arm hurts! When do I get paid?!" What changed was they decided to hide the dope they were transporting under the seat, and walk away from $50, and go for the big pay out, and when they figgured out how to get it off their person, that's what they did. The cops did shake them down too. If it ever happens again, you can be sure the cops will shake down the back seat too. I remember the cop too, her name was Gail Holmes. She was amazed that I was so calm and composed. The previous time we met, I'd been attacked, was bleeding, and wanted her to arrest the guy who blindsided me, on a moving job I was running.

The final accident I'll mention was one of those rescue the passengers deals. When a cab dies for what ever reason, the driver is supposed to tell the dispatcher, who will put it on the board as a call. It was back when I first started driving, a Sunday if memory serves. There was a new guy out there, like it was his first or second weekend, a part time guy. He was zooming around downtown way too fast, and he'd beaten me for a couple of calls by doing 60 on West Washington, which is around 30 over. The lady who'd been in his cab when he wreaked it said he'd been brake torquing at a light, and when the light changed he let it rip. Unfortunately for everyone else involved, someone was making a late left turn on a yellow light and had not cleared the intersection yet. She said he plowed into that car with the accelerator on the floor.

When it rains it pours.....

Last night I super sized my shift. What's that? I went in to work a 2p-10p, and actually worked a 2p-2a. As soon as 10:00 came around it got weird.

There was a Hilldale to Yuma on the board, I called for it and got it. I went over to the GDHD (Great Dane Hilldale) and started waiting for the passenger to come out. The Great Dane is a gin joint with pretty good food, and nice pool tables. A city bus came through and this black kid, about 20, got out and walked over to the cab and got in the front seat. Take me to Yuma he said. I told him he should call for a cab from where he actually is, not from somewhere else. He said he got there pretty quick, and he used the cell phone on the bus. The cell phone on the bus? I didn't say anything, but I wasn't liking the sound of any of this. Public bus's don't have cell phone service for the passengers. So I told him that since he wasn't where he called for the cab from when he called I was going to need cash up front for the ride. Where on Yuma, I asked, because Yuma has address's in 2 different zones.

He said it should only be 1 zone, meaning it should be the minimum charge for getting in the cab, which the book would say is no zones. I said it was more than that, opened the book and asked what address on Yuma. He said 9 Yuma. Bad address, Yuma has address's in the 3000's and 4000's. Well, just take me to Yuma he said. I told him I couldn't help him and asked him to get out of the cab. He wanted to know why? He said he'd show me the money. I told him I didn't care, I couldn't help him and he needed to get out of the cab.

Like many people, he was of the opinion that he could fuck anything he could catch. They changed that law years ago. The notion that you can open a car door, sit down, and start ordering someone around is common enough, but I've seen a thousand of him and it just isn't going to fly. He wanted to know why I wouldn't take him.

"Well sir, you don't know where you want to go. You weren't where you called for the cab from. And you want to argue over how much the fare will be. I can kick you out of the cab for any of the 3 reasons. Now, I can't help you, please get out of the cab."

He tried the most common ploy, argue until the driver gives up and refuse to get out. No way. Giving up on a guy like him can get you killed, I told him that if he wouldn't get out of the cab I'd get the cops to help him get out, and I would too. Over and over he wanted to know why? Finally I told him. "The last 2 guys who tried to rob me with a knife were just like you, they wouldn't tell me where they wanted to go, now get out of my cab!"

Now we started with the crap that I was painting him with those to guys, and blah blah blah. He as a black man was indignant. Yeah, the fucking race thing always gets called into play. He finally got out, and said he'd get me fired. How many times have I heard that. He did call the company back, and did complain, and they did not send him another cab. If you want to get refused service, just try refusing to tell the driver where you want to go, or giving him a bad address, works like a charm every time, or should work every time anyhow.

Then, an hour later I get a couple of calls going from downtown to Park and the belt, and Midvale and the belt. I get to Park and the belt, start making change for the guy, and the other passenger is barfing out the door. So I tell him I'll give him a break since he only got a tiny splash on the door and a little in the pocket where people put their hand to pull the door closed. He could pay me for the ride to that point and good bye good luck. He was pretty sincere and begged for a break, said he didn't know where he was, which was true, and it was cold. He held out a hand full of cash, said it was all he had on him and could I please help him. Awwwww, fuck it...... But if you barf again in my cab it's Detox for you and that's a nightmare, understand? I gave him some napkins out of the glove box and told him to clean it up. He made it to Hammersly and Midvale without incident, thanked me, and vanished into a red brick 8 unit.

I told Eric over the radio that when it rains it pours, and he asked why I super sized. I told him that none of that kind of thing is predictable, and if I could predict it I wouldn't have super sized. Who would? He agreed, and the next 3 hours went pretty well.

