The happiest Badger cab.

In the photo of me, you also see the happiest Badger cab. Why is it the happiest cab...........

I went combing through the blog looking for this story and couldn't find it. It's my next first chapter attempt. How could I have possibly left it out?

Goes like this:

I only ever got one brand new cab. It was 71 I think (171), and it was back in the Dodge Diplomat days. Some people like Mean Gene and Boom Town get a lot of new cabs but they whine for them. I don't. And the fact of the matter is, I like driving junk anyway. 72 these days has a maj0r dent in the right front fender that they say Gooooner left there for me. Thanks alot Rabbit. (yes the guy has 2 nicknames) Where was I..........

I was given this new cab, first ever shift driven in it to drive, back in the day. I think it was a Friday night, but it could have been Saturday. I'm trolling for drunks on State street around 10:00 pm and this couple wave at me. They want to go to Squaw Bay. Cool, hop in.

We get to about Southtown and the Belt and this lady asks if anybody's ever had sex in my cab. I say not so far. She asks if they can have sex in the back seat. What a way to christen a new cab right? "If you're willing to pay for it, I don't care what you do in the back seat."

She asks how we should do this thing and I suggest driving west on the belt line until the fellow is finished. She says do it, and we're off.

I got back on the belt line west bound and got all the way to Airport rd., before she said they were done. Then I turned around and went back to Southtowne. Very nice fare!!

I took them to their house, and she danced from the cab to the front door. The guy sat there in the back seat with that stupid shit eating look on him for a minute then he slowly plodded to the door. And I figured that any cab that was used for getting a piece on it's maiden cruise had to be the happiest cab in the fleet. What do you think?

And I think I'll do my next chapter one rewrite using this as the first story. I've tried a dry explanitory, and I didn't like it much. I've tried violence, and it's ok, but not really good enough, but this is kind of catchy. Many passengers ask if anybody's ever gotten a piece in the back seat, it's a sort of romantic idea, in a real coarse sort of way. Well.......... worst that can happen is it will become yet another first chapter that didn't work.

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...............

The thousand dollar cab ride

How does a $5.00 cab ride become a $1,000.00 ride, or perhaps more?

The guy thinks he's being real cute stiffing me for a couple of bucks. Then he compounds being stupid by calling the cops and lying to them, claiming I'm trying to get into his building. Cop said it was a dumb move in his eyes, it gave him complete ID on the guy.

Well, I sprained my thumb while it was happening too. So the insurance company is going to go after him for their expenses. At least $1,000 by the time you add up the citation and the insurance company, and do insurance companies ever give up? What an idiot.

On a lighter note, the students are back!!!!!!!!! Business will be good for at least 6 weeks straight!!!!!!!

Thanks gentlemen

My thanks to Matt, the guy who went to The Willy Street Co-op, and Mr. Jackson. I'd been looking for a way to fictionalize a place that no longer exists, and with your help it came to me.

The entire way to set it up, and roll with it came real fast as soon as I had the beginning of it. As I turned the corner at Bedford and Wash I finally saw it, I'd been looking for that picture in my mind for a few years.

Thus, I am probably going to back burner Night Driver and spend that time on an actual work of fiction. Wow, what a trip.

THANKS GUYS!!

Camel Jack

I'm stoked!!!! Tomorrow evening, there is a writers group in a joint up on the square. It will be the first time I will ever have received feedback from other writers or writer wanna bees. I can hardly wait!! Now, where was I.... The story, yeah.......

The Elder identified the Q & M people for me. Young princes, whose native language is Arabic, they are students, according to him.

Here's the deal. Phone guy couldn't understand this guy, and the guy gets frustrated and gives a destination he can pronounce, Walmart. So the call is on the board as Q & M going to Watts rd. I'm getting empty on Shiloh, and bid that I'm empty there. The dispatcher I have the most trouble with and complains about me constantly, gives me this call. There were closer calls it made more sense to give me, but he knew this was going to be trouble and he wanted me to have it.

When I get there, these 2 guys take their sweet time coming out, and I'm about ready to take off when they finally get in the cab. Guy on the passenger side is going to do the talking, and he has a thick accent which I don't identify, and he's saying something that at first sounds kind of like, "Cat food."

I ask him to say it again. Now it sort of sounds like, "Cap food."

After he butchered the destination the first time, he'd said, "You go, I show you, you go."

Well, I don't do that for a number of reasons. And I told him he'd have to tell me where he wanted to go or we weren't going anywhere, which is what I'd tell anybody, unless I had a compelling reason to believe they needed to show me. This guys 200 word vocabulary is really good, you figure he can speak English, and he's just unwilling to tell you were you're going. Fact is, 200 words aren't enough to express himself, and he should be upfront about it and say his English is weak, and that he's here to learn English, then I'd say ok, it would make sense. People who lie or are evasive about where they're going will get refused service by almost any cab company anywhere.

That this guy is too stuck up, or shall we say, arrogant, to admit that he can't speak English isn't my problem, isn't going to become my problem, and isn't going to make me want to help him.

