Boston-The Hack

My 15 Minutes of Fame

2011-02-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

A reporter from a local radio station called. His name was Adam. He was doing an expose on the Boston cab industry and wanted some background information. Would I care to help?

"How come I can never find a cab when I get out of a club at 2:30 in the morning?"

I don't know. Probably because the buses and subways are closed and everybody is looking for a cab at that time.

"Uh huh. Do you ever refuse to take credit cards? Or do you lie and tell someone the machine is broken?"

No. I don't lie. The machines are finicky. Some drivers complain about the six percent fee taken out for use of the machines, but one reason the city hiked the fares three years ago was to offset the income loss to drivers by use of the machines.

"I see... Do you ever refuse to pick up people or go to certain neighborhoods?"

No. Obnoxious people are part of the job, but I've never felt in personal danger. I just try to be cautious and aware.

"Mmmm... Well, how would you like to be on the radio?" Adam then asked. The telephone interview was apparently just a test to make sure I was radioworthy. Adam asked to ride with me to get a sense of what the job is like.

Sure. Why not? This could be my proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

The following week I picked Adam up at his office in the cab. He was a young, earnest-looking guy. He cradled a tape recorder and two bulky foam microphones as he fumbled into the passenger seat. After saying hello he stuck one of the things in my face just as I was to pulling into traffic.

"I just need to get a sound check."

He asked me how much money I made that night. It was a question I trained myself to never answer truthfully, either not to entice a potential robber or just because it's really no one else's business. But I told him, honestly, that I only had a couple of small fares. Because it takes me $100 just to to pay off the night's lease on the cab. Technically, I started in the hole. I had earned nothing.

"Maybe I'll change your luck."

Probably not. The weather forecast was calling for another blizzard to sweep through the area. Airlines cancelled flights into Logan. The city declared a snow emergency. Events were being cancelled or postponed. Most people simply hunkered down for the night. But I had been wrong before, and in fact I had given up trying to predict how any particular night would go. Other than big events like New Year's Eve, Halloween and college graduation weekends, it always a crapshoot at guessing when you're going to have a big night.

Adam then asked if I have a regular route I follow, or an area I play.

No, not really. My basic philosophy has been to keep moving. I turned down Boyston Street near Copley, a good area to catch street hails around rush hour. I picked up a couple of more short fares, one going to the South End, the other downtown.

The rides were quiet. Both the passengers were content to read their emails or text on their smartphones. But Adam looked a off, as if he was expecting me to fill the silence with some crazy cabbie rant. Later, he asked, "Don't you like to talk to people?"

Sure I do. But I'm not one of those cabbies who goes on and on just to hear the sound of their own voice. That's not me. If passengers want to talk, I'll talk. If not, I shut up. I'm just trying to earn a decent tip.

Adam then asked about tipping.

Most passengers tip, but the amount often has little relation to their ability to pay. Some of the most generous tips are from people who seem to have little. By the same token, there are a lot of very wealthy skinflints in Boston. Another factor is that Boston is an international city. There are a lot of visitors from cultures where there is no tradition on tipping. In these cases, It's not my job to educate or argue with them.

All this chatting distracted me. I found myself driving aimlessly. Other cabs had cut in front of me to pick up fares I should have stopped for. I was getting frustrated.

"What about the airport?" Adam asked. "You must get a lot of good fares from there."

Actually, I hardly ever go to the airport, other than to drop off fares from the city. The taxi pool at Logan is a black hole, a place where hundreds of cabs cram themselves into a parking lot and become trapped for hours on end. By the time you get out of there you're likely only to get some passenger going to a downtown hotels. It's not worth it.

"Really?"

To prove it, I dialed up the Massport taxi pool line on my cellphone (617-561-1690). The line is a recorded message that gives the number of cabs and approximate wait time in the pool. Typically, there are around 250 cabs in the pool and wait times are anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours. This time, for the first time ever, the recording said, "There are currently zero cabs in the pool... Come on down!"

I guess we're going to the airport.

"Great! We're going to the airport," Adam said, genuinely excited.

The reason there might be zero cabs in the pool is that, with the approaching snow, there are zero airplanes coming or going from Logan.

"You're a glass half-empty kind of guy, aren't you?" Adam said.

Guess so.

By the time we got to the taxi pool lot located on the airport perimeter, there were more than a hundred cabs filling the lanes in the lot. But things were moving, so maybe it would work out.

"Wow," Adam said, looking over the sea of taxis. "What if you have to go to the bathroom?"

I pointed to a trailer in the corner of the lot, where's there's a restroom, payphone, and a couple of vending machines.

He turned off the tape recorder to save on battery life. We sat in the dark. "Boy this is really dull," he said. "I can see why you avoid it." We chat a bit. He asked about my background. I told him I worked for years as a newspaper reporter and editor, but quit when I saw there was no future in it.

"Yeah," Adam said. "My parents are proud of me because they think I have this big-time job. But honestly, I'm barely making ends meet."

That's journalism.

After about 20 minutes--a short time for the airport pool--we were freed, sent to Terminal B. A young woman got in. She started immediately.

"I was sooo lucky," she said. "My original flight from Chicago was cancelled, but they got me a seat on this flight..."

Where you going?

"Oh, to Malden Center, please. You know, the weather doesn't seem so bad here. Hey, who's this guy in the front seat?"

I introduced her to Adam, who explained what he was doing. He then interviewed her to see what she thought taxis in Boston. How do they compare to other cities? Are they too expensive? Has she had any bad experiences in Boston? Been ripped off?

Adam then went into his whole theory of how to improve the taxi industry. He'd do away with the patchwork of municipally organized taxi authorities and form a regional authority that would allow companies to pick up in towns all around Boston. This would cut down on the number of empty return rides and free up cabs for high-demand times like rush hour, big conventions or New Year's Eve. Made sense to me, although I'm sure someone would object to it.

I dropped off the Malden fare, and we headed back to Boston (empty, of course). The snow had started to fall. The streets were largely empty. We cruised the North End, which at 7 pm was nearly deserted. You could have a table at any restaurant you wanted. We drove past Quincy Market--dead--then over to Park Street Station--also dead. By then, the snow was really coming down. Adam decided he had had enough. The battery on his recorder was gone. He was hungry.