The thespian and barrista

Ah, he was a great audience. He came up to me at the airport as I was about to take off with another fare and he also wanted to also get in. A split from the air to Monona and Hilldale? Oooo, delightful!!! It was south Midvale, so it worked. It was a GREAT run, I had a few long fitters, just fantastic!!! Anyhow, the guy, the story..........

The guy tells me he's an actor, and he hustles coffee for a living at a coffee house. So we talk about stories, and he tells me that acting is story telling. So I tell him the story of the 5 knife stories, and start telling them. He's a great audience!!

What's really most great about this fellow is he tells me that some of my stories might make good monologues for auditions. He's right, they would, and I never knew about this use of monologues before. The Somebody did a Doogie in This Cab story has 3 distinct voices in it, in a certain way it would be perfect.

So I will be looking to publish in small story form a few of the tales in the blog. Thank you sir!!!!!

Cute things to say

Just for joke, I think I tell you some of the cutsie things that they say in cab driving, and I'll toss in a couple I also like just because I like them.

When amusing passengers, nothing is guaranteed to amuse them like cute things to say. I had this Russian guy and his wife laughing all the way to Hilldale on Christmas, sharing all the ways to pick a fight I could think of and I didn't even go through all of them. So without further ado, (drum roll....), here goes.

Your parents were brothers. My dog got fleas when he fucked your mother. You smell like your mothers cunt (in Capetown, in Afrikans this is guaranteed to work). Your mother has a bald pussy (in Vietnamese, in Siagon, to a Vietnamese this is guaranteed to do it). And finally last but not least: Vas tu faire, en cullier! Which will do the job in Paris. I know the Afrikans but you wouldn't understand it, I don't know the Vietnamese, but I learned it from a guy we called Spike years ago and have since forgotten it, and the French.... well, those of you who speak French will recognize that we also say that in English, so in English it's garden grade.

The cab driving cleaver things to say, or a few of them anyhow would be: Remember to wave with all 5 fingers. It's the only job in the world where you can come to work hungry, horny, broke, and sober, and within an hour have all your problems solved. Your job stinks, your love life stinks, the guy in the cab next to you stinks, and it don't get no better than this.

And of course I should mention the 3 states of being, you should be able to figure these out. Dark side of moon, Via satellite, and Painfully in person. Oh, yeah, and as previously mentioned in this blog, I can drive on State st., because my cab is the 5th stage of tequila and it's invisible.

Twas the night before Christmas

And I sure don't like the idea of going out and shoveling slush, but I have to do it. It's 34, light rain, and I played it perfect I think. It's going to be warm for 2 days, warm enough that if I clear the pavement now, I won't have a sheet of ice to contend with.

The birds and squirrels have been fighting over the food on the deck since I put it out a couple of hours ago. I sure do love them. They are the best part of this drafty old dump. When I was a kid my grandmother loved this yellow shafted flicker that came to our yard at the cottage up north, I hadn't seen one since until I got a regular coming to the deck, he likes corn.

As usual, I have no family to spend holidays with, but that's ok, my family was kind of dysfunctional anyhow. If the weather was better I'd go down to the cab company, but I think minimizing driving about now is the prudent course of action.

I had a passenger in my cab who was kind of interesting, said she has a PhD in Education? Over qualified to ever get a job now. Drag. If the first chapter I just finished doesn't fly with an agent, perhaps I'll ask her to help me polish it enough so it does fly.

Friend of mine in Canada (ooooooo there's the most beautiful cardinal perching in the big pine tree, he's getting ready to swoop down for his meal, he's much shyer than the jays, Mrs cardinal is on the seed bell, they came together............... such beauty) has a copy of the proposed first chapter, I'm anxiously awaiting her opinion. She seemed to be interested in the blog. We were at the online bridge club and she stopped playing bridge to read it. Clearly some of the entrys are better than others.

I predict that the winter cab season will be a good one. All this snow is going to make it a brutal winter. Driving in the snow is much more work than warmer weather, there are so many details that get added. For instance, all those snow piles in the middle of the street, you can't see through them, nor can the other guy. Every time it's warm and sunny, the minute the sun sets you have black ice everywhere. But those nasty sidewalks are hard on the girls wearing 3" heels, so they take a cab. Ever try to walk in 3" heels? It's a trip.

Dog just had to get out to tree a squirril, first time I've ever seen him chase one. Woodchucks are his specialty, he lives for hunting woodchucks. The yard woodchuck is snuggled safely in his burrow for the winter, sleeping until spring.

