Get Busy...

"Didja hear about Billy?," asked Rick.

"Billy?"

"You know... older guy, glasses, always wears a baseball cap."

Rick could be describing about half the drivers here, including myself.

"Yeah, well, last week Billy went to the doctor complaining about a back ache. Turns out he has terminal lung cancer. He has maybe two weeks to live."

"Geez... really?"

"For months he figured he was just stiff from driving long shifts. It got to the point he could barely stand up."

"Wow."

"All they can do is give him somethin' for the pain... He finished out the week, then went home to die."

"What? He decided to spend one of his days on earth drivin' a cab?"

"What else was he going to do? He's been driving a cab more than forty years. That's twelve hours a day, six days a week, every week of the year. I've been drivin' nearly thirty years and I don't remember him ever takin' a vacation. No hobbies. No real friends. Just drivin' a cab and his family. And them he only got to see maybe one day a week. He put his two kids through college, but that's a lot of missed recitals and Little League games. But whatcha you gonna do?"

"How old is he, Rick?"

" 'Bout 65, I guess."

"That's really depressing, Rick."

"I guess he figured his family could use the money."

Now I don't even know Billy but this shook me up. Not because of the tragedy of his death, but because of the tragedy of his life. I wonder if 40 years ago, when Billy first started driving, what dreams he had for himself. He'd be 25, strong, full of energy, with nothing but time and his imagination standing between him and the future. Perhaps he wanted to go to college, travel the world, start his own business. Perhaps he figured cab driving was a part-time gig, something to tide him over. Perhaps he looked at all the other middle-aged men driving cabs and told himself, "I'll never let myself turn into that." Who knows?

But then he met a girl, knocked her up, got married, had one kid, then another, and suddenly all those doors closed. He had responsibilities, bills to pay, obligations to keep. All of his dreams disappeared like his breath on a cold winter's morning. And maybe years later he looked in the mirror one morning. He saw the face staring back him with the graying temples and the thinning hair and the dark circles under his eyes and he asked himself, "Jesus, where did the last forty-fuckin'-years go?"

But heck, he may have told himself, he wasn't that old. He could still have dreams. Maybe once the kids are out of the house; maybe once the mortgage is paid off; maybe once the wife and I can finally save a little money and time for ourselves.

But first, he tells himself, I gotta go to the doctor and get my back checked out.

I ask Rick how he got into cab driving. He explained that he was welder, and that he worked in the boatyards in Quincy. After they shut down in the Eighties he couldn't find a welding job. There was a recession going on and a lot of welders out of work, so he started driving. Like the rest of us, he thought it would be a part-time thing. But, one thing led to another and, thirty years later, here he is.

Does he ever think about doing something else? "Nah, I don't give it much thought."

A couple of weeks later, a small note was posted on the office bulletin board announcing Billy's death with the name of the funeral home and the hours for the service. I don't know how many drivers went to the service. I don't know how many drivers who even knew Billy. A week after this, another note was posted, announcing that the city had awarded Billy the "Cab Driver of the Year" award--posthumously.

"Can you believe that?" Rick says. "Forty goddamned years and he has to die to get it. You think they could at least give to him while he was still alive."

I spend the rest of the night driving in a kind of daze. I keep thinking about the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, about a guy wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison who over the course of 25 years tunnels his way out. And I keep thinking about that line: "Get busy living, or get busy dying."

A Short Night

Ah Haaaaa Yeah!! It's a gusher.


The Red Line has broken down. There's been a power outage, and the fire department is helping evacuate trains. Not only that, it's rush hour. The stations are jammed with people just looking to get home, and there aren't enough cabs for them all. The cops in Cambridge don't even care. They just want to clear the stations and the sidewalks and turn a blind eye to cabs from out of town. Forget the hotels. Forget the stands. Just head to the nearest Red Line station.

From Park Street to Andrew...Andrew to Central...Central back to Park...Park to Alewife...Harvard to South Station. For three hours, the gravy train ran non-stop. I booked $150, nearly as much as I do during an entire shift.

The end result was I could knock off early, get home, get a good night sleep and manage to get up early enough to make use of the next day.

Now, if only I could find some pimply faced, teen-aged computer expert to hack into the T's system and do this on a regular basis.

Modern Romance

I was sitting on the stand, half asleep, when the rear door suddenly opened and someone threw themself onto the back seat. The noise made me nearly jump out of my skin.