"You can drop me off right here."

No problem.

He got out. He leaned through the open door and thanked me, apologizing if he interferred in any way.

"Will you be able to make it up?"

Sure, I say. Someone always needs a cab.

Last Fare

2011-01-03T16:19:00.000-08:00

It was a lousy night. A Tuesday? A Monday? I don't remember. Just another in a long line of lousy nights. Long hours. Shit money. Maybe it was the holidays. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe I'd been driving too long. Whatever. I was tired. I was cranky. I needed a drink. And looking back, perhaps it affected my judgment.

I was gassing up, preparing to finish my shift.

"Shuh?"

Where did that come from? I was the only car in the gas station. I looked up, wondering if it was the lone clerk in the plexiglass booth talking to me over the speaker.

"Y'dake me'd m'rose?"

I leaned across the hose. Hidden behind the advertising tent was a slight man. He was dressed sharply in khakis, an Oxford shirt and sport jacket. He looked like he might have just gotten off work, other than the fact that it was the middle of the night and he had a gaping head wound. He also seemed drunk, really drunk. I took another look at the wound. It was bright red, oozing blood, angry and swollen except for a penumbra of dried blood at the edges. Then I thought: He might not be drunk, but in shock or he had a concussion.

"You need help mister?" I asked.

"Take me'd Melrose?" he said, his arm extended, leaning against the car.

No, he was just drunk, really drunk. Still, that was a nasty gouge on his head.

"Why don't you let me take you to the emergency room," I said.

"Nu-ah... no," he slurred. "No, no, no... NO!" he yelled. "No doctors."

Technically, legally, in the City of Boston you can't refuse to give a ride to anyone, no matter how drunk he or she is unless they have an open container of alcohol, refuse to put out their cigarette or you have a legitimate fear for your own safety. This fellow didn't meet the first two criteria, and given his condition I doubt he was much of a threat. So really, in my mind, I had three options: 1) I could say no, go home and leave him there, and let the guy behind the plexiglass deal with him or just let him wander into the night; 2) I could take him to the hospital against his will, which probably meant no fare, no tip and who knows what else kind of trouble, or; 3) I could just take him to Melrose and hope he had someone to help him and hope he had some money on him to cover the fare. My head told me to just leave him there and go home, make him someone else's problem. But there was no really good choice. I sighed.

"You got an address?"

He gave it to me.

"Okay, get in."

He opened the door, threw one leg in, sat on the edge of the seat and tumbled out onto the pavement.

"I'm s'right!" he shouted, clambering back into the car.

I told him to give the door another slam, just to make sure it was shut, then punched the meter.

"M'wife gonna keel me," he said. I didn't answer. I didn't want to know. My sense was the gaping head wound was the least of his problems. At this time of night there would be no traffic. I could be back within an hour, home within two. I turned the volume up on a late night blues station. I could tell this guy was going to be no company.

He started to snore. I looked in my rear view mirror. His head was resting against the door.

"Hey, buddy, wake up!" I yelled. "You're bleeding all over my car."

"Wha'up?" he snorted. He raised his hand and felt the wound. "Oh mah, I really am bleeding."

"Yes, you'll have to have someone look at that," I said, handing him a wad of napkins from Dunkin' Donuts.

"She gonna keel me," he said again, almost in his sleep. His chin was bobbing against his chest as the car bounced along. I turned the radio back up. Howlin' Wolf was singing "I Asked for Water, She Brought Me Gasoline."

Once out of the city the streets were largely dark and empty. I waited for the lights to change at intersections where there was no traffic. Other than street lamps, nearly all the lights were off. It looked like one of those post-apocalyptic cityscapes you see in the movies. I wanted to go home.

"Whoah. Sto'here!" he yelled. I stopped. It was one of those blocky, brick and glass apartment buildings built in the Sixties and Seventies. I told him the fare, about thirty bucks. He dug into his pockets, one after the other, pulling out whatever he could find: packs of matches, loose change and a few bills. He counted through it, slowly, stopping at times and starting over again. After three or four minutes, he finished.

"Ooo... d'hurts," he moaned, touching his head. He handed over a wad of soggy bills.

I thanked him, not bothering to count the bills. He climbed slowly out of the car, groaning as he did. He could have used help. I didn't offer it.

"D'hanks," he said.

As I pulled away, I looked in my rear view. He stood, teetering on the edge of the curb, staring at the short flight of steps up to the lobby door as if planning a route up the North Face of Mount Everest. By the time I drove up the street, pulled into a driveway to turn around and drove back past, he was still there, pondering his next step. I drove on.

He might never move. He might never make it home. He might fall over, gash open the other side of his head and bleed to death. Or stumble off and pass out under a bush and freeze to death. Maybe I should have taken him to the hospital. I didn't know. Didn't care. Fuck him. Fuck Melrose. I was tired. I was cranky. I needed to get home.

Use It or Lose It?

2010-11-20T05:39:00.000-08:00

Finally, proof that reliance on a GPS system really does rot your brain.

Researchers at McGill University in Toronto recently reported the results of a test that suggests reliance on GPS navigation may lead to reduced brain function. The researchers took brain scans of adults who were GPS-users and those who were non-GPS users. They found that those who didn't use the devices were found to have higher activity and a greater volume of grey matter in the hippocampus than those who relied on GPS. These adults also did better on a standardized test used in the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, which often precedes the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

This comes on the tail of a study released in 2000 by scientists at University College London that showed that London taxi drivers given brain scans had a larger hippocampus compared with other people. That study also found that the hippocampus grew larger as the taxi drivers spent more time in the job.

Now Boston isn't London, particularly when it comes to driving a cab. In Boston, prospective cabbies take a 10-hour course that ends with a test in which they have to answer brain twisters like "True or False: It's okay to rush customers. That way you have more time for other fares." In London, prosective cabbies have to pass a three- to four-year course which involves learning the layout of 25,000 streets in the city center. Called "The Knowledge," three quarters of those who start the course end up washing out. Still, Boston has its challenges and as I've mentioned before, while a GPS will get you where you want to go, it won't get you there necessarily the fastest or even the shortest route.