We finally got the credit card machine activated. It does a bunch more stuff, and it's not real good yet at that other stuff. Every time you cross a zone line it beeps, the display lights up, and it shows the new zone, only it gets some places wrong. It's going to take a while. From the looks of it, eventually, we will be a metered zone cab.

Merry Christmas Fast Eddie, Jeff & Christopher, the King and Gene in NYC, the girl at Ian's, and Laurie in NB. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The right stuff

Passengers some times ask what it takes to get into my blog. The ones who really want to get in never do. Last night I had not 1 but 2 who are getting in. They are examples of the extremes you run into in a space of less than an hour.

I went to the Rustic to get a guy going to a bar on Winnebago st. Guy was super drunk. Every other sentence he said he was all pissed off. He had a bag with him, said it was the Christmas presents his regular customers gave him. Turns out he was one of the bar tenders at the bar he was going to. Said he'd forgotten to take his fanny pack with him when he left the bar and went to the Rustic (a bar close to his house), and in the fanny pack was his inhaler and a bunch of other stuff he needed. He's one of those people who should never let anyone else see him drunk, rather disgusting I'd say, and I see A LOT of drunks.

The other extreme was this real nice girl who works at Ian's on State st. We got on the subject of pizza shops and pizza delivery, and I gave her some of the history of the business. She thought this trivia was super cool and said she intended to tell her pizza co-workers about the trivia and me. Wow, I'm flattered. So, since she said she'd read me, I'll post some of that trivia here, and some of the stuff I perhaps left out.

Here goes, the pizza trivia. Back in my younger days I delivered a lot of pizza. Decent jobs were impossible to get in the Detroit area. The story of my life, it would seem, is I've lived in places where there are no jobs. Most people don't know that pizza was the first food ever delivered, and it was first delivered in Ypsilanti, Michigan to the campus area close to Eastern Michigan University. Domino's store number 1 is the Cross st. store in Ypsilanti. The east side of Ypsilanti is store number 2 and the guy who owned it's name was John. Store 3 was the west side of Ann Arbor, and for some reason I never delivered a pie out of store number 3. That store was a really well run store and they never desperately called all the other stores begging for a driver to borrow for the night. Store #4 is the U of M central campus, and was on South University, it had the coolest oven I've ever seen. Store #5 was the east side of Ann Arbor, I managed that store for a while, big mistake, the owner was a big hillbilly named Dean who is a complete loser. Store #6 is U of M north campus and north side of town. Back in those days, a 16" plain cost $1.70.

She said a 20" pepperoni at Ian's is $9.00 these days, which sounds like a real bargain. I have some weird pizza delivery stories, I don't remember the nice stories, there must have been some. It was a long time ago however. One that I will always remember is the 3 cops who ordered a pizza. One of the drivers took the call and they refused to give their phone number, so when fuck up (we called Gene who was making pizza's fuck up) got to that slip he crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. When they didn't get their pizza they called and Gene told them no phone number, no pizza, so the lady said something like, "Ok dingbat, here's the phone number", and fuck up hung up on them. So they started calling back, and calling back, and calling back, and every time Gene would pick up the phone and hang up on them. I walked into the store and answered the phone and the lady started screaming at me, so I told her to calm down and tell me what happened. Fuck up told me he would not make a pie for them so I made it my self and took it down to their house, it was a house on easy st.

When I knocked on the door it opened and this woman with a shoulder holster with a huge gun in it opened the door and grabbed me by the front of the shirt and dragged me into the house. In the living room there were 2 more guys, so 3 people total, all wearing a bunch of guns, 5 guns total if memory serves, and dressed like they were in the Soprano's and were going to a funeral. Way over dressed for an evening at home and armed to the teeth! One of the guys snarled, "Do you know who I am?" And I said, "I don't care who you are, you can be anybody you want." What are you supposed to say to some big ass hole with a gun anyway? So he says, "My name is Under Sheriff Owings! Now what's this shit about you wouldn't bring us a pizza?" Nice guy, I take the lady's shit on the phone, bring them the pie, and now I'm supposed to be scared shitless of the guy.

The way scared shitless works for me is if you suprise me I won't be scared right then, I'll be scared after it's over. Right then I will be at a loss for words, but I usually don't satisfy people with being terrified. It turns out that if you're really in great danger, you rarely have the luxury of being able to shit your pants right then, you just have to hold it for later.

I stammered out that I was the person who'd actually took the order and made the pizza and he shouldn't be mad at me, he should be mad at fuck up. So they thanked me, like nothing had happened, gave a little better than average tip, and told me I could leave. That address became another on my list of places I wouldn't deliver to, and luckilly they didn't order more pizzas because I would have told the big hillbilly who owned the store do go down there and deliver it himself, and he would have canned me.

