 Wednesday afternoon -Alex Farr It's a funny thing, driving a cab. You do it, but you don't think about it. You're better off if you don't think about it too much. But people keep asking... "I bet you've got a lot of stories...". Well, not at first I didn't. I drive in Oakland, CA. The dayshift is largely old ladies... going to the beauty shops, and the doctor's offices... but there're plenty of lunatics that slip through... Yeah, I guess I've collected some stories over the years. But, is it anything that the public wants to hear? It's not usually Hollywood style happy endings... It's usually gritty bits of weirdness... and if people really enjoyed that sort of stuff, then we'd all be down in the trenches, rolling along the avenues in cabs, risking our lives in search of amusing anecdotes... despite the fact that any city police force's Intro. Course for a new cab driver points out that it is the most dangerous job in the country. Period. More dangerous than being a cop, or a fireman, or even a fucking 7-11 night manager. It is the most dangerous job in the country. That's not to say it doesn't have its share of amusements.
Of course, not everyone seems to share a cab driver's sense of amusement. I remember one afternoon a couple of years back... it was one of those days that one, or several, of the freeways running through Oakland clogged up... and traffic on the streets was vicious. After a while, you don't even have to be on the freeway to know if it's jammed up. You just have to be within a couple of blocks of an on-ramp, or even just one of the many routes that run between them. And Oakland isn't what I'd call a fast-moving-traffic kind of city to begin with, so once the commuters start jamming up the surface streets, well a professional like me just can't afford to have any conscience when it comes to getting through it. So, I was winding my way through traffic, and I happened to hear that there was a fare at a supermarket on Lakeshore. They aren't big fares, but what the hell?... I was nearby. I rolled into the parking lot, ignoring the dirty looks of the drivers waiting for parking spaces as I dodged around them. I made sure I had at least a few inches of clearance... and if that made them nervous then they shouldn't've been blocking up the lanes of traffic in the first place. I got through, and spotted the fare, and... wondered why I bothered with the job at all. I recognized her quickly enough. There really aren't that many people that find themselves taking cabs home from the market these days, and any of the few drivers who's willing to take the time with the supermarket orders gets to know most of them pretty quickly. This particular one was a dim-witted handicapped woman who liked to have her driver take her groceries up to her second floor apartment door, despite the fact that she not only didn't tip, but didn't even get out of the car quickly. And, to make matters worse, she paid with City vouchers for the old and handicapped... which my company redeemed at 90% of face value. Great, extra service demanded and I had to cut a 10% break on the deal too... But, as usual, it was a case of 'what the hell?', I would at least get paid 90% value... and I knew she would be taking me back in the direction of the busy MacArthur BART cabstand. So I just pasted my over-used plastic smile on, and loaded her crap into the car as quickly as possible. "Do you need me to help with any of the bags?..." she asked, in that slow, dim-witted tone. "No, I got it. Just go ahead and climb into the car..." I assured her, smiling once she got her rickety ass moving in that direction. She was one of those people that takes 2-3 minutes just to figure out how the door opening mechanism works, let alone for the process of actually climbing in and sitting down. I got the groceries in, climbed in myself, and got back to work fighting the traffic. Unfortunately, the way the Grand Lake end of town has been sectioned up by the freeway meant that I would have to use a freeway on-ramp just to get to her street. I wouldn't actually have to get on the freeway, I just had to get on the on-ramp, and hop back off on the same off-ramp. It wasn't gonna be pretty, but it could've been worse. So I was driving, lane jockeying for all I was worth... my first priority being to get the run over with as fast as divinely possible... and all the while she was jabbering at me. Some of that crap about how hard it is to find a cab, and how the drivers are always so rude, and they drive like maniacs, and on and on and on... "Yeah, I know what you mean..." I muttered back at her. At the time I was driving an old cab that I'd inherited as a regular cab from an old guy who usually spent half his shifts at the Oaks Club playing poker. When he did drive, he didn't bother with the ghettos... and so the car didn't have the usual plastic shield. Unfortunately that just meant I had to hear all the more of whatever crap this lady wanted to say at me. I managed to get past the freeway and back onto the surface streets, but the traffic on the off-side of the ramp was, not surprisingly, worse still. I was rolling in a right lane, and suddenly realized the right turning traffic ahead was going to jam up at the next block... but I saw an opening to get over a lane in the rear view. It wasn't a big opening, but assuming the driver of the car at the back of the opening wasn't too involved in a cell phone conversation, or picking his/her nose, or whatever... it'd come off alright. I timed it perfectly. The opening came, and I made my cut just as my fare, who'd been saying some shit or other about maniac drivers, got to the part about how she was hit by a drunk driver 10 years before, and she'd been nearly killed, and been on disability ever since. I probably wouldn't have a clue what she'd been saying at the time, if the cab wouldn't've died on me just as I made my cut. Now, I can not stress enough just how much traffic there was on the street at the time... and they were all coming fresh off the freeway, and in no mood to slow down. The real problem though, wasn't so much the fact that as the engine cut, I suddenly had no power to accelerate... the problem was that the power steering cut out just as I was cutting left into the second of three lanes on West MacArthur Blvd. Luckily, it'd happened to me before. Not in nearly so tight of a place... but it wasn't a total shock. Apparently those early 90's Ford Crown Victorias, especially when they start pushing 300,000 miles, seem to have a bit of a glitch in the steering system. Now, I can't begin to even guess at the theory of why... but with one of those old things, if you pull the wheel sharply, especially to the left, and accelerate at the same time, they will stall. Straight acceleration isn't a problem, or at least not much of a problem... and turning left isn't a problem... but doing both at once is like trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. It'd happened to me before though, once or twice. That was just enough for some desperate adrenalin amped piece of my back brain to realize what was going wrong... despite the horns blaring at me from every side. Gently, but as quickly as I could, I took my foot off the gas, and threw all of my unimpressive mass into yanking the wheel back to straight. It may not sound like much, but a tight lane in traffic isn't where you wanna be when the power steering goes out... and 153 pounds doesn't give you a whole lot to lever with. Somehow, though, I pulled it off just right. 20 yards further on, the car coughed and wheezed itself back to life... I didn't even flip off the driver who honked bloody murder at me as he sped by in his SUV... once I'd managed to get the front end of the car back out of his lane. Instead, I just turned back to my fare and said "Now, what was that you were saying?..." in my most pleasant tone of voice. I still look back on that maneuver and
wonder though. I know it would've gone smoothly if I hadn't been
driving such a hunk of shit car... but I can't help but wonder- is
it right that my fare didn't tip me, despite the fact I saved her life??
You gotta be shitting me Alex... |