All this doesn't mean NASA is going to start recruiting astronauts from the ranks of cab drivers and I'm not going to be a professor at Harvard, but it's interesting to think how all this might correlate with the increasing reliance on similar technology in other professions--say, flying an airliner. I'm not about to get rid of my GPS, but I think I'll turn it off once in a while.

A Nose for Trouble

2010-11-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

I have been away for three weeks. When I arrive at the garage, there's a new addition to the usual potpourri of aromas that greets me. Standing out among the usual mix of grease, solvents, paint, rotting fast food remnants, stale cigarettes and an overflowing toilet is the acrid and distinct stench of skunk. I ask the dispatcher what stinks (non-metaphorically). He chuckles and tells me the animal apparently took up residence under the building. The owner ordered the mechanic to locate the source of malevolent odor (Hey, why pay for an exterminator?). The mechanic, out of loyalty or a sense of adventure, did as he was told. Armed with a flashlight and broomstick, he squeezed himself underneath the building and following his nose crawled to the skunk's home. A quick visual told him everything he needed to know. Wriggling his way out, he reported back to the owner that the skunk had met an untimely death some time ago and that rats, drawn to the pungency, had begun feasting on its bloated remains. The owner, realizing that his problems were only beginning, told the mechanic to go back and recover the carcass before the building became uninhabitable. The mechanic, who lived in a world of fetid smells and perhaps understood the owner’s problems only in concept, was not a man to shrink from a challenge. He grabbed his flashlight, fixed a hook to the end of the broomstick and crawled back into the bowels of the garage. Finding his way back to the skunk's lair, he maneuvered his body so as to use his improvised tool in such a way as to gaff the stinking remains and haul them out. His eye steady, his aim sure, the mechanic, like those lyrical hunters Ahab or Crocodile Dundee, brought his weapon down on the swollen pelt. But the animal (if that's what you'd call it at that point) was not done. Like the mythical Phoenix, the skunk had taken on new life. It was now a city, a megalopolis, a universe of bacteria ingesting and exhaling the vital components of the former skunk, all of which were contained within a (relatively) airtight membrane. When punctured by the mechanic's hook, that universe, under considerable pressure, exploded—a kind of Big Bang, if you will. The result being that what was left of the former skunk was scattered. There was little left to haul out. Whether or not the mechanic needed a change of clothes, the dispatcher didn't say, but the objective was completed, sort of. The mechanic was unfazed, and there were plenty of other problems to deal with, lingering stink notwithstanding.

The Long Way Home

2010-10-01T12:07:00.001-07:00

A recent article in the New York Times ran a story about a 45-year-old Bavarian man who followed the directions of his GPS device onto the wrong end of a highway off-ramp near the town of Onsabruck and straight into an oncoming car, injuring an 11-year-old boy. A local newpaper called accident of "blind trust" in the gadget.

What an idiot.

Yes, but I say so not without some understanding of the situation. See, I have driven with a Tom Tom now for four months, and while I've never let the thing lead me the wrong way onto a highway, I can see how people can become mezmerized by the things.

I had mixed feelings about the purchase. One was cost (I'm cheap). The second was pride (I'm a cabbie, dammit). As the cost of the things has dropped, however, I can't really say I can't afford one. And because there are vast swaths of Dorchester, Roslindale, West Roxbury and Roxbury that I do not know by heart, I have to admit there are times it would come in handy.

I would say about half half the cabbies today use a GPS, mostly newer drivers like myself. The old guys rely on memory or use street guides to look find obscure addresses. These compact books simply list street names alphabetically followed by the streets they intersect. Once you hit a street you know, you can construct a route to the destination. Easy, provided you know the major arteries in the city.

Ninety-five percent of the jobs I get are straightforward: airport to hotel, hotel to tourist attraction, tourist attraction to restaurant, restaurant to nightclub, nightclub to hospital... you get the picture. But then someone gets into your cab and says they need to go to 10 Shirley Street in Roxbury.

"Excuse me a minute while I look that up."

For the next four minutes you're fumbling in the dark trying to read the tiny print on the atlas or street guide while your fare is sitting impatiently in the back. Not good, espcecially if you expect a tip.

With a GPS, you just plug in the address and go. Passengers tend to be reassured by a GPS system. Most think a GPS won't get lost or rip them off.

True, a GPS won't rip you off intentionally, but they are far from perfect. I knew this even before I bought my own. A lot of people have Iphones nowadays. These have built-in GPS. A lot of people with these will get in my cab and offer to look up the directions to where they are going go on their phone. In general, it's helpful.

One time, however, a lady got in the cab with her Iphone. She insisted I follow the directions it gave to and address in Watertown. I complied. The route the device picked was not the most direct, and I knew we were in trouble when it told me to go up Belmont Avenue but she insisted we press on. We ended up on a dead-end street near Belmont Cemetery. I then took her to her destination, but the experiment cost her another $8 or $9.

Part of the problem is Boston itself. There are umpteen different ways to get from one place to another, and deciding which one is best is sometimes a relative thing, depending on the traffic, road construction, time of day and, yes, personal preference. Another problem are the settings of the device. You can program it to calculate the shortest route, the fastest route, to avoid highways or toll roads. And, once a route is calculated, you can then request alterations to the route. The devices are, in a way, handicapped from the very start.

With my Tom Tom, I sometimes plug in the address even if know where it is, just to see how directs me. For a trip from the Harvard Business School to the Boston Common, it told me to drive through back streets in Allson and then down Commonwealth Ave. rather than the much easier, faster and more direct Storrow Drive. In some cases, I've the GPS will tell me to take the next right, then the next right, then the next right and then the next right. Yup, right around the block. If I followed those directions, I likely not only would get an earful from the passenger but a call from the Hackney Bureau.

Some passengers will ask that I use the GPS, then marvel at the convoluted directions it spits out. "Take whichever way you think is best," they then say.