Something else she'll probably think is neat, is the history of keeping a pizza hot while taking it to the customer. Back in the day, we drove company cars, and used hot box's that were first kept warm with a little propane heater. The trouble with this was that you'd open the door and the wind would snuff the burner, then 20 minutes later with the car doors shut, windows rolled up, cause it was cold outside, you'd light a cigarette, and the accumulated propane in the hotbox would blow the door off the car. This wasn't real great for the driver either, but they mostly cared about the damage it did to the car. So most stores started using these little cans of jellied alcohol, but one store started using blankets, that was store number 6. One if the guys who worked there was an engineering student named Dick who only worked on Sunday nights when I first met him. Dick ended up with the franchise for Pittsfield Township, the area between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, which it is my understanding he swapped Domino's for the franchise rights to Columbus, Ohio. If he owns all the stores in Columbus, Ohio, he must be filthy rich these days. My guess is he also holds a basic patent for the zipper hot bags that many stores use today to keep pies warm.

There was a burnout who worked for store 6 named Bill Rue, who'd given up on an engineering degree, to be a 6 day a week pizza man. What a waste. Bill had been robbed 3 times when I met him. For some reason, I never got robbed, and to this day have never been robbed, though people have tried a few times. Becky Belknap told me Bill was murdered making a night deposit in Columbus, Ohio. Dick took him with him to open his first store.

Another memory, the first guy I ever fired was Tim Heller, a guy I'd known since 7th grade. In a snow storm he took the company red white and blue Domino's Javelin and ran over the stop sign 60 feet from the store and pulled the car right up in front. The ONLY tire tracks. He thought it was funny. Looking back on it I should have called the cops and let them handle it.

There was a bar next store to the Packard store, I'm told Tuck Banfield own's it now, back then it was The Fireside Lounge. There are a couple of noteworthy drunk stories, who got 86'd from there. One was a guy who was surrounded by 6 cops when I pulled up to the store. The owners son Warren was outside watching, he was 12 at the time. The cops prodded the guy until he made a mistake that they used as provication pound the crap out of him. I tried real hard to get Warren into the store before he saw all this, I recall saying, "Come on Warren, you don't need to see this", and pushing him into the door. They made a deliberate effort to seperate both of the drunk man's shoulders, I used to wrestle and I know just how to do it. After they'd beaten him unconscious they tossed him in the squad and 4 of them left. The other 2 came in the store for the 2 pies they'd ordered, which we never charged them for. I asked the cop what happened and he said, "That guy tried to hit me and", and I stopped him in midsentence.

I said, "You know, I saw you hit him, but I never saw him hit you."

He replied that he wasn't going to let the guy hit him either. So I asked what they were going to do with him, and he said they'd probably let him go after he slept it off. I probably saved that guy's ass. I handed the cop the pies, said no charge and life went on.

Another drunk I tried to spare Warren from dealing with was a guy who'd gotten kicked out and came in the employee's entrance and demanded to buy a burned pie for a buck. We didn't have a burned pie just then. I was moving him out but when we got to the door he grabbed my shirt and started shaking me back and forth while giving me the raspberries. I looked in at the man in charge, a fellow we called Fat Dan, and he was holding up a fist and making a jesture that I should slug the guy. When he let go of me I gave him a single uppercut right to the jaw. He rose up on tiptoes, turned about 180 degrees and fell in the snow. I looked at him for a moment and said to myself, if I let him get up I'll just have to hit him again, so I jumped on him and put him in a wrestling hold called a guillatine, which had him facing the stars unable to move either arm or his legs and I had my free hand in a fist right in front of his nose. I told him if he didn't get up and leave he was going to get hurt, and got my most important lesson in drunks of my entire life.

His reply was classic, he said, "Why am I going to get hurt? I'm going to kick your ass."

I could have caved his face in right then and there, and he wanted to know why? Well, that's what drunk men ALWAYS say, they're complete idiots. It took about 10 seconds to decide that if he needed it explained to him, I couldn't explain it. So I said I didn't want anybody to accuse me of taking advantage of a drunk and he should come back the next day when he was sober and kick my ass. I told him to ask for Morris Dean Jenkins. I would be off the following day, he would be asking for Warrens dad, the big hill billy. It worked, he left. The other drivers were amazed that I'd let him go and not put him in the hospital. What they didn't understand is that it is impossible for me to hit someone in anger, they trained that out of me in a gym when they were training me to be a complete heart attack.

A couple of other names that come to me, Mary Traumatine and Marty Brooks. I hope both of you have lived fine lives my friends, and I wish I still saw you frequently. Marty gave me my first ever doobie, Mary always wanted to ride around in the delivery car and I'm sure she wanted to do............ She was a nice kid, she didn't do it with me.