"You're available, aren't you?" the woman asked. She was twenty-something.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," I answered, grumbling to myself that I should lock the doors in the future. I mean, what if she was some crazed robber or something? I could have been be whacked over the head or stuck up, who knows? I mean...

"You okay?" she asks.

"I'm fine," I answer, composing myself. "You just startled me. Where to?"

She gives me the address. I punch the meter and we're off.

"Workin' late?" I ask.

"No, I was just having a couple drinks with friends after work. It's been a loooong day."

"Really?"

"Like I've never had."

"Whadayamean?"

"Do you do Face Book?"

"No," I answer. "But I've heard of it."

"Anyway, I get an e-mail from a friend telling me to check out my boyfriend's Face Book page. So I do. And he's changed his status from 'attached' to 'single'. In other words, I've been dumped."

"Wha?... You mean he didn't actually tell you this?"

"No, nothing. No discussion. No phone call. No message. Not even an e-mail. Not only that, all my friends found out before I did. I had to learn about it from them."

"Have you tried tried to call him?"

"Not yet, I've just been in shock. I don't even know what I'd say to him."

"When did you see him last?"

"Two days ago. We spent the weekend together."

"And there was no fight, no hint that anything was up?"

"No, nothing. I thought we had a wonderful weekend."

"How do you know it's not, like, a mistake?"

"Because he put up a picture of his new girlfriend! Some twit he met last week. I recognized her from a party we went to. I asked him who he was he was talking to and he said some girl from Vermont. She had tatoos, like he does, and likes motorcycles and the same kind of music he does. He thought she was cool."

"Wow."

"Yeah, he dumps me because I don't like heavy metal music and have tatoos! Well, I'm sorry, but I know I'm going to be old some day and don't want to look like some crumpled piece of newspaper with these faded, gross tatoos."

"And how long have you been going out?"

"About three months. He had just gotten out of a really bad relationship, he said, so I was trying to be extra gentle with him, give all the space he needed, not to pressure him or nag him about spending time with me... AND FOR WHAT!? Couldn't he have just called?"

"Unbelievable. I've heard of jerks breaking up with girlfriends by leaving messages on their phone machines, but this is a whole different level of contemptible. You don't cancel a magazine subscription that way. It's despicable, almost psychotic."

"He's too chicken to do it in person?"

"It's probably lucky it happened sooner than later, because just think of if you had spent some serious time with this butthole. You deserve better. Lot's better."

"You think so?"

"Definitely. And you will. In the meantime, I'd start thinking of some medieval-style revenge on him."

"You know, he's not worth the time and effort. I think I'll just hang out with my friends."

"There ya go."

"I feel better just venting about it. Thanks."

She handed me a twenty to cover the $13 fare. I started to make change.

"No, keep it. Thanks."

"Thank you."

End of an Era

The true measure of a man's importance I discovered this past week is not what he leaves in life, but the traffic snarl-ups he causes in death. Senator Ted Kennedy and mobster Gennaro "Jerry" Anguilo--two titans of Boston's power elite--were buried this past week, and I got stuck in the resulting traffic jams for both. First for Kennedy's procession, which tied up traffic for several hours downtown as it toured various sites in the city last Saturday. According to the radio, the crowds in places were eight deep to get a glimps of the flag-draped coffin and the surviving members of the ever-dwindling Kennedy clan. The second for Anguilo's wake in the North End on Wednesday, which practically shut down Commercial Street as a potpourri of old timers, thick-necked brutes in fancy Italian suits, bikers in Hell's Angels colors, and mothers with small children lined up outside Langone's Funeral Home to pay their last respects to one of the last old-school Italian mafiosa in the city.


I assume that Kennedy being Kennedy and Anguilo, having spent most of the past 20 years in jail, never personally met most of the throngs gathered in their honor. No doubt, some wanted to be there because they felt the deceased had somehow touched their lives. Others because they simply wanted be a part of the spectacle. But most, I suppose, were there to acknowledge the end of an era.


With Kennedy's and Angiulo's go the last vestiges of a time when Boston was run by powerful families and clans. Back then, who you knew and the neighborhood you lived in meant more than how much you earned or where you worked. Boston has always been a city of neighborhoods, more so then than today, but back then it meant something totally different if you said you lived in Southie or Charlestown or the South End or Brighton. It's still a city of neighborhoods, but it's much harder to tell them apart. Back then, the people you saw on TV representing Boston were guys who were part of those neighborhoods. Guys like Tip O'Neill, Mel King, Kevin White, Ray Flynn, Dap O'Neill. Mayor Menino is among them, but he is in dwindling company.