Don't get me wrong, a GPS will get you to your destination--eventually. The way I've come to use the device is to calculate the route, then work backwards: figuring out the neighborhood of the address, then figuring out my own way there, letting the machine recalculate the directions constantly, until I'm very close. Then I might follow its recommendations.

Which brings me to the man in Germany. Even though I don't rely on my Tom Tom, I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the goddamn thing. Of course, I should be looking the road, watching for cars, trucks, pedestrians, bicycle messengers, stalled vehicles, stray animals, UFOs, whatever. That little screen hypnotizes you, makes you suddenly unaware of what's really going on around you. And so I can understand how the guy mindlessly pulled onto the off-ramp.

Dumb, yes. But understandable.

Wretched Excess

2010-07-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's true. They're different than us. For example, I was in Augusta, Maine, last week. I picked up a friend at the airport. Tiny airport, especially for a state capital. Just four flights a day to Boston. But on the tarmac are parked dozens of huge corporate jets, dozens of them. So many, in fact, that they closed a runway to use as an overflow parking lot.

What's going on? Is there a hedge-fund convention this weekend?

"It's parents weekend."

Parents weekend?

"The summer camps. All the rich mummies and daddies have flown in to check on Billy--to make sure he's not lonely or homesick."

You gotta be kidding. I thought the reason you sent kids to camp was because you didn't want to see them.

A couple days later, at work, I get a job. Go to this office complex. A Mister Gorman needs a ride to Logan. He has a plane to catch to Nantucket and he's in a big hurry.

Gorman was heavy set. Expensive suit, with a flimsy set of wire-rimmed glasses and a couple suitcases.

It's rush hour. Storrow Drive is backed up to Mass. Ave. "Are we going to get there on time?" he asks, or rather, demands.

Sure. We'll go the back way, I tell him, through Haymarket. He seems pleased, as if he thought of it himself. Then he goes back to his Blackberry.

We get to the airport. Plenty of time. The fare is about $30. He hands me a credit card. I ask him if he wants to include a tip.

"Sure. Add fifteen."

Gee, thanks.

I help get his bags out of the trunk and hand him the receipt.

"What's this?"

What's the problem?

"Thought you'd drive off before I noticed, huh?"

You said fifteen. That's what I plugged in.

"I meant fifteen percent. How many of your fares give you fifty percent tips? You take me for some kind of asshole?"

You get all kinds in this business, I tell him. If you meant fifteen percent instead of fifteen dollars, you should have said so. Here's ten dollars back, good-bye.

"Hey wait," he shouts. "What's your name? I'm gonna tell your boss."

Good. Tell him. I'm sure he'll get a laugh out of it.

A bit later, I'm turning a corner. There's an old man with a cane, disheveled, teetering to maintain his balance near the curb with his arm outstretched. I stop.

"I'm not going far," he says apologetically, gently lowering himself onto the seat.

That's not a problem, I tell him.

Once in, he thanks me. He gives me an address in Cambridge. Like he said, not far.

The fare when we arrive is about $8. He thanks me again, and hands over a wad of bills. I count it out: Two five dollar bills and three ones. Thirteen dollars. A 60 percent tip.

Excuse me, sir. Are you sure you want to give me this?

"What did I give you?" he asks. I hand back the bills.

"Oh gosh, I'm so sorry." He rummages through his wallet, then hands back the wad. I count it out again. A ten dollar bill, a five, and two ones. Seventeen dollars. 110 percent tip.

Are you sure?

No, no. You were so nice to stop for me. Keep it.

I thank him, wait for him to make it safely to the curb, then pull away.

Like I told Gorman, you see all kinds.

Quitting Time

2010-07-10T05:50:00.001-07:00

We were both parked outside the same apartment building, waiting for our fares. It was warm, with a pleasant breeze, so we both got out and started chatting. He was a little older than me, heavier set with a bit of a stoop. He had warm eyes behind his half-glasses and an easy smile.

"You like driving for them?" he asked.

It's okay, I guess. How 'bout yourself?

He shrugged.

"How long you been driving?" he asked.

Couple years. You?

"Since 1993."

Wow.

"Yes, that's a long time."

Where'd you come from?

"Brazil. I used to be a school teacher. In Recife. Beautiful city. Beautiful beaches. I loved my work, my life. But one day I lost my job. They closed the school. I kept waiting to get a new assignment, but after six months I needed the money, so my brother living here bought me a plane ticket. When I got here, I got a job driving. I figured nine months, a year, then home. But here I am."

You ever go back?

"A couple of times. But I always come back, driving a cab. Next year I'll be sixty-two. Next year, for sure. I quit. Get out of the fucking business. Time to go home. Back to Brazil."

He then looks at me over his half-glasses.

"Three years? You have another year, maybe two," he said.

Whatdyamean?

"Then you have to quit."

Huh?

"You quit or drive the rest of your life. I've seen it all the time. Guys start driving, telling themselves they'll just do it for a bit. But after four years they're stuck. They're in for life. Like me."

C'mon...

He tilted his head down, looked at me over his half-glasses and pointed at my gut. "This job, it's not healthy. Look at yourself. When was the last time you had long walk?"

I didn't need to look at myself. Instead, I made some lame joke.

He smiled but didn't say anything. Instead, we stood there, letting the breeze cool us. The bell from a distant Green Line trolley reverberated in the night air.

"Well," he said. "it doesn't look like my fare is going to make it. Another no-go." He then got into the cab. "Nice talking to you."

He waved as he pulled away, leaving me standing alone in the driveway. The trolley bell rang again. I looked down at my bare arms, which under the sodium lamp of the building's exterior lights took on a bluish palor.

Maybe next year.

The Century Mark

2010-07-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

The century mark: 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The whole city seems to be moving in slow motion, as if it was under water, which is true in a sense. That is, if sweat can be considered water. Even the traffic is slogging along. The light turns green, and there seems to be about a five-second hesitation for the eye-to-brain-to-foot connection to get in gear. Usually, no sooner does the light turn green than the guy behind you honks.

The drivers coming off shift looked wrung out, as if they'd just crossed the Atlantic trapped in a shipping container.

"How'd you do?"

They shake their heads and groan. July is a slow month anyway. The heat just makes it more punishing.

