A Taxi Driver is the Life for Me
by Paul Geneson
It was a time of turmoil while I drove that cab. The Vietnam War was raging, Detroit and Newark broke out in major riots. And I remember waiting on University Avenue for a hamburger with a group of people, white and black, as Aretha Franklin belted out what sounded like something special: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Posted on November 15, 2007
A Taxi Driver is the Life for Me
A Taxi Driver is the Life for Me, or
I’m Tired of Starving on Telegraph Avenue!
It was a time of turmoil while I drove that cab. The Vietnam War was raging, Detroit and Newark broke out in major riots. And I remember waiting on University Avenue for a hamburger with a group of people, white and black, as Aretha Franklin belted out what sounded like something special: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
On my job, I was starting to adjust to an oddball schedule. I’d get off the bus just before 3 a.m., walk fifteen minutes to my apartment, then make something to eat. I was still “buzzing” so I’d read, sometimes till 5:30. Then—up before noon. Not much time left to myself before getting back on the bus and beginning my shift at 3 p.m.
***
I discovered a truth about the night I never knew before I drove a cab: There is a definite craziness in the air that only increases the farther into the night you get. I must have tapped into that craziness because I ran one crazy cab out there on the streets.
My biggest business in the evening hours was the business in the bars. It should have been a matter of taking the drunks from the bar to their residences. Cut and dried. Until I got the idea of turning off the meter in mid-ride, which led to some very strange results:
“Okay, you can wake up. We’re here.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” (He looks at the meter. Sees it’s been cut off.)
“How much do I owe?”
“$5.25.”
“What? I live three blocks away. It’s always $2.50.”
“Well, tonight it’s $5.25.”
“Oh, Jesus---“
And the guy would start fumbling around in the semi-darkness to come up with the fare.
Sometimes, when I’d be called to a bar, I’d look around to see if I could spot my client. The bartender would come over.
“He’s sitting at the end of the bar,” he’d indicate, motioning with his head.
Sure enough, the guy who looked most likely to fall off the stool onto his face was my guy. After awhile, I got used to it and I could spot my client using the formula: It’s always the most wasted guy in the joint.
One Sunday afternoon—Sunday was the only time I worked daytime hours—I was called to a bar near downtown. Sunday is such a family day and the cab crowd is mostly single, so there was a certain wistfulness about Sunday.
None more so than on the day I walked into the bar where “Wally” was supposed to be meeting me by the phone in the lobby. There was no one near the phone, of course, and as I made my way into the bar I was caught up in the loud and plaintive voice of Engelbert Humperdinck, who I’d never hear before, pleading, “Please release me, let me go—for I don’t love you anymore.” All around me on the dance floor were couples, middle-aged and older, in various stages of drunkenness, clinging to each other for dear life.
My client, typically, was the guy most likely to hit the floor without the support of his partner. I walked over to where he was barely holding on and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Okay, Wally, I’m here. You ready?”
“Jess a minute. Jess a minute.”
I backed off, discreetly. I could see he wanted to give his partner a few soft, slurred words in her ear before he decided to walk unsteadily the short distance to the cab. I could see in the teary-eyes of his partner that this last goodbye was breaking her up, too.
Why not get married and not have to suffer through these heartbreaking scenes? I wondered. Then I had a vision: These two lost souls in the morning, dragon breath plus, trying to help each other with breakfast as they stumbled over each other in the kitchen. “They’re better off apart,” I thought.
***
One lady I picked up, also on a Sunday, had a few good belts in her before she got into my cab. She seemed nearly incomprehensible. And, when I could understand her words, I couldn’t follow her logic.
She wanted me to take her to a cemetery in San Francisco. It was a cool, dreary fall day and she had some kind of fox fur around her neck. It started to rain after we arrived, and it wasn’t exactly a light rain. Here I was, running after this nearly incomprehensible middle-aged lady who, overcome by a wave of late Sunday afternoon nostalgia, had to find the grave of her “wonderful, wonderful” mother. (I could understand that part.)
And the fur was getting wetter.
It was starting to get dark, and since this graveyard was banked and rolling, I was barely able to keep my footing on the wet grass. I was almost out of patience, too. I kept the meter in the cab running, but I had no desire to be drenched to the skin and catch a cold.
“Lady, I really think we need to get back.”
“Oh, you are so sweet.” On these words, the woman came over to me and tucked a ten dollar bill into my shirt pocket.
“Now, I’m sure it’s just over this next hill.” And we’d be off until I would assail her again with my desire to return. Another ten dollar bill—then a wet walk around a few large gravestones looking for something I had my doubts even existed.
Tips, of course, were what greased the gears and made me run like a madman out in that crazy cab. One time I was hailed by a man carrying a small suitcase. When he closed the door, he said, loudly and out of breath, “I’ve got to catch the train to Sacramento in fifteen minutes.”
The station was nearly twenty minutes away, so I let him know what was what.
“I don’t know how we can do it. I mean, if I go all out and risk a ticket, maybe---”
“Okay. Just get me there!”
“All right. But it’s going to cost you.”
I put my foot on that accelator and took off, looking for every shortcut I could find. I made good and sure the tip fit my efforts.