It was different, not necessarily better, but different. In a lot of ways, Boston is a better place today. It's cleaner, it's safer. There's more to do. It's easier to get around. But something's missing.

I had the same feeling when legendary rock radio station WBCN went off the air a couple months ago. The station had changed program formats so many times that I quit listening to it ages ago, but I remember when it was part of regular day: Charles Laquidara and Duane Glasscock, the Big Mattress, the Cosmic Muffin. Now it's gone, and in its place we have what? Twenty-four-hour sports talk?

What's missing I guess is character. Like every other place, Boston is becoming more like, well, every other place.

Summer Scenes

After two months of monsoons and cool temperatures, summer finally arrived in Boston this August. June and July were so wet and awful I practically had mushrooms growing between my toes. I had a fare from Seattle telling me how she looked forward to going home, being that it was the sunniest, warmest summer in memory. Usually, she said, summer is cool and wet, kinda like, like... Boston. I felt like stopping the car and demanding that she give us our summer back under threat of making her walk the rest of the way to the airport.

But now summer is here. About 90 degrees, 90 percent humidity. Hot and steamy. Things are, relatively speaking, back to normal. You can not only feel it, you can see it: Kids selling lemonade from makeshift stands in front of their houses, backyard barbecues, late-night games of softball.

Only that's not what I see. Here are a couple of the sights, sounds and smells of typical summer day from where I sit:

4:30 p.m.

At one of the busier intersections along Massachusetts Avenue, there's a large, black woman pushing a baby carriage with her two young children. She's in the crosswalk, stopped dead, glaring at a taxicab trying to turn onto the street. They are in a stand-off. Traffic is backing up in all directions. I have no idea what she's saying, but while she's yelling she's boring a hole in the driver with her eyes. She's waving, screaming now at the top of her lungs. Her two children stand by her side bewildered, frightened. Should they stand my their mother and risk getting run over? Or should they continue across the street and wait? They decide to stay put by their mom, who continues to yell above a rising chorus of car horns looking to move.

Now she's shaking, completely enraged. She's pounding on the car hood, then stands straight up and flings an empty plastic water battle at the car, which ricochets off the windshield and hits another woman crossing the street. The woman jumps at first, then looks perplexedly at the black woman, who glares back, daring her to say something, anything.

The taxi driver gets out of his car, pointing to the woman, then to the windshield and back to the woman. But the mother isn't moving. She steps forward, putting her finger right in his face. The driver takes this for about a minute, then turns around, throws up his hands and gets back in the car.

The woman steps back behind the carriage, gathers her children, and slowly, ever so slowly, begins to move on, throwing one last hard look back at the cab.

6:30 p.m.

At the entrance to one of the city's few budget hotels. There's a swarthy, heavy-set man with a thick moustache wearing a cheap sportcoat and waiting with a suitcase held together by duct tape. I pop the trunk and put the bag in the back.

"Where to?" I ask, guessing he's headed to the bus or train station. "Logan airport" he answers in a heavy, slavic accent. "Beetish Airways.

I'm pleasantly surprised. "But first, we wait for my daughter." It's hot, and the car is air-conditioned, so I decide to wait in the cab. "Not a problem," I say, inviting him to wait inside also, which he does.

I turn down the radio and grab my copy of the Herald when I notice the car is filling with a horrible stench. What is that smell? It's nearly overpowering. My nostrils are stinging and my stomach begins to churn. Where is it coming from? Then I realize it: It's him. Did he just get off a fishing trawler? Or is that body odor?

Oh my god, it's B.O.

I step out of the car and start fiddling with the windshield wipers trying to kill time until his daughter shows up. She's a sullen, sallow, thirtyish woman with stringy blond hair and wearing an ankle-length dress made of what looks to be burlap. She silently puts her suitcase in the trunk and gets into the back of the car with her father. I close the trunk, get into the driver's seat and throw the car into gear.

I fairly peal out of the entryway while simultaneously rolling down the window, sucking a few gulps of air before putting my seatbelt on. Father and daughter are in the back arguing in whatever language it is that they are from . Usually, it's about a ten-minute drive to the airport from where I started, but I'm looking to shave that by about half--running yellow lights, weaving in and out of traffic, consistently breaking the speed limit. If I don't, I think I'll pass out or throw up, maybe both.

In the tunnel, I pull up besides a hulking, noisy bus. The thick, black exhaust fumes are a welcome relief from the rolling cesspool I'm driving. How does this guy not notice how he smells? More perplexing, how does she not notice?

