Taxi driver

It was the summer of 1971, and I needed a job. I had just graduated from college but had made no effort to find one until the last party ended. There was a nasty recession, and I looked like a roadie for an unsuccessful rock band. My prospects were limited.

I had a line on a government job, but that was going to take some time, and meanwhile, I had to have beer money. I had the proletariat spirit, but a series of jobs over the previous summers -- digging ditches, spreading hot asphalt, painting houses and shucking steel -- had me longing for something different. I wanted one where I could talk to someone other than the mope standing next to me, breaking rocks in the hot sun.

A couple of high school pals had driven cabs the summer before and that sounded right up my alley. First of all, the job was performed sitting down. That was a major plus right there. I imagined myself driving businessmen to the airport in Youngstown, or maybe even Cleveland. I’d probably be picking up divorcees at cocktail lounges and taking them home to their little apartment someplace, where they’d invite me in to…oh well, just a young man’s fantasy.

The reality was somewhat different. First of all, the full-time, older drivers got all the airport runs, and they also worked the night shift when business was brisk (and the divorcees were at play). That left me to sit and bake in an un- air-conditioned Checker under the summer sun.

This was in Warren, Ohio, a city of 65,000 people; 30,000 of whom worked for General Motors. The only people who didn’t have cars were communists and the truly poor. Most of my trips were to take older women to the grocery store or the beauty parlor. The fares were small and the tips meager. Carrying six bags of groceries up to the top of the duplex was an expected part of the service, which might win you an extra quarter.

The cab stand was on Park Avenue, across from Courthouse Square and in front of Vogue Records, but I can’t remember anyone ever walking up to the cab and asking for a lift. All our rides came from the radio dispatcher, a gruff, middle-aged woman named Joyce who weighed about 250 and smoked two packs of Chesterfields a day. She was the one who decided what driver got which rides and respect had to be paid.

A measure of how much Joyce cared for me can be taken from an account of my most memorable day behind the wheel at Yellow Cab. It came late one very hot August afternoon when she radioed to send me to Coleman’s, a working man’s bar down in the flats next to the Republic Steel open hearth. Coleman’s was a legendary joint, but I’d only been inside a couple of times. I’d turned 21 the year before, and prior to that could only legally drink 3.2 beer. Colman’s wasn’t the kind of place that served piss-beer, or the kind place to get caught underage either. Truth-be-told, I was more than a little intimidated by the place.

I walked in the front door and looked down the long bar for my fare. The place was crowded with mill hunks just off day turn. About 40 faces, mostly black, turned to look at me. The bartender was black, about 35, and processed NFL proportions; his neck was the size of one of my thighs, and his biceps looked like someone had hacked a bowling ball in two and glued one half to each arm. There was no hint of humor on his face, or in his voice, as he looked me in the eye and asked, “You the cab driver?”

“Yeah.”

“Down here,” he replied as he pointed with his massive head towards the far end of the bar.

A few drinkers glanced up from their shots and beers as I made my way deeper into their world. About half way down the long bar I saw him: a scrawny, pathetic-looking little man passed out face down on the bar, motionless, silent and drained of color.

“I’m not taking this guy anyplace,” I said with much more confidence than I felt.

“The hell you say?” the bartender responded. “The only way you leaving here is with this white muthafucka in the back a your cab.”

There were no further negotiations.

The bartender and a customer lifted the little man under his arms and carried him out to my cab. His feet never touched the ground. They opened the back door and tossed him in. The bartender turned to me and said, as he slammed the door closed, “Have a nice day friend. Be careful. He’s a mean one.”

I looked down at the little man passed out on the floor of the Checker, which was the size of a double bed mattress but not nearly as soft. I tried to get him to tell me where he lived but all I got were some mumbled incoherencies.

I rode around the block past the hulking mill, trying to decide what to do. I called Joyce to explain the situation. The ever-sensitive Joyce instructed me to, “Throw him out, and if he won’t get out take him to the nearest police station.”