"Good fucking luck," one says as he hands over the keys.

After four minutes behind the wheel my back had soaks through and fuses to the car seat. I have to lean forward gently to peel it away from the vinyl every time I punch the meter. By the end of the first hour, it feels as if I was sitting in one of those kiddie pools. Keep moving, I tell myself, drink plenty of water and seek out cab stands in the shade. Ducking into a 7-11 for a bottle of water and I have to push through a crowd of people standing around just for the air conditioning. Probably the same crowd standing around in February just for the heater.

I have no proof, but I think the crime rate must go down in this heat. Who has the energy? The news, of course, is all over the story. Drink plenty of fluids. Seek out air conditioning. Never leave a loved one in enclosed automobile (Duh! Oh wait, that's me.) Still, there are plenty of jackasses jogging along the Charles, preparing for the long-term effects of global warming.

The Red Line breaks down--again. There's a trainful of commuters stranded on the Longfellow Bridge. Poor bastards! I can only imagine what the mood (and aroma) inside the stalled cars is like. Of course the T says nothing to those stuck in the stations. After waiting around for 50 minutes, they start to drift out into the streets to hail cabs. They're ticked off, of course, but things could have been worse for them--lots worse.

An Indian guy gets in. He's dressed sharply in a business suit. Unlike nearly everybody else, he looks completely unruffled. "I just flew in from Singapore," he said in lilting English. "This really is not so bad."

Really? End of conversation.

Schooled

2010-06-07T09:53:00.000-07:00

There are something like 250 colleges and universities in the Boston area, and in May and June they all let out. The streets are swarming with kids pulling suitcases. It's time to go home for the summer, and they are all looking for a ride to the airport. To a cabbie, it's like watching salmon spawn, they're everywhere. If you can't make money at this time of year, you're either drunk or not trying.

This guy was older. He was well-dressed, almost professorial. He also didn't have a suitcase. So there was a twinge of disappointment when he got into the cab--a feeling confirmed when he said he was going to an address just a couple miles away. But he was polite and enjoyable to talk with. He spoke with a lilting British accent, which made him sound a bit like actor Michael Caine.
He said he was a professor of economics or something at the Harvard Business School.

"Excuse me, would it be possible for you to wait outside while I drop these papers off?"

Absolutely.

"I'm afraid I'm running a little late," he explained. "I have a plane to catch, but I have a few errands I need to run first. I'd be grateful if you would drive me around. There'll be a good tip in it for you."

Great. This may not be such a bad fare, after all.

After the first stop, he then said he needed to go to his office, a walk-up in the middle of Central Square, an odd location for a professor at Harvard, but who knows? Central Square has been coming up over the years. Still, its proximity to a shelter has always made it a hangout for derelicts, earning it the nickname of "Mental Square" among locals. After four or five minutes, he emerged. By then, the meter had tallied $15.55.

From there, he gave directions to his apartment, a place in Back Bay not far from Kenmore Square. After 20 nervous minutes ($10 in wait time), he came down carrying a shopping bag. Again, it seemed a strange way to pack, but driving around Boston you learn that a lot of academics are oddballs.

Now there's $35.50 on the meter.

"Thanks so much for your patience. You've been an enormous help. I assure you, I am headed to the airport, but I have just one more errand to do."

What's that?

"I need to go to St. Elizabeth's Hospital. I have to visit my mother before I leave. I need to make sure her care is arranged for while I'm away."

I understand.

"Just wait outside the main entrance. My plane departs at five-thirty so I shouldn't be long."
Ten minutes passes, then 15, 20, 25... He better hurry or he'll miss his plane altogether if we get stuck in traffic. Thirty minutes passes. Thirty-five minutes.

Dammit. Did he leave anything in the cab?

No. Nothing.

He carried the shopping bag with him. Ohhhh.... you motherfucking moron.

The meter now reads $58.15.

What now? Wait and hope the guy eventually comes out? Go inside and try to hunt him down? Call the cops? Sit on the curb and cry?

Really, there's nothing to do. Just clear the meter, put the car in gear and hope you can make it up.

And if anyone asks, you can say there is another way to lose money this time of year.

Mother's Day

2010-05-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

He’s an older guy. My age, I guess.

“Brighton Center,” he says, slamming the door.

It’s clear from the accent that he’s a native. Probably grew up in Brighton.

I start the meter, and put the car in gear.

“Which way you plan on goin’?” he asks.

We're down near Mass. General. I tell him my plan: Storrow Drive to Western Ave. to Market Street to Brighton Center.

“You kiddin' me? You tryin’ to cheat me?”

Look, I'll take whatever route you want.

“I'm just joking,” he laughs. He then tells me to go to Kenmore Square and then up Comm. Ave.

We down near the Liberty Hotel, the old jail with its heavy stone façade.

“Nice place,” he says.

Yeah, I suppose.

“I stayed there a night,” he says. “Of course, that was before it was a hotel. And it wasn’t no $400 per night.”

I laugh.

“Actually, that little jam cost me five grand by the time it was over.

I laugh again.

“You do anything nice for Mother’s Day,” he asks.

No, my mother's dead. I'm divorced. Instead, I'm driving a double.

"Well, I called my girlfriend to wish her a happy Mother's Day and she told me to fuck off. I got in late the other night after playing pool. She didn't like that, told me it was the last straw. So I guess we're broke up now."

Sorry to hear.

"I've been married twice and just have never been able to play Father Knows Best, ya know what I mean? But don't get me wrong. She's a good gal. Good Mom. I knew her way back in high school. Hadn't seen her in thirty years when I found her on the Internet a few months ago."

You were old flames?

"Oh yeah, we used to be quite an item. I went out with the two best-lookin' girls in school. One brunette, the other blonde. She was the blonde... She was something. Still is. But I'm too old, too set in my ways. I like doing my own thing. I like my cards and pool. She's better off without me."

Maybe now you can track down the brunette.

He laughs.

"You like drivin'?"

Yeah, I guess.

"I used to drive a cab, in Cambridge."

Really, when?

"About thirty years ago. Drove nights. After the bars closed and the trains and buses stopped running, I used to head over to Blue Hill Avenue. I'd make good money just doing short trips up and down the avenue."

