People from the past

I ran into a few people from the past over the weekend.

To the best of my knowledge Butch and I are the only 2 drivers who have really escaped robbers. They say that Useless One escaped, but he did he? The bad guys got his cell phone which they used to call a cab from a different company, and they put the driver from that company in the hospital.

Many years ago, there was a string of robberies which happened about once a month. It was always the same story. 3 guys, black, about 18 years old, a dark one who looked about like so, and a light one who looked about like so. I figured it was a gang initiation, but the company was always very adamant that I was wrong. That makes me believe I was right, of course. The way it always went down was the guy sitting behind the driver would throw something over the drivers head, draw it tight around their neck so they were strangling, and the other 2 would pound the crap out of the driver. After the driver was beaten up pretty bad, they'd ask for the money. No opportunity was given to simply give up the money.

When these guys tried to rob Butch, he won the fight. He laughed about it, and would say, "They was just flappin", to describe the fight. Butch must have had a bit of practice, when they try that on someone with no experience, the element of surprise is probably enough to win, all by itself.

Back in those days, another driver was said to have won, but that kind of depends on what you call winning. When they started beating the crap out of him his foot came off the brake peddle. His cab was in reverse and he was on a grade that went down to his rear, so the cab took off backward and wasn't going real fast, but was gaining speed. One or more of the kids pounding on him decided to exit the cab before the cab wreaked and didn't quite make it, his arm got pinned between the open cab door and a tree, so he got caught, and hurt pretty bad.

The white chick Butch was with was pretty skanky. He didn't remember me. He's been gone from our company for close to 20 years, and out of the cab business for around 5. Almost no one remembered him.

I had Mona and Stella in the cab. Mona has been Mona since before I started driving. She's never been all there, but age hasn't been kind to her. I really wondered why someone would take a ride a single block on Williamson st. When she got in the cab, I greeted her by her name and asked where she wanted to go, she gave an address a block and a half up the street. When she got out, I saw why she took the ride. The skirt she was wearing was mostly gone in the back all the way up to the waste band, which revealed the diaper she was wearing. At least the seat was in the same condition when she got out as it was when she got in, whew!

Stella was at the grocery store on Broadway. I guess most of the drivers know that ride and won't take her. She's also been riding since before I started driving and she always talks non stop a mile a minute the whole way. Most of what she says is a complaint, one after another, and she's always got 3 complaints about the driver before you even get the cab in gear. Her groceries MUST be in the back seat. Bull shit, groceries go in the trunk, but all the other drivers....... All the other drivers don't know who you are Stella, and don't know that it won't shut you up, and since you won't shut up, why should you get special treatment? Answer: You should never get special treatment. But once in a while I will take her because I need the good will it generates with the dispatcher.

I took The Cookie Lady to the same grocery, she'd gotten out of a week in the hospital. She too, figured she'd gotten crappy service. I started work at 3 and she was bitching that she'd called for a cab at 2. I drove out there from downtown to do that ride too, again to make points with the dispatcher. Ah, let no good deed go unpunished, right?

And finally, drum roll perhaps, the final ride of the weekend I did was positively creepy. A couple of guys, 25 - 35 years old perhaps, got in to take a ride to a small club to hear the metal band playing there. When the subject of smoking came up, the guy on the passenger side commented that he'd quit smoking once for 2 years, but started up again. The guy sitting behind me commented, "Yeah, but that was when you were in prison."

"You were in prison for 2 years? What did you do, if you don't mind my asking", I asked.

"Robbed a bank. Actually robbed a few banks", he replied.

"Really!?"

I asked him a little about it. He said that the papers in the community where he was at the time gave him a nick name.

Then the guy behind me commented that they had a buddy who'd killed a cab driver. Really!? Here in Wisconsin? He said yeah, here in Wisconsin, and went on to say the guy would get out of prison in 4 more years. If he killed the cab driver around 20 years ago, the guy he killed was my best friend. The guy said that his friend was 16 when he killed the cab driver, so sure enough, their good friend Peter had killed Jim Bob. It was awkward to say the very least. They said nice things about their friend, and I said to not worry about it, it was a long time ago. What a blast from the past.........