Neither option was compatible with my recently acquired liberal education. I rode around the block again, talking over my shoulder to him, asking him where he lived. After a few minutes he mumbled, “Niles,” which is a mean little mill town about five miles downriver. I updated Joyce.

“Outta town is a flat rate – ten bucks to Niles. Collect it in advance.”

I already knew that, and I knew just as well that I wasn’t going to get ten bucks in advance from this guy. The Coleman bartender wouldn’t have thrown him out if he still had money to pay for drinks. But he was mumbling that his wife would pay me when we got to Niles so I decided to take a chance.

“Hey buddy -- where in Niles?” I asked repeatedly over the next ten minutes as I headed south on Main. I kept making unnecessary turns to keep him rolling on the back floor, which was bringing him closer to being sober enough to answer me. He couldn’t tell his address, but he managed to pull himself up to the seat and wave me left and right until we arrived at a run-down duplex near the glass works. At which point he curled up on the back seat and went back to sleep.

I went up to the house and rang the bell at the downstairs apartment. A middle age woman with a thick eastern European accent took a quick look in the cab and said, “Dats Mrs. Connelly’s man.” As she pointed to her upstairs neighbor’s door.

I got Mrs. Connelly to come down, but reluctantly. “He ain’t my husband no more,” said told me. “Not for five years.” She was probably 50 but looked older. Very thin. All bone and sinew. A tough woman with sad eyes. She looked like the subject in a Walker Evans photo. Her dialect gave away her mountain origins, and the sad carcass in the back of my cab hinted at the kind of life she’d lived.

“Thomas please get out of the cab,” She pleaded. “How much does he owe you?”

“Ten bucks ma’am.” I backed away and let her talk to him in privacy for ten minutes, imagining how many similar conversations she must have had with him over the years. I was struck by the tenderness in her voice, but I suspect she never had much success with talk. I didn’t know him well, but Thomas was clearly not the kind of man who responded well to kindness.

Ten minutes stretched to twenty. Mrs. Connelly gave up. “I don’t know what to tell you to do. He’s a very stubborn man and he says he won’t get out.” She was crying.

Joyce knew exactly what to do. “You didn’t get any money upfront? You big sucker. That is theft of service. Take his ass to the nearest police station now, and then get back here. You’re already late to turn the cab over to the next shift.”

So, off to the Niles Central Police Station I went. The cops had a good laugh over my story. Two of them walked out to the parking lot with me to fetch Mr. Connelly.

“Come on Murphy,” the first cop shouted as he opened the cab door and stepped half way in to grab Connelly by the collar. Before he could get a grip, Connelly gave the cop a sharp kick in the face with the bottom of his foot while bracing his back against the nexus of the floor, seat and door.

The cop flew back out of the cab holding his bloody, broken nose. This was the day I learned that it doesn’t pay to hit cops. They run in packs and quickly got reinforcements. Connelly fought like a demon, screaming unintelligible epitaphs, holding on to anything he could grab in the cab. It took four cops several minutes, but they eventually extracted him. “Oh God, he shit himself,” I heard one say as they dragged him away, giving him repeated shots to the ribs along the way.

The always compassionate Joyce greeted my return: “What the hell took you so long?”

“I had to stop to clean the back of the cab.” I told my tale as Joyce looked at me like a sap who had just rescued a sack of feral kittens from the river. I didn’t just fail to make any money for the last couple hours of my shift; this adventure had actually cost me money. Yellow Cab and the driver split the fares 50-50, and I paid for the gas from my half. I’d called in the trip to Niles, so I owed the company their five bucks even if I hadn’t collected the fare in advance, as Joyce had warned me to do. I dreaded telling her more than losing the money.

I handed her my ride log and the money bag and stood sweating in the airless office while Joyce checked the math and counted the cash. She handed me back a five dollar bill.

“Next time don’t be a dumb shit.”

That was the lesson I learned. I tried not to be a dumb shit from then on.