On one call a man in a third floor apartment pointed to the four boxes and a couple of floor lamps gathered around him. He told me he was moving “a couple miles away.” I surveyed the items, thought what it would feel like lugging all those things down the steps and how I could make them fit in the cab. Then I gave an assessment.
“I can do the whole thing for the meter fare—plus $20.”
“What?” he squealed.
“You know you can call Bekins,” I said, walking toward the door.
“Wait,” he called, stopping me in my tracks. “I guess it’s okay.
He must have done the math and figured, “He’s here now, what the heck.”
Down at the airport, things could get a little crazy, that’s for sure. Sometimes, I got there and there were no cabs to wait behind. I’d wait for the first available customer. If it was a well-heeled businessman, I’d look at his two well-stuffed bags and tell him that a new policy required a $2 surcharge on each bag I lifted into the trunk. He’d look a little skeptical then, seeing no other cabs in the area, he’d go along with the program.
If I saw three or four people waiting together, I’d tell them they were in luck and I’d load their bags before I let them know the arrangements. Away we’d go. Then someone would get out.
“Okay, let’s see. $9.50.”
“But what about the others?” the man asked as I unloaded his bag.
“Oh, they’ll be paying, too.”
Before he could get back to the others, I’d have his money and be back in the cab. He would stand there watching me drive away. The next customer—sometimes he was only a few miles from the first client—I’d tell him, “Well, it’s $12.50.”
“But you collected $9.50 from the last guy.”
“I know. But everybody pays his own way. $12.50, please.”
Intimidated, he’d come across with the money and—poof. I was out of there.
In my zeal to go after business and the Almighty Tip, I sometimes stopped in Chinatown after I’d dropped a fare at the San Francisco Airport. It was easy to pick up tourists there, and I’d give them a fixed price since I didn’t dare run my meter in an area I wasn’t supposed to be working. You didn’t want to run into a San Francisco cabbie.
One time, as I was getting out of The City (as they call San Francisco over there), I noticed a policeman behind me. I toned down my speed and, getting on the Bay Bridge, I saw the two policemen smiling at me and turning off before the bridge. I figured, “Now I’m free.” So I accelerated and crossed the bridge in near-record time.
At the other end, there was a nice welcoming party: An Oakland police car was waiting for me with a speeding ticket in hand. There were so many things to learn out there in the cab.
***
Race was never an issue for me in the cab. One of the black drivers, a small guy who looked to be a veteran, approached me about where I worked. When I told him downtown and West Oakland, he shook his head.
“Man, you don’t make no money down there. Go up to Berkeley. You’ll make money over there, and good tips.”
What he didn’t know is I didn’t see my mission as being a driver for the rich folks of Piedmont, North Oakland and Berkeley. I was the equal opportunity driver. Mostly, though, I liked the action in those downtown bars, and the fast talk and excitement of some of the black clients who came out of places like Al’s House of Smiles or Esther’s Orbit Room. Quiet, well-mannered folks did not happen to be my style.
One black lady, who I took to several locations where we would sometimes have to get out, asked me, “Are you afraid out here?”
“No,” I told her. Though maybe I was a little unsure of places I’d never been before. I didn’t figure, though, that she was out to do me any harm.
Another lady who got into the cab asked me, right out of the gate, “Excuse me, have you ever been robbed?”
“No,” I answered. “Is this my first time?”
When she assured me it wasn’t, I told her that questions like that are like asking a pilot if he’d ever crashed.
The most incredible client I ever had was a white Southerner who, while he was clearly liquored up, knew how to hold his liquor well enough and hold a conversation as he sat beside me in the front seat. He had me drive him through an all-black area. When we stopped, he got out and brought back a black man and a black woman with him. This was 1967—and you didn’t see many blacks and whites together in those days, much less a person from the Deep South palling around with black people. He seemed like he shared a strong affection for liquor with his friends. And who knew what else.
***
About halfway through my stint as a cabdriver, I was able to get to Southern California for a job interview as an instructor at a junior college. I got the job and realized all of this cab life would one day cease. I also knew that my mind and attitude would have to undergo serious changes if I was going to be able to exist in a classroom with thirty young people.
Late August came, and it was time to get ready for my trip down to Southern California. I bought a very used station wagon that the guy promised would get me where I was going. It broke down in Monterey, not even halfway . As I didn’t have the money to get any further, I had to S.O.S. a friend in L.A.
So much for the idea the money I’d managed to pull out of my clients by hook or by crook was enough to serve me well.
When I got to my destination and was out on the job, I had to start looking for professional help to get my head screwed on straight after those three swashbuckling months in a taxi.
So, apart from an experience that made me seem like I was in a movie, how much ahead was I, I wondered, thinking back on my days when I terrorized the streets of Oakland as a my-way-or-the-highway kind of cab driver?
***
Paul Geneson was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. He studied English Lit at UC Berkeley where he got his BA and MA. He did postgraduate work at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has lived in California, Colorado, Texas, Missouri and he spent a year and a half in Spain. He has worked as a teacher, freelance writer, and salesman. His book, "47 Tales of a Lifetime" was published in June. It contains stories of a nostalgic and humorous bent about places he's lived and people he's known and learned about. The book is available for $12 by contacting him online at thegeneson@yahoo.com, or by calling 833-9611.