Lucky

I haven't seen the guy for years. He was a dispatching groupie. Like most groupies he had a favorite. His favorite was Piggie. Piggie named him Lucky, short for Lucky Pierre.

Unfortunately for Lucky, he didn't have enough suck with the office to get a job IN the office when he lost his drivers license. I could be wrong, but I believe the number one reason the dispatchers in the office became dispatchers was loss of drivers license. It's usually bad luck, but when you drive more than 1,000 miles a week in city traffic, you're going to have a little bad luck, sooner or later.

If memory serves, the ticket that put Lucky over the edge and resulted in loss of license was for riding his moped on a county highway. I don't think you even need a drivers license to ride a moped, but you can get a real ticket with real points for riding one on a numbered or lettered highway. Same as you can get a drunk driving ticket for riding your bicycle drunk.

The thing that will make Lucky always stand out in my mind was a left handed compliment.

The most profitable calls when it's super busy at night are short rides that go from the State st. area to the stadium area, or vice verse. This is especially true during the bar rush. It is only human nature to want those quick profitable rides, the object of the game is to make as much money as possible in the hours you have the cab leased for. Over the years, the dispatchers have tried all manner of things to move the long rides. They don't try very hard any more. The reality is, if the drivers aren't allowed to run the rides they want to run, they'll refuse to pick up the rides they don't want to run, which basically hurts the cab riding community.

Those short rides, State st., to the stadium, are called "puff calls", which is short for cream puff calls. Piggie's answer was to only give out a puff call with a long call which took the driver out of downtown. If you didn't want the potatoes you couldn't have the gravy either. This was just plain stupid, of course. If you want me to take a ride to Middleton at bar time, and you're trying to move 2 singles and a pair, I want the 3 way split with the long fares, to package it so 3 cabs are going to Middleton in such a situation makes little sense. If I have a fare in going to Middleton or East Towne, a short fitter is not gravy, and I don't want it.

When I became a night driver, this conflict had been going on for years already. Piggie added cream puffing to our vocabulary unintentionally. He'd sit there, frustrated that he wasn't getting his way, and mutter, "Cream puffin faggots!" Sounds kind of similar to something the bad guys in a Tolken novel would say,doesn't it? Anyhow, that's where the term came from.

The left handed compliment Piggie gave me, came second hand via Lucky. He said that the Hog commented to him that I was a "real cream puffer", in other words, the best of the best. Thanks Piggie!! Piggies long dead, and I'm not that good any more, but 15 years ago, I was the best. Piggie said so, and Lucky told me, so it must have been true.

They come here for an education and we sure give them one

There is a place, down by South Towne, called Detox. If the cops pick you up and you're drunk enough to be staggering, you will probably wind up in Detox. What does Detox do? My knowledge of the place is all second hand, but basically they watch you sleep it off, and when you don't die, they turn you lose the next day. If you do die, they call 911 and have the body removed, and if it looks like you're going to die, they call 911 and have you moved to the hospital.

The minimum price for a trip to Detox is hundreds of dollars. Again, my knowledge is second hand, but you want to have your insurance premiums paid.

The day shift dispatcher who says, "They come here for an education, and we sure give them one", still dispatches 5 days a week. He says it when there is a call like Detox to the dorms, or county jail to the dorms, and we have calls like that the day after Halloween, and the day after football games. Like many of us, he wandered off for a few years, but he came back. Can't you just hear Sting saying, "They all come back!" Our dispatcher has a full head of red curly red hair which is beginning to grey, is slender, and still smokes. He's always been a good guy, as fair as anyone. The other comment he's given to making is, "Driving away from money?" He says this when he's trying to get a cab to a certain place and the driver finally says no, and refuses to be stuffed the next call.

What he does is give you a call, then a few minutes later he asks you where you are and what you're doing (follows you around). Then he says also get xyz. About the time you should have loaded that one, he asks you again. When I was real green and didn't know I could say no, this really was annoying, because I'd want to do something specific, and he'd want me to do something else. This also used to be called using and abusing a driver but the company hasn't let them say that for almost 20 years.