But being a Cambridge cab, you're not allowed to pick up in Boston.

"You kidding me? None of the Boston cabs went to that part of town. Hell, the cops generally didn't go there, either. I had the place all to myself."

You never got robbed?

"A couple of times, sure. But they were just hopeless junkies. They just wanted money for a fix. They'd just grab whatever cash I handed to them and ran, not even bother to stick around and count it."

Still, sounds kind of dangerous.

"You do what you gotta do," he says, directing me to pull over to a corner. He peels off a few bills from his gambler's wad, hands them over. "Be safe, my friend."

I intend to.

To the Moon

2010-04-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

Think of the distance between Boston and Los Angeles (2,605 miles)--a hundred times over. Think of the distance around the Earth--(24,901 miles)--ten times over. Think of the distance to the moon (238, 857 miles)--with enough mileage to circle it three times over. A total of 258,671 miles, that's a lot of miles, especially when driven on Boston roads. With that many miles, this car should be in a junkyard. That or the Smithsonian Institution.

"You driving this pig?" Steve asks.

I nod.

He shakes his head. "Have the mechanic give you some spare fuses. It keeps locking up when you put it in park."

What? Why?

"How the hell do I know?" he says, handing me the keys.

The mechanic gives me a handful of fuses and tells me to remember to keep it out of park with the engine running.

I should have handed the keys back and just gone home.

"Put it in neutral, not park," I tell myself. "Neutral. Neutral. Neutral."

I make it through two fares, putting the car in neutral each time. No problem. My third fare is to 90 Tremont Street downtown, to one of those new boutique hotels near the Common. It's rush hour, and I'm fighting traffic all the way. But my fare is friendly and we're having a good conversation. Finally, we get to the hotel. I pull up to the corner of Tremont and Bosworth streets, outside the Beantown Pub. Without thinking, I automatically throw the car into park, collect the fare, say thanks, fill out my waybill, then try to put the car into gear.

Nothing doing. It's like the gear shift is embedded in concrete. I get under the dashboard, pull the fuse--blown. I get one of the spares and plug it in. Phfffttt! Blown. Another. Phfffttt! Another. Phffttt!

Six fuses, all blown.

By now traffic is backing up down Tremont Street. I'm stuck in a travel lane, reducing three lanes to two and forcing the traffic to squeeze over. Cars are honking. Even if I was able to push the cab aside, there's no place to push it to. Just sit and wait. I call the office and have them send a wrecker. I stand beside the cab, trying not to look too stupid. On one side of me people are rolling down their windows, yelling at me to move. Insults, epithets, threats are being hurled.

On my other side, pedestrians see that I'm a cabbie and are coming up ask me directions. Which way to the convention center? How far is South Station? You know where I can score some pot?

"Hey asshole! Get that fucking piece of shit out of the way!" That was one of the nicer comments thrown my way, from a cop no less. By law, I have thirty minutes to move the disabled vehicle. So he rolls on by with a sneer. A couple of other cabbies pull up and ask if there's anything they can do. I wish. A dignified older man in a glistening black Mercedes sedan creeps along, edging his way over to get by me. Once alongside me, he rolls down his window, says something to me I can't hear, then spits at the cab.

The traffic must be backed up at least a couple of blocks, for the long, angry wails of car horns start from a distance, then echo and reverberate around the high-rise buildings. As the traffic moves forward the horns become louder and more distinct. One old lady in a beat up Buick must be late for her hairdresser because she has been leaning on the horn pretty much non-stop for 10 minutes. Once she sees what the problem is, she doesn't let up, but all the pedestrians on the street are taking notice, turning around to see who this crazy person is. The old woman just keeps looking straight ahead, leaning against the horn.

Finally, I see the tow truck crawling up Tremont, the top of the truck and its emergency flashers looming above the rest of the vehicles. Whew. But then it turns down School Street. What the...?

I call the office and ask them if the tow company knows the correct address.

"Tremont and Bromfield streets, right?"

No, Tremont and Bosworth. Even so, why did he turn?

"I'll make sure they get it right," she tells me.

Ten minutes pass. Next I see the top of the truck pull out of Bromfield onto Tremont moving away from me. I run up the sidewalk to try and catch it, but the light changes and the truck turns up Park Street. Dammit.

I call again. The dispatcher tells me the tow company said the driver was a new guy, and but assured me he'd be right there.

By now, I'm almost getting used to people screaming at me. All I can do is smile and shrug.

Another five or six minutes pass, and I see the truck again crawling up Tremont. I wave my arms to make sure he sees me. This time he flashes his lights to show me, yes, he sees me. Once in position, the driver, a big, barrel-chested guy with a beard lumbers out. He apologizes up and down. That's okay, I assure him. Let's just get the heap hooked and get out of here.

The next day, the boss calls me. He too apologizes. Said the problem happened to be a broken brake switch or something, a $20 part. He laughs.

"Good as new," he says.

Sure, sure, I say. "Good for another 258,671 miles."

Jimmy's in Trouble

2010-02-27T15:35:00.000-08:00

Jimmy's hard to miss. A big, Boston-Irish guy, he stands more than six feet tall. His bald head is shaved so smooth that it shines like a peeled boiled egg. Usually he's wearing a big, mischievous grin--like he's pulled a fast one on you that you won't realize until after you've gotten home. I like Jimmy.

But right now, Jimmy's missing.

"Cab 175, where are you?"

The radios are a constant source of frustration. To hear anything you have to turn the volume way up, but the sound then is so distorted its nearly impossible to decipher what the dispatcher is saying. Buildings block the reception, so you'll be trying to answer a dispatch, trying to bid on a job, but the dispatcher won't hear you. I've lost a lot of work that way. When you're parked on a stand, you have to roll the car forward and back to find a spot where the reception is clear.

"Jeemy, answer da radio!"

But if you've got a long job to somewhere out in the 'burbs, transmissions will just be intermittent bursts of static. That's one reason we carry cellphones.

"Jeemy, you're not answering your phone. Turn on your phone!"