Where? Cap Center Foods downtown perhaps? He's trying to say it, says it a few times more, I ask where a few times more, and he gets frustrated and says, "Cap food, you know, by Walmart." Ok, that makes sense now, that was how they had it on the board. NOTE: When he was saying cat food, I was thinking I ought to take him to Copp's on Century. There are a couple of small foriegn groceries near Walmart, I'm guessing that's where he wants to go.

We get to Watts and Gammon and I point to an Indian grocery and he says no, take him to Walmart. It isn't making a lot of sense, but I take him were he says he wants to go.

An hour later they have a return ride, I want to go to the airport which is on past Q & M, so I bid for and get the return ride. We haven't gone 1/4 mile and the guy starts in on me that I refused to take him to the grocery he wanted to go to 2 miles in the direction he's pointing in. Closer to 4 miles actually, but he's talking about Copp's on Century. And now, somebody's coached him on how to pronounce Copp's.

"You refuse to take me where I want to go! You make me take ride I don't want! You don't give me chance! This is the 4th time I've riden with you in a month and I have trouble with you every time. You get angry with me every time. I call your company and complain, I will have you fired!"

What............. Just who the hell does this ass hole think he is? Sure we had trouble, if you wouldn't tell me where you wanted to go the other 2 times, I'm sure I would have said if you continuted to refuse to tell me where we were going, you'd have to get out of the cab, and a, "You go", "Get out of the cab", "You go", ..... "For the last time, you either tell me were you want to go, or get out of the cab.", ensued, and he gave up and said something he could pronounce. I'm thinking these guys are Afgans, because I don't recognise the accent, and the way he's butchering English leads me to believe his native language is poorly defined. Poorly defined? Yeah, some languages are strongly defined like Baltic languages, which is why a Latvian will say, 'Wash it the car.' Weakly defined means they dispense with articles like a, an, the, that, this, get the idea? Arabic, I know to be fairly strongly defined because I took 3 semesters of a real closely related language called Hebrew in college. Trying to cool the guy off, I tell him my accent in French is bad and my accent in Hebrew is worse, and least I can make all the sounds in the French language properly, I can't in Hebrew. And I know just what the guy was thinking at that point, 'I'm going to get this filthy Jew, who's screwing me over.'

30 years ago, in my home town, rich Arab exchange students didn't dress like bums like these 2, and they had manners, kind of like the guys in James Bond movies. My home town? Yeah, another Big 10 town, and we had LOTS of Saudi's, and a whole lot more Japaneese than Wisconsin had. Back then Wisconsin had a lot of Chineese and Iranians. In Ann Arbor, you can buy fresh made stuffed grape leaves. Here, only out of a can, even at a restraunt.

There ought to be a law

There ought to be a law prohibiting passengers from using cell phones. There is a law prohibiting smoking, so don't say such a law is impossible.

2 consecutive passengers:

First one gets in and insists on sitting behind me, and demands I close window. It's cracked 1/2". So she gets on her cell phone and calls the company and tells them I won't roll up the window, she's cold, she doesn't want to move to the passenger side, and they need to make me roll up the window. Screech!!! Now there are almost tears in her voice, she's telling the phone guy she thinks I'm going to kick her out of the cab. Under different circumstances perhaps, but it's very cold, I just take her back to where she came from and tell her she can get a cab driver she likes. I tell the dispatcher that no matter what the issue, if a passenger calls the company to complain or demand they get their way about something, they're out of the cab, PERIOD.

Next passenger can't talk, she has a lisp. She holds out the cell phone like it's a loudspeaker, I can't hear it right. So, she wants me to talk to some guy on it, and it's like a cherry bomb went off next to my ear. Then she claims it's not her fault, it's the phones fault.

Bottom line, I will never put a passengers cell phone up to my ear again.

What a zoo

I worked a 5-5 last night instead of the usual 3-3. It wasn't a great night, for a New Years Eve, it was only ok.

The overhead was way to massive however. I severely injured my thumb. Now it's actually hard to turn the ignition key. The x-rays say nothings broken, hand specialist will look at in a week.

Last night was the first time anyone ever said, "You're Real Cab Driver?" Someone who'd read this blog without me telling them about it, in my cab!!!!!!!

Around 3:30 this smart ass bartender got out of the cab and refused to pay. He shoved me a couple of times, and walked away laughing. His girlfriend wasn't too happy, she wanted to know why he did such things so frequently, I didn't hear the answer. I called the cops, and the officer told me he'd write the guy for disorderly, a $400 ticket. He could do this because while I was talking to the officer the guy called the cops to complain that I was trying to get in his apartment building. I think that lie was enough for the officer all by itself.

New Years Eve with a full moon, how could anyone expect less.

I had a banker in the cab who said he thinks the economy will do a lot better this year. He said that availability of funds to loan was good. Da wha........ I play the stock market too. One of the biggest variables in banking is how much money they can get their hands on to loan. If money available to loan dries up, your credit score isn't important, there's no water in the well. My biggest winner in 2009 has the stock symbol GFRE, which prompts me to share the story of Dow Chemical. GFRE is a company in China that produces specialty chemicals. Dow was founded by a guy who went prospecting for underground salt water when he

In general it took a lot out of me. I guess I must be getting old.