Halloween - The best costume prize is.........

Before I forget, if you want to see what Halloween in Madison looks like this website has some nice photos and so on...... http://www.channel3000.com/freakfest/index.html

I was standing in a long line, and casually told the fellow in front of me that Halloween spending was down 15% this year over last year. I asked how many people he expected at his Halloween party. He had enough various bottles of booze in his cart to stock a bar that specialized in mixed drinks, and he had a few cases of beer too. He said he was making 18 gallons of wap. I guess wapatuli is one of the vilest forms of witches brew, so why not, a Halloween wap party sort of makes sense.

I replied that I once knew a priest named Father Wapatuli. He and his wife both giggled. This a description of a movie titled New Machine. I think the movie was a theater class project, but it doesn't matter why it was made. It should be a local cult classic. The new machine was an old candy vending machine that was purchased to replace the origional machine when it died. I won't disclose it's location, but 30 years ago those of us who knew it's location also knew that a joint cost $0.75. I went on to say that the guy who kept it stocked is now the president or CEO of a local high tech firm, which should raise no eyebrows in Madison, Wisconsin.

There were 3 knobs out of 8 that would lead to a joint. You deposited the first quarter, pulled the knob, and nothing came out. You deposited the second quarter, pulled the knob, and a strike anywhere kitchen match came out. You deposited the third quarter, pulled the knob, and a joint rolled the classical way about 2/3 the diameter of a lucky strike, came out.

In the movie, if memory serves, Father Wapatuli picks up the kitchen match and joint out of the candy machine tray, and lights and hits the joint. The dialog was something like, 'I remember these from college.' A couple of minutes later he is shown swaying back and forth, and it was perfictly played. It's hard to resist the impulse to name these people, but........... Anyhow, that's the enduring image I have of the fellow with the house over by Norris Court, and the enduring memory of New Machine.

The fellow who made the movie was a fellow many called Duckless. He got kicked out of more living situations than anyone I've ever known. If someone specifically asks, I'll offer more about this group of people from the past in more posts, I do see a story or 2 coming out of the group. Duckless wasn't that much a part of our crowd, he was a Leon Varjain hanger on. I was warned about helping Duckless out, but I took mercy on him when he was homeless yet again, in the fall of 1980. When I got crab lice because he sat on my bed when I wasn't home watching television, I gave him 48 hours to get rid of the crabs. He made a big joke out of it, and said he'd make a movie out of it. 48 hours came and went, I didn't have the time to confront him about it at precisely 48 hours. He took it as a victory, big mistake on his part. His fate was sealed when I saw a bottle of quell shampoo dispensed by health service to a Simon Rabinowitz. Simon was Kathy's boyfriend, but she played around with Duck, so they all had the crabs. He came home from a party on Sunday morning and all his stuff was in the street. Want to hear the whole sordid tale? I take requests.

And if you ever see a tall skinny 60ish guy in a priest costume at Freakfest, do ask him if he's the famous Father Wapatuli.

I've been asking people what costume I'm wearing. I've gotten really interesting responses. I'm only wearing my usual outfit, so what they're telling me is what they really see.

I've gotten, Indiana Jones, a guy leading a safari, and Neil Young so far. I guess they like my hat, I think that's mostly what they're seeing.

What costume am I wearing at work really? The one I wear 24/7 and it's a doozie.

My last passenger last night will probably get the prize for best costume this year. She said it was nothing specific, a silver mask, a wispy silver cape, and a shift of the same wispy silver fabric. Nope, she got 2nd.

The best costume of this years Freakfest to be seen by this cab driver was a buxom young woman in a fleece leopard costume. It was a great costume because it allowed her to wear long under ware too. Her companion was a girl I had in the cab on Friday night too. The companion girl told me someone had set her costume on fire, but they caught it quickly. Sure enough, when they got out, the fringes on the back of her costume were burned. And people wonder why they wind up in jail when they do stuff like that and get caught.

