Valentines Day

Yesterday was Valentines Day. Every Valentines Day should be a Saturday, it was the first night that the students really went out since school started. It's like the worlds economic downturn went on vacation for a day.

I won't make a cent today. I had a personal emergency, and I'm losing over an hour taking care of it. Thank god it's only a personal emergency, it could have been worse, and there are definately worse things that can happen than not making any money for a shift.

I frequently have candidates for the ultimate dumb and dumber pair. Friday night I had a couple of guys who will never get in my cab again who definately are in the running. People have to be pretty bad usually to be memorable, and these guys were definately memorable. PERFICT examples of why I NEVER take people through a drive through for drunk food. I did, because doing so put me up for a $15 fitter (we are a shared ride cab) that the dispatcher would have said I had no reason to be any where near otherwise. The lady who was the fitting ride was very nice, tipped well, and the 2 guys who got Taco Bell were, well, pigs. Oh well. I had a total of 5 people on Friday who will never get in my cab again, that's a lot for a single shift.

In addition to the 2 I just mentioned, there were the very first passengers of the shift. An old woman and her daughter I'd guess, they went from a cheap oriental buffet to a crappy neighborhood, and wanted to be dropped off at different places for the same price as if they went to the same place. I told them I wouldn't do that, and they got pretty upset, "Well other cab drivers do............" Lady, I'm not other cab drivers. I treat EVERYBODY the same, everybody! If I stated saying well you're an old lady so I'll give you a break, then I'd have to start saying that black guy looks scruffy so I need to get cash up front, which might offend him, and so on, so the way it works is everybody gets treated the same. At this point the daughter in the back seat said with that indignant tone in her voice, "Are you calling me old?" They were, quite simply, nothing but trouble. As the old woman paid, no tip, she said in a nasty tone of voice, "I'm not paying extra just so it can go into your pocket." Then she said she'd never ride with me again. Cool, she watches for me, I watch for her, and we never cross paths again. That brings up the total to 4, there is one more.

The one more was a MA ride. What's an MA ride? It's a charge to a hospital or county or city agency that pays for rides for the poor. MA=Medical Assistance. If my dispatcher gives me an MA ride to do, I'm the only one who can turn in the paper to get paid for the ride. I got to this psychiatric clinic and this woman comes out and says, "This cab better be for So-And-So!!!" She plunks her butt down in the front seat and starts on a long rag about how she's been waiting for a ride for 2 hours, and that bastard in the cab in front of me wouldn't take her inspite of the fact that he's been sitting there for a long time. My good friend Ham Dinger was the driver in that cab, and he couldn't have taken her if he'd wanted to, he'd never get paid for the ride, not to mention he was waiting for his own looney that he had paperwork for. I tried to tell this woman that if she was a cash customer Ham Dinger could have taken her, if he'd wanted to, but she wasn't a cash customer so I was the only one who could do her ride. Then she went on a bigger rag about how an MA ride was as good as a cash ride, which is irrelevant, and I finally told her as politely as possible to SHUT UP. Then I took her to a subsidized apartment building. She doesn't pay her own rent, doesn't pay her own cab fare, no doubt doesn't pay her shrink, and I think she should be a bag lady, instead of a well fed, middle class, leach on society. What was it Billy Joel (or was it Harry Chapin.... nah, Billy) said in the old song, "You should never argue with a crazy man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man. You ought to know by now! ...................................... If that's all you get for your money!"

Lady, you'll never get in my cab again, MA ride or no MA ride. If you want her name, so you can avoid her too, ask me in the drivers room, for obvious reasons, I can't put her name here.

A decent Saturday night.

Last night was the best night I've had in a long time. It didn't look like it would be, but when I counted up at the finish it was.

I had a group of girls going from Bradley Hall to The Party House. They asked what they could say to a guy if they really wanted to offend him. Geeeee.......... What can a cute girl say to a horny frat boy that will offend him enough to make him stop trying? That's a toughie, don't you think?

I decided to suggest a comment that's used in another language in another country to pick fights. Tell the guy he smells like his mothers cunt, that might do the trick. They roared!!!! They loved it, tip accomplished!

forced off the beltline

I remember so many of these rookie moments with a small smile and say to myself that the other guy was really lucky I was a green horn.

It was just before sunrise on the south beltline. I was westbound, and I'm thinking it was somewhere around John Nolan Drive. I had no one in the cab, and I don't recall if I was going to get a call or not, it doesn't matter anyway.

A guy started honking his horn behind me. I changed lanes, and he changed lanes, he stayed right behind me no matter what I did, flashing his head lights and blasting his horn. Finally, I pulled over on the median to see what his problem was. This little black guy wearing pajama's got out of his car and started screaming at me. He screamed that I'd cut him off or something, and since there was almost no traffic on the highway, I couldn't figgure out for the life of me what he was talking about.