I get to the airport. The fare is $21.50. The guy hands me thirty bucks and I count out eight singles. He raises an eyebrow over the missing fifty cents, and I explain that I don't have coin.

"Okee-dokee," he says, handing me a buck for a tip. I feel like I should tell him maybe he might want to "freshen up" before getting on the plane, but hold my tongue. Let the airline suffer for a change. The two turn and plod into the terminal building.

2:30 a.m.

I'm waiting at another intersection on Mass. Ave. On the opposite end of the intersection there's an all-night convenience store. A couple of bums outside the front door are duking it out, rolling on the sidewalk, moving in slow-motion, flailing ridiculously at each other. My guess is that an argument over who was there first has escalated into fisticuffs. Soon, the police will show up and neither of them will get the spot. In the meantime, a couple of guys looking to go inside have stopped short. They look down at the bums. They appear to be assessing the best route to bypass this comic spectacle. After a few moments, they move down the sidewalk to to one side of the door and gingerly make their way around the entangled bums. Wrestlemania continues.

The guy behind me honks. The light is green.

It's time to go home.

Fifteen Percent of Nothing

At taxi school, my instructor, a tall, heavy-set and impeccably dressed man named Al threw out a hypothetical situation to the class: Suppose you pick up someone at an apartment complex. It's an elderly woman who uses an walker. You assist her getting into the car, then fold up the walker and put it into the trunk. You then drive her to a grocery store. The fare is $7.50, which she pays for partly in cash and partly with a discount voucher the city distributes to senior citizens. How much should you expect for a tip?

"Three dollars!" shouted a man from the back of the room, as if anything less would be an insult.

Al smiled, then nodded to a middle-aged man with his hand raised.

"Fifty cents?" the man asked meekly, making some in the class laugh out loud.

Al then formed a circle with a his index finger and thumb, holding it up for the class to see.

"Zero," he exclaimed. Al warned us that we should never pressure or harangue passengers for tips. It's unseemly, he said, and could be the basis for a complaint. Besides, we should think of ourselves as ambassadors for the city, sometimes the first face a new visitor sees when the arrive or the last one before they leave.

Okay, point made. But the fact is cab drivers depend on tips. In my case, it accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of my pay. I don't get health benefits, no retirement, no unemployment insurance or disability. The car has no collision insurance, so if I hit a telephone pole, the repairs come out of my pocket. As it is, I earn, on a good night, maybe $17 or $18 per hour. Full-time cabbies drive 12 hours per day, six or seven days a week. By the end of the week, they're zombies, sleeping and eating in their cars, taking spit showers in public restrooms. They might have time to get their kids off to school or tuck them in at night--maybe--but they don't have much of a life outside of work, and they sure don't have much to show for it.

But since the economy tanked, zero is increasingly what I am expecting. Business is down, way down. Not only are fewer people taking cabs, but those who do are tipping less. Yes, cabs aren't cheap. For little old ladies living on fixed incomes a dollar-fifty tip on a $10 fare might make a dent in a budget, particularly if you depend on cabs every day to get to the grocery store, doctor appointments, community center, etc. But frequently, I find the best tippers are the little old ladies, especially those living in subsidized housing. They seem to understand our predicament.

People who used to tip well, businessmen, students, tourists and the like today seem to be keeping a tighter grip on their wallets. Where 15- to 20-percent used to be the norm, nowadays it seems to be 10- to 15-percent. Everybody seems to be acting like they're just one step away from the street.

Another problem for cabbies is Boston is increasingly an international city. A lot of people I pick up come from cultures that simply don't get the concept of tipping. I took a carful of Swedes to Andover not long ago, a flat rate, something like $55, and after I handed them back the change they all just got out and walked away. I was about to roll down the window and yell out my harshest Swedish curse ("Saab You!") when one of the group ran back and gave me, what's this, a whole five dollars. While I don't like to cast aspersions on one's nationality or culture, it's difficult when you repeatedly have a car full of students from the Middle East going to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where it's nothing for them to drop three thousand bucks in a night entertaining friends, to then have them scrounging around the bottom of their pocketbooks for a couple of lowly dollar bills for the cabbie.

But it's not just foreigners, everybody it seems has gotten cheaper. I used to hand the change back to customer and wait for them to hand back the tip. But it seems once the money's in their hands it's harder for them to part with it, so instead I now ask, "How much would you like back?" just to make it clear that tipping is the custom. If they say they want it all back, I'll give it all back--with a smile.

But it's tough.