The all time best costume I've ever seen on State st. at Halloween? The dancing radio, which probably belonged to WORT. It was a round top radio, like they had in the '30's, made from cardboard or foam core, supported by shoulder straps. Who ever made it spent quite a bit of time on it, the artwork was very nice. It looked just like an old radio, the scale was right too. The person inside had on a black leotard with white gloves and white sneakers. She danced on the Library Mall for hours and will forever be a happy memory of Halloween in Madison.

The artistic inspiration for Jabba The Hut

If you come to State st. in the evening, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, you'll see cab after cab cruising, pretty much like they do in big cities. Here we call it trolling for drunks. Years ago cabs stayed off of State st. until bar time. Curley and I changed all that.

Curley was the artistic inspiration for Jabba The Hut. He was fat and claimed he wanted to eat until he exploded. He had an artificial hip and walked with a profound limp. He had a single functioning kidney that was origionally his sisters (she's a nice lady). He had reddish hair and a face that resembled a pepperoni pizza. He is mostly famous for all the little things he introduced into the jargon of dispatching. When he cleared the board, he'd say, "I win", these days when the board is cleared they often say Curley wins or they'll say it's a Curley board.

When I started driving, Curley was just another night driver. I don't recall when he started dispatching, it was before I ever became a night driver. At first he was a rookie dispatcher who started during the tail end of some of my day shifts, I didn't know him well, he was ok for a rookie. His shift was 3:00 pm - 11:00 pm, and that never varied. Before he really graduated from being a rookie, I started driving nights. In a way, we were rookies together, he a dispatcher, I a night driver. At first we got along pretty good.

The time was 3 or 4 years into my cab driving career, I was pretty generous back in those days. Back then it was normal for all the drivers to tip the dispatchers if we had good days. Say to yourself, 30 drivers times 5 bucks divided by 2 dispatchers. Not bad at all, considering it was undeclared and the company pays them pretty well in the first place. Curley cured me of that. Ask any dispatcher if I tip, they will say once in a blue moon, or more likely, never.

I don't recall what started it. Very likely it started out that Curley was fighting Piggies battle with me for him. Recall that Piggie and I had issues over yards runs cheating. Curley idolized Piggie. The model of how Piggie figgured the night shift at Badger Cab should work would be most accurately described as the way a cell block runs in prison. One prisioner is the boss, he has friends who get special treatment and are henchmen for him, and Piggie saw himself as the boss. I suppose he was very impressionable when he got tossed into Waupon for U&P (want the details, ask and I'll post them).

Curley told me in no uncertain terms that he would screw me over and I'd quit because I wouldn't make any money. Only, by this time I was a pretty experienced cab driver, I had 3 or 4 years of driving experience. If it's busy enough, you can't screw over the drivers, you need them, and screwing over a driver is ALSO screwing over a customer most of the time. If it's not busy, it becomes obvious to all the drivers you're screwing over a particular driver, and nobody likes to see that kind of thing as stardard operating procedure. But between Curley and I it was SOP because I didn't take that kind of crap off anybody, and he didn't take that kind of lack of respect for authority.

Thus was cruising State st., born. It would be absolutely dead, nobody doing anything, and all of a sudden, I'd get a couple of flags on State st., and poof I'd have a $50 hour. $50 hours are still big hours. Other drivers would give me shit, tell me I should be ticketed, and I'd ask them why they were waiting, get me ticketed if you can.

The last time I saw Curley or worked with him, I was doing 48 states in a semi truck most of the year, so I didn't drive cab a lot. I came in to drive a couple of shifts and Schnidley said Curley had passed away, died in his sleep, of natural causes. Poppy cock!!!! I was told it was a cocaine overdose by someone who isn't as smooth a lier as Schnidley. I'll hold the details of how the person who told me about it knew, lets just say, somethings go undisclosed.

Hog huntin

I had 4 guys from Campbellsport in the cab last night. Their pilgrimage to Madison for Halloween is very important to them, the year just wouldn't be complete with out it. Here for a really long weekend, Halloween in Madison is more important to them than deer season. They'd taken in a concert at the Barrymore and were heading back down town to get to the serious part of the evening, hog huntin.