In his screaming, he screamed that I was lucky he didn't get his gun out of his glove box and shoot me. That was the freebie he got from me. If it ever came up again, I'd have the cops involved immediately. The guy claims he's got a gun and ammunition in his glove compartment, uncased undoubtedly. A bad day almost beyond his wildest dreams. I don't give out to many freebies anymore.

It may be obvious that I haven't been posting much lately. I'm back to driving 5 days a week. I've retired from the University, recovered from the injury I had at the beginning of December, and I'm glad to be back driving. I've been driving a couple of day shifts and 3 or 4 night shifts a week, the odd combination of hours is hard. Why? I need to get my edge back for the city, 24 hours a day. I'd like to drive days for about 8 weeks sometime say in April and May, but if I don't know what's going on, I'd be showing up for little or no money. Stone-Eye was in the drivers room at 3:30 am on a Sunday morning. Stone-Eye!?!?? In over 20 years that I've known the guy, he's never driven a Sunday before (he's a day guy, starts at 3 or 4). Needless to say, it's bad for everyone driving a cab, probably everywhere, people just aren't spending and going out. Driving when the money's poor takes more out of you than driving when it's good. I just haven't felt like writing after work like I did.

I did figgure out how I'll compose the first chapter of the actual book. Part of it is sitting on my desktop, it's carefully complying with the guidelines set down by the authors I'm reading who teach writing. It includes my best friend getting murdered by a fare in April of '92, they say gore sells well, I know Jim would want me to sell the book. The part of it that will be submitted to agents will live on a web site, and I'll put a single link to that website in a post as soon as Chapter 1 is finished and polished. The actual book chapters will live on the web until I am able to sell the book.

Thanksgiving

The last time I worked a Thanksgiving, I worked a day shift. I think I have worked a Thanksgiving night shift once, and decided that I'd never do it again, no business. Inspite of being mostly a night driver for the last few years, the last time I drove a Thanksgiving it was a day shift, and it was terrible because it was a nice balmy fall day with sunshine.


Toward the end of my shift, I got a pair going from Balsam to UW Hospital. 2 black ladies, one in her 40's or 50's, one in her 20's. Of course, they weren't ready to go. Usually I wait for 3-5 minutes and take off, and refuse to go back, it's part of my style, however it had been such a dismal day, and there was NOTHING else to do, with no prospects for the next hour, I decided to wait. I waited for probably 15 minutes before they came out.

One was young, around 20, the other was around 45. The young one was wearing a brand new winter coat. There are people here who collect coats for the poor and give them out in a similar fashon to a food pantry. The problem with this is, I don't want a brand new winter coat in leu of a cab fare, and if you have a coat that cost you nothing which you don't really like that much after you get it home, well why not stiff that stupid cab driver and give him that ugly coat? Anyway....... The young one starts this fake wailing immediately, "Oh, my baby. Oh, my baby. Oh......."

We get to the hospital, and the young one announces that the ride will be paid with a voucher that she has to go inside to get. I immediately ask for the cops and then follow her inside. Close inside there is a woman behind a desk who recognizes her, and greets her by saying they already discussed a voucher over the phone, and the hospital isn't giving her one. This same lady looks at me and asks who I am. I tell her I'm a cab driver. She immediately tells me she'll call the cops on me, I tell her I'd like that just fine, I've called the cops myself. I also tell her that since she obviously recognizes the young woman with the new coat, she'll be able to provide the cops with her name so thay can cite her for refusing to pay. When I get back to the cab, a cop is waiting, the mother is looking around like she's wondering where she can dissappear but it's to nice a neighborhood for her to vanish in, she'd look out of place.

You have to love hospital and hotel people. They're such nicey nice (explicitive, explicitive)'s. They would call the cops in a heart beat if someone tried to rip them off, but if they can protect their patient or guest from an evil cab driver who is trying to collect a fare, they aid and abet the act of refusing to pay, agressively, every time.

The cop tells me that they're trying to take the lady's kid away from her. He didn't say what pretext, drugs or unfit mother I suppose. What's really most disgusting about this who deal is why the kid even exists. The grandmother who was trying to wander off, but couldn't probably had the young woman so she could get paid for being a mother. She probably didn't care who the father was, and didn't even care about the kid, she didn't want to get a job and having a kid would pay the bills, so she had one with the intent of a career on welfare, then when the kid became an adult, well she'd change diapers as her own mother probably had, and live off the kid and grandkid. The young woman was following her own mothers career path, and why not, who'd want to get a job?