I just got on my shif, so I don't know how long this situation has been unfolding. But the dispatcher has an urgency in his voice that makes me think it's been going on a while.

"Jeemy, the other driver's waitin'. Gas it up and bring it in. NOW!"

A lot of drivers push it. They try to squeeze in one last airport run before the end of a shift, returning the car a half-hour late. It's not fair, and cheats the other driver, but some guys are like that. Jimmy, however, is now an hour late, and the dispatcher sounds frantic.

"Cab 175, Cab 175, Cab 175... Has anyone seen Cab 175? Jeemy, call in!"

I pull up alongside another driver and ask if he knows what's going on. He shrugs and shakes his head.

"Jeemy, call now if ya know what's good for ya."

The owner then takes the mike:

"Jimmy, c'mon. Call me and we'll talk about it. If not, I'll have to call in the cab as stolen."

I hear the dispatcher asking various cabbies when and where they last saw Cab 175. But the radio system is designed so that I only hear the dispatcher, so I don't know what the drivers said.

“Cab 175. You better bring it in, Jeemy. If ya don't I'm gonna have to make another call and believe me you're not gonna like it."

So Jimmy stole the cab? In what, a fit of anger, derangement? What is going on?

The owner's back on the radio. He's pleading, almost desperate.

"Jimmy, I'm trying to be reasonable. I don't want to call the police. I just want the cab back. Bring it in. We'll talk.

Another driver tells me this isn't the first time Jimmy has done this. The week before Jimmy left the car on a side-street. Took the waybill and the credit card machine and went home. He got ticked off or something and just left it there. Thing got towed and the owner had to pay $160 to get it back.

Why did he do that? I asked.

Dunno, the driver answers.
So why is Jimmy still driving?
Dunno, the driver says.

"Jeemy, I got a sergeant from the police department standing behind me. Bring it in now and MAYBE you won't face charges."

Jimmy never answered, never called in. Eventually, Cab 175 was spotted parked in front of a bar. The police found Jimmy inside, tanked to the gills. They took him away in handcuffs.

I asked the owner the next day what happened. Simple, he said, Jimmy stopped to get drunk. It was the same thing he did the week before.

After the first incident, Jimmy gave some sad story about his wife or his kid being sick, promised it would never happen again, and that he would turn in all his earnings from the next shift in compensation. The owner, who recently took over the business, took him at his word and gave him another shot.
The owner is new at the business. His family bought the company and over the past few months he's been learning the ropes.

Some lessons, especially in this business, can only be learned on the job.

Valentine's Day Special

2010-02-15T16:00:00.001-08:00

I picked up a young man and his girlfriend at a popular restaurant. After getting their destination and punching the meter, I overheard the following:

Girlfriend: Well that was interesting.

Boyfriend: Yeah, that was some argument.

Girlfriend: Do you think they'll make up by the time they get home?

Boyfriend: And what? Then have really good make-up sex?

Girlfriend (coyingly): Well... yeahhh.

Boyfriend: I don't even want to think about that. They're pretty old.

Girlfriend: Oh, come on, they're not THAT old.

Boyfriend: Maybe. Still, it was a really interesting argument.

Girlfriend: What do you mean?

Boyfriend: I wish we had arguments that interesting.

Girlfriend: What?

Boyfriend: I mean, we ought to make a point of having more interesting arguments.

Girlfriend: I thought the point was to not have arguments.

I waited for the boyfriend to respond. Nothing. They finished the ride in silence, got out without saying another word, and went home to either have an interesting argument or tepid makeup sex.

Bits & Pieces

2010-02-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

While sitting on a stand the other night I saw one of the more amusing signs used by a bum:

Raising Capital for My Hedge Fund

Looking for more shares of UBS and AIG

Rock it like a Morganthau!

Maybe he really is.

The Chicken Man

2010-01-02T17:25:00.002-08:00

A typical shift is 12 hours, but it's not unusual to drive 14, 16, 18 hours or more, especially if you only do it a couple times a week. This may sound pretty rough, but there's practically no limit to what you can do given enough coffee and Red Bull (a beverage I discovered out of necessity but would hardly recommend) .

Generally speaking, I have no problem driving for long periods. In fact, there's something about driving a cab--the rhythm of the city, lots of activity, people coming and going. In fact, I find it relaxing. No problem.

But once I cash in at around 3 a.m. and head home on the Southeast Expressway, that's when the hallucinations kick in. Every light pole, every shadow, every piece of wastepaper blowing across the road suddenly becomes a deer jumping in front of my car, a truck about to sideswipe me or some other obstacle that I need to swerve around. My vision gets gauzy along the along the periphery. The first few times I drove for long periods, the experiences driving home were so harrowing that by the time I arrived I was soaked in sweat and couldn't get to sleep.

Over time I've trained myself to ignore the leaping animals, the corpses and the darting sprites. I learned to drive in a gauzy violet fog. The biggest challenge was trying to determine which trucks about to sideswipe me were real, and which ones were the figment of my imagination. So far, so good.

Reality, however, has a way of messing with you in a way your imagination cannot touch. Take the other night.

It started snowing by early evening. Just a few flakes at first, drifting lazily across the windshield. The forecasts had predicted this, saying it would pick up quickly by midnight, and fall at a rate of three inches an hour. The television news had announced all this a kind of hyperventilated excitement one might expect for a nuclear holocaust or the rapture. "Buy batteries and stock up on potable water," the buxom weather girl said cheerily.

By midnight, it was coming down hard. The windshield wipers could not keep up with the pace of accumulation, and every two or three stoplights I had to get out of the cab to scrape clean the wiper blades by hand. The plows had yet to emerge in force, so the streets were a mess--slushy and rutted. The work was dwindling, so I decided to quit early.

I cashed out at 1:30 a.m., and soon after was on the Southeast Expressway, carefully making my way home. Four lanes of highway had disappeared under three inches of fresh snow. Finding a lane was pure guesswork. In addition to the clumps of frozen muck, puddles and patches of ice, were the usual assortment of morons: drivers crawling along at five miles per hour in the left lane with their emergency flashers on, buttholes in Cadillac Escalades going 80 mph, and passive-aggressive weenies lining up alongside each other to create a rolling roadblock, all moving at one-quarter speed.