I only got 2 of their names, the one in the front seat was named Pete and one in the back seat was named Mike. All 3 fellows in back were egging Pete on to best his record.

"Record?", I asked.

"Oh yeah! Petie's got the state record! Don't you Petie? The Wisconsin hog huntin crown!!"

I glanced at the fellow beside me in the passenger seat.

Pete grinned broadly and explained his record, "We were in Oshkosh. We went into this run down little country western place just out side of town and there she was. She was at least a 3 pointer. I was out for a record that night. She was about 4'10" and weighed at least 350 pounds. Her thighs were about this big (he held his hands apart describing a circle about 15" in diameter). She was wearing a really cheesy country outfit. I asked her to dance and we danced for a while. She was really hot to take me home with her, and she was record material, so I went for it. When I woke up the next morning she was still asleep. As I was dressing I pulled a drawer open in her dresser and pissed in it."

"Know what?", he chuckled, "About 2 weeks later she actually called me up and asked me out for a second date."

At this point all 4 of them were roaring, and I was just pulling off the square onto State st. One of the guys in the back seat said, "Oh man, who dropped his ass?!?"

Almost immediately all 4 of them were making gagging sounds, laughing their ass's off, and making all the crude comments you hear when someone deliberately farts in a cab with all the windows rolled up. I rolled all the windows down and resisted the temptation to strangle one or more of them, it was only about a minute until we'd reach Brat's and I'd be rid of them. The last 2 blocks down State the 2 in the window seats in the back were hanging out the windows shouting cat calls at all the women we passed. True to form, no tip. Real class guys, on a quest. Hog huntin.

The Fuzz

To the best of my knowledge we've had a couple of drivers become cops, and we had one who claimed he was a former cop. The guy who claimed to be a former cop, I'll call him WF, he never had anything like a nickname and without his written permission I wouldn't use his name here.

It's my understanding that Mario is a cop up north somewhere. Sheriff's deputy or something like that. Mario was one of my night drivers when I first started driving. Like all the night drivers back then he figured he owned the car until he was tired of driving. If it stayed busy late, he just wouldn't bring the cab in, and the five bucks for every fifteen minutes late, you are kidding right? Mario pay me for being late? Roy Boy would tell me it was the dispatchers job to kick Mario off the road, the dispatcher was usually Louie, and he would NOT kick Mario off the road. Dave, where ever you are, DO NOT come back. Mario did other cute stuff, now that I think of it, he was fond of doing doughnuts on fresh snow, for ten dollar bills, and he bragged about it. Doughnuts? Spinning the cab 360 degrees in the middle of the street.

Gwench is a sheriffs deputy locally. She was a good dispatcher, there was a piercing quality to her voice, and you could hear her perfectly at 60 mph with all the windows down. She once told me she either wanted to be a cop or a lawyer, or was it cop or a judge, now that I think of it I don't recall, but judges are lawyers. Her long time boyfriend, Jumbo, is a lawyer I'm told. We all liked her, she was good people, and to her credit she never came back and applied being a cop to anybody in the cab business. As Sandy Van Sycle once wryly said, "Everybody's doing something, all the time." And of course, legally, some of it is kind of sketchy.

Back to WF............. I'm not sure when he left, I only know he's not around now. This leads me to believe more confidently that he was never a former cop at all, he was current, and what ever he was supposed to be researching was found to be insufficient to justify him being here. He always had one of those blue tooth ear pieces going and he made a lot of phone calls while he was driving. When I found out he was a cop, I asked him why somebody with a generous pension would go out and try to get himself killed 4 or 5 nights a week. His reply lead me to believe he carried a gun. He said something about it being very unlikely someone would survive trying to rob him. How does that work? He went on to explain he was entitled to defend himself. Yeah right. If I punched the ticket of some poor under priviledged minority youth who was trying to rob me, I KNOW I'd be given the burden of proving he was trying to rob me. I'd need a bullet hole or a serious knife wound in me to keep from going to jail. Ah, he said, it was a question of credibility. Yeah, he'd pull out a badge, show it to the cops that came to the scene, end of story.