From listening to the conversation about the baby in the cab, I think I know what the problem was. I had a dog who had seizures for 1/2 his life which I believe were caused by the bug killer the land lord used to get rid of roach's. I'll bet that baby got seizures from the bug killer in that rat trap apartment on Balsam, and there was nothing particularly wrong with the parenting. I could have told that lady that, but since she ripped me off, why would I want to? The fare she ripped me off for would have raised my income for that 8 hour shift from around 25 bucks to around 40. Is it any wonder why I'd refuse to drive subsequent Thanksgivings?

Playing chicken

It's amazing, how may psycho's are running around out there. I should talk? Years ago, my friend Big Al Schouldenrien told me that if I lived in New York City where he came from somebody would kill me. Perhaps I was that bad, but nobody ever remembers their youth that way.

Here, where we sometimes have a lot of snow, as we do this year, the side streets get really narrow. A small percentage of agressive drivers charge through a single lane wide passage between park cars challenging any oncoming car to hit them. I don't approve of driving like that, it would be dangerous on clean pavement, but on snow, it's really dangerous. The idea is that agressive driver is going to force the on coming car to pull over and give him the whole street. My reaction to this kind of thing is usually to leave them room to get by, but not much more than the minimum amount of room.

The guy did stop, he wanted the whole street, not just enough to get by. He flipped the back of his hand dismissively, about 4 flips worth. I returned the gesture, and waited for him to pull by. We waited for a few minutes. All of a sudden his passenger got out and started walking, I should have read that as trouble. Since the guy wasn't moving, I picked up the paper and started to read it. About this time, another car pulled up right behind him. After about 5 minutes he got out and came over to the cab and started screaming at me, saying I was supposed to pull over like I was parked so he could get by. I pointed at the passage next to the cab and told him he had enough room to get by, and that he should get back in his car and do just that, pull by. He went psycho. He had a car key in his fingers and swung through the window a couple of times, making me duck back into the center of the front seat. I don't know that he would have cut my face with that key, but when people go crazy like that, who know's what they're going to do. I was asking the dispatcher to get the cops for me, and he broke off the attack and got in his car and drove past me, vanishing into the day's traffic.

The next car's driver did the same dismissive hand wave, I returned it. He drove through without incident. Then I drove down the street.

Why did I do this? I could have just parked and watched this crazy man drive by without ever discovering that he was crazy. If I'd known he was crazy, I probably would have done just that, but we all assume that the other people on the street are more or less normal. His passenger got out and walked, he knew there was trouble about to happen and he didn't want to be there to see it.

The normal way the majority of us handle streets like this is to slowly pull through, both directions, until it gets tight, and who ever is there second normally stops at a wide place and lets the other car come past. I do that all the time. I realized while thinking about it afterward that the guy was playing chicken. Chicken is a classic teenage game, usually played by boys. The absolute classic version of the game is played on a dark highway at night. 2 boys in cars will drive toward each other, toward a certain head on collision. The boy who at the last minute decides he doesn't want to find out what happens in a head on collision pulls to the side, is declaired chicken, and is of course the loser. What that fool was doing, and the small group of other drivers like him, was playing chicken in broad daylight on a slick snow surface. The streets are where I work, that kind of play makes my workplace much more dangerous than it needs to be.

The kid with the bike who broadsided the cab

Official company policy is that every accident be reported and fully documented. Reality is different. For one reason or another, many accidents do not get reported and are only informally documented. 2 immediately come to mind.

The first one was a guy who was absolutely intent on racing past me on the right and passing me. You know the type, every traffic light is the Christmas tree at a drag strip for them. I don't approve of this kind of thing, the street may be their playground, but it's where I work, and it's dangerous enough without that kind of thing. The guy was in a right turn lane, that vanished into a row of parked cars along the curb on the other side of the intersection. I had 2 or 3 people in the back seat. When the light changed, he floored it. I went through the intersection, and almost immediately it was obvious that if I didn't slam on the brakes and/or change lanes to let him swerve in front of me, he was going to rear end the first parked car, and/or hit me in the process. While I was giving this a moments thought, he swung his car into the cab, just like they do in stock car races. I couldn't believe it! He hit me on purpose. Now I was definitely going to let him by, because I was going to get the cops and needed to keep him in sight. He pulled over almost immediately, jumped out of the car, and started screaming that I'd sideswiped him and I was at fault.

Ah, we need to get the cops for this. He's screaming that this car belongs to a dealership, and it is indeed wearing a dealers tag, and he's a car salesman. Right, and the only good thing about a car salesman is he's not on welfare. I take a look at both cars, and I can't find any damage. How did that happen? I consult with the passengers in the back seat and we vote for telling this idiot that since there is no damage we are willing to let the issue drop, if he is. He agrees, but I do get his name, and the license number, and the names and phone numbers of the passengers, just in case. Yes, people really do such silly ass shit. Of course, the names and numbers are always given to Roy Boy, and he's always agreed with my judgement that it was better to not call the cops that time, what ever time it was.