By the time I caught up to a phalanx of snowplows blocking the width of the freeway, my frustration and exhaustion had built up to the point that I ceased caring for my own life. I just wanted to get home. I saw an opening, and squeezed between two of the plows. I could practically hear the plow driver cursing at me, but I was free. Ahead of me was a seemingly endless stretch of pristine highway--four lanes of snow-covered Interstate to myself. With the lane markers obliterated it looked like a giant, white runway. I could spin out and gently ricochet down the road like bumper bowling.

I was happy.

Then, far ahead, I saw trouble. Flashing lights. Police action, I thought. Heads up.

The visibility was pretty bad, so I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. The flashing lights, however, weren't cops. They were too irregular, not stroboscopic, and mixed in with different colors--yellows, whites and reds--not the standard blue and red. They were also moving, not stopped as if at an accident. As I drew closer, I realized it was an advertisement of some sort.

It was an electronic sign attached to a truck, the kind in which the message scrolls across like the old news ticker in Times Square. But there was something else about this truck. The box itself was illuminated. In fact, the walls of the box weren't solid, but clear. It was a glass cube on wheels. Inside the cube was a room. It was a reading room with a deck chair, a table and a lamp. Fluorescent lights along the edge of the ceiling illuminated the room. And there was a man. At first, the man appeared in silhouette. He was squeegeeing the windows in long, vertical sweeps. the whole thing looked like a diorama from a natural history museum, a really weird museum. What the hell was this?

It had to be an advertisement. But for what? And why? And why at night on a desolate highway in the middle of a raging snowstorm?

The flashing lights announced the time: 2:28 a.m., the ad scrolled across: REMEMBER THE CHICKEN MAN. THE CHICKEN MAN IS COMING. The man inside the box put away the squeegee. He sat in the deck chair and opened up a laptop, like he was checking his email or updating his Face Book page. He seemed oblivious to the weather and peril surrounding him. I trailed the truck for a time, staring in disbelief at the spectacle.

This was nuts, and continuing to follow this truck in the dead of night in the middle of a blizzard was equally nuts. I needed to get home, so I pulled out to pass the truck, moving carefully. The man inside, an older guy pushing 50, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, ignored me. He was just doing his thing. As I rolled past the cab, I saw stenciled on the door "The Chicken Man--Boston" and a phone number (which I subsequently forgot).

By the time I got home, the episode seemed so unbelievable, so surreal that I had to find out what it was. I searched on the internet for "The Chicken Man" and Boston. All I got back were references to Frank Perdue, Bruce Springsteen's song "Atlantic City" and former Red Sox slugger Wade Boggs (whose locker room nickname was the "chicken man.") I told my wife about it the next morning. She didn't believe me. "You were hallucinating again, weren't you?" she said, advising me to quit driving such long hours.

"But I didn't imagine it!" I insisted.

"Uh huh."

Determined to get to the bottom of this, I asked the other drivers if they had seen the truck. One driver said he hadn't seen the Chicken Man, but he did see an IKEA truck with glass box containing a living room set with two people lounging around. Another driver remembered a truck advertising some travel agent hauling around a beach scene with some bikini-clad young girls inside. A subsequent web search revealed that trucks hauling constructed scenes are part of a vanguard in "mobile advertising" and named firms such as GoMobile Advertising in the Pacific Northwest and Minnesota Mobile Billboards tout such 3-D displays among those specializing in the service.

Finally, another driver told me, yes, he too had seen the Chicken Man. He remembered the room and saw the guy squeegeeing the windows. But he didn't give it much thought. After all, this was Boston, a lot of crazy things happen.

But I wasn't crazy. And I still want to know, who the hell is the Chicken Man?

A Slow Day

2009-12-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Every shift begins with hopes. Hopes for a few airport runs, hopes for steady work, hopes for big tips. In my case, I also hope for a good story. Sometimes the story happens to me, but sometimes the story happens to someone else. But it becomes everybody's story, nevertheless.

The fare looked ordinary enough, at least for this part of town, wearing baggy blue jeans, albeit with a big stain down the front and a beat-up old sweater with a snowflake pattern The sweater looked like something his aunt gave him for Christmas in 1979. He had a nervous, kind of crazed look in his eye. Like I said, nothing special.

It was the slowest part of what was a deadly dull day. The kind of day in which you're so desperate for work that you wouldn't care if he had a butcher knife in his hand so long as it got you off the stand and moving. So maybe the fact that this guy picked your cab out of the eight or nine piled up along the curb meant your luck was going to change.

He burst into the cab. "MOVE IT!" he shouted to the driver, slamming the door.

Where to, the driver asked?

“Uhhh. . .Arlington, and HURRY!”

Arlington Street? Or Arlington, the town?

He then noticed the guy had his hands down his pants and he smelled of alcohol. Jeezuz, it's not even noon and this guy's three sheets to the wind. Has he pissed himself?

"The town, the town... just get moving NOW!!”

Okay, okay. The driver started the car, punched the meter, put it into gear and eased into traffic. He then noticed that a middle-aged woman was running down the sidewalk. She was nicely dressed, but without a coat. She was waving and yelling, pointing at the cab. Another nut job.

Is she with you, the driver asked?

"NO! C'MON, MOVE IT!!" he shouted.

In the next breath, before the car could move half a block, the street was filled with cop cars... three, four, five cars, all lights flashing. They screeched to a stop in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, and in the next second they were are all out of their cars, swarming, guns drawn.

Holy shit... And then it became clear.

Hey, they lookin' for you?

The driver didn't even finish the question before the back door flew open and the guy was gone. The driver turned in time to see the guy's back just as he turned the corner at a full sprint. While the rest of the cops hauled off in pursuit, one cop pointed at the driver to pull over. The driver, a mild-mannered Morrocan named Harari, learned later that the lady was a teller inside the bank next to the cab stand, and that the guy handed her a note demanding money. She pulled out a neatly wrapped stack of bills and handed it over. He took the money, stuffed it down his pants, then turned and walked out the door. The dye pack slipped into the stack of