I recently had one guy who had a $6.25 fare, handed me a $100 bill and then got ticked off that I didn't have the coin on hand so he could leave me a fifty-cent tip. Instead, I got bupkus.

Thanks, Al.

My Celebrity Moment

"Hey, chief."

He wore a pork pie hat, a vest and a goatee. He was pulling a large suitcase, so I instantly sized him up as someone likely headed to the airport, a plum fare. But my sense of fairness and cabbie protocol kicked in.

You should go to the head of the stand, I told him. Those guys, I explained, have been waiting the longest.

"Nope. You're my man," he insisted, lugging the suitcase into the trunk. "I'm a man of the streets and I've learned how to judge people. I can tell you're just the guy to help me out."
I did my duty. Besides, who was I to argue? A fare can pick out any cab they want. He climbed in.

Sure, where ya headed?

"South Station. You know, to those Chinese buses. But first, I got to make a little stop. But hey, I'm good for it." He pulls out a wad of cash, flashing me a couple hundred dollar bills.

That's okay, I said. I didn't peg you for a cheat.

"Good," he said. "You know, I'm famous, world-famous, really. A poet."

Really, I answered, I didn't know there was such a thing, a world-famous poet.

"Yeah, I'm the next Charles Bukowski. That's what they call me. The next Bukowski, or a Kerouac."

Rain started to pelt the windshield. Big, fat drops that quickly came down faster than the wipers could clear them away. Maybe this was my "celebrity moment," that moment every cabbie dreams of in which they get to have their own private, really cool conversation with someone famous.

Where are we going? I asked.

"Downtown. I gotta score some crack," Mr. World-Famous poet said.

Jeezuz. Why me?

Look, I'm not going to let you score crack while sitting in the back of my cab, I said like I'm talking to a five-year-old.

"Hey, man, it's cool. I just need you to wait while I score. Besides, I'll give you a really good tip. I tell you, I'm good for it."

I spent about a millisecond debating this (crack, good tips, what's the difference?). Okay, I said, I'll wait, but I don't want to know about it, and you leave the suitcases behind.

"Good enough," he answered.

Again, where we going? I asked.

"You know, The Combat Zone."

Oh boy.

They tore the Combat Zone about twenty years ago, I explained to him. It's all hotels and fancy restaurants now. Again, where do you want to go?

"You know... downtown... where all the black people and hookers are," as if the two were synonymous. This guy was seriously beginning to annoy me.

"Hey!" he shouted in a sudden burst of paranoia. "Are you a cop?"

This guy was turning into real trouble. No, I'm not a cop, I told him. But I'm not just going to hang out waiting to see if you get yourself killed outside some housing project. I'll take you downtown, to Park Street, you can try your luck there.

"Cool. Cool. Hey, you mind if I light up a joint?"

On second thought, maybe I will just drop him off outside some housing project.

Generally, I told him, I don't care what you do. But given that smoking is illegal in cabs, and given that I'm ashmatic, I'm going to say no.

"Okay."

The rain started coming down harder than ever. I could barely see more than 30 feet in front of me. I wondered, exactly how dumb do you have to be in order to be a world-famous poet. So, I asked, Since you brought it up, who are you?

"No way, man," he said. "You never know when information will leak out and get printed all over the Internet. Let's just say that when I first became known they called me the 'Rust Poet.' "

Really, I asked, why the 'Rust Poet'?

"I dunno. They just did."

I had just turned a corner off Charles Street to Beacon Street when the entire car filled with flashing blue lights.

"FUCK MAN!" he screamed. "I knew it! You are a cop!"

I'm NOT a cop, I yelled. Just relax. We'll see what he wants.

As Mr. World-Famous Poet nervously shuffled things around, I rolled down the window. Rain began spitting inside the car.

"You in a hurry?" the cop said dryly.

No officer, what's the problem?

"You gotta yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk before turning, ya know."

But officer, there was no one in the crosswalk.

"License, please."

The cop walked away. Mr. World-Famous Poet, now slunken so far into the seat he's practically disappeared, raised his head. "Shit, man."

I clear the meter and pop the trunk. Look, this could take a while. Why don't you hop out here. You'll have no trouble finding another cab.

"Good idea," he handed over thirty bucks, a $10 tip. I watched as he crossed the street, scanning hungrily for another target. I was glad to see him go.

The cop returned after about five minutes, handing over a white piece of paper. "It's just a warning this time, but watch it. The streets are crawling with people this time of day."

Thank you, officer.

For once, I meant it.