The second time was a bit more serious. It was a foot ball Saturday night, and I had a load of drunk football fans in the cab. The intersection of Randall and University has always had a light, and everybody turns there, but a slick cab driver will go straight through that intersection and turn on Lorch which is only 80 feet up the street, without waiting behind 6 or 8 civilians who are turning on to Randall. One then turns left on Campus, and right on Randall, no waiting. There is an eastbound bike lane along the left side of University. University a westbound one way street. On the left side of University is an oncoming, or eastbound, bike lane that's seperated from street by a largish curb that's about 10 inches wide. Just as I was turning across the bike lane at Lorch, into the head lights came a student on a bike who was doing at least 20 mph. There was no way he'd stop, I was already in front of him, he was boxed by the curbs on both sides of him in the bike lane, and my only prayer was to floor it and try to clear the bike lane before he got there. I didn't make it. He hit the rear quarter panel on the passenger side right behind the rear axle and flew over the trunk lid, landing on the pavement on the drivers side of the cab. I stopped immediately of course.

The kid with the bike, who was of course unhurt, was hopping mad. I pulled in front of him he said, it was my fault he said, what was I going to do about his bike!!!!!!! His bike looked pretty bad, he was for sure losing the front tire, and front fork. It also looked like a very expensive bike, I never found out if it was or not.

It was true that I pulled in front of him. In the dark, it was impossible to see him in that bike lane. He had no head lamp of any kind. I pointed up at the bike lane yield sign and said, "That yield sign is there for your safety, you ignored it. You have no light on your bike. Would you like me to call the police?" I held the mike for the radio up for him to see, and continued, "If the police come and determine that you're at fault you will be required to pay for the damage to the cab. Do you have insurance like that?"

We bickered for a few minutes, mostly him grumbling. He knew he would be found at fault if the cops came and got involved. I took his name, he did not take mine. Then he stalked off into the night, carrying his twisted bike over his head. I got the names and phone numbers of all 4 drunks in the cab, a bunch of good old boys from northern Wisconsin, down in Madison to whoop it up for the weekend.

Again, Roy Boy agreed with my judgement that any kind of accident with a bike, was something that should be avoided if possible. He took the list of names and numbers, the body shop repaired the quarter panel, the kid probably got his bike replaced at Christmas, and life went on. I don't know about happily ever after, but life went on.

Why do I have to get involved in something like this?

I'm not a social worker. I don't work in a hospital. I'm not a cop. Getting involved in some woman losing her child shouldn't be part of my job. Unfortunately, it has been part of my job, more than once.

I pulled up in front of a really sleazy dive at Union Corners, to pick up somebody going to Hilldale. The woman going to Hilldale was really drunk, and she had a little girl with her. The kid was 5 perhaps. There was also another woman with her who wanted to go first to a liquer store near by, and then to her apartment which was also close by. In my mind, the second woman was the worst kind of predator, but many people would dismiss what she did as minor.

Someone, probably the bar tender, had given the really drunk woman enough money to pay for a cab home. The second woman, took the money from the really drunk woman and bought beer and a ride to her own place with it, leaving the really drunk woman with the little kid about 2 bucks, when she got out of the cab. I don't recall how it came up, but after the predator got out, the subject of money came up, and I found out that the really drunk woman in the cab no longer had the cash to pay for the ride. She was a happy drunk. One of those people with an innocent drunken smile, and a mostly nice disposition, inspite of being too drunk to walk more than 50 feet at a time.

I don't like getting beat out of a ride for any reason, and I'm not a charity. I told her I wasn't going to kick her out of the cab, but I fully intended to give her a piece of my mind. She told me to shut up, she didn't have to listen to my crap. "Yes lady, you do have to listen to my crap, you don't have the money to pay for the ride, so you will listen to my crap."

Drunks don't usually change their mind when it comes to criticism. Even a sweet drunk will turn ugly if they don't want to hear something, and you insist on telling that something anyway. She started getting nasty. I told her that if she wanted to get nasty, I'd kick her out of the cab. She told me that she'd get as nasty as it took to shut me up. What was I telling her? I was telling her she was an unfit mother. I finally put her and the child out of the cab at the corner of First and Johnson. She sat down on the curb, and the little girl tried to take care of her. I had no choice, I had to call the cops. She went to Detox, I'm not sure what the cops did with the little girl.

Why didn't I just shut up? I'm supposed to silently smile as I give a free ride to a woman who is too drunk to take care of herself, and was too drunk to keep the fat pig who was on the bar stool next to her from stealing her money? Why didn't she shut up? She was too drunk to know any better? Still, why do I have to get involved in this kind of thing? Simple, I'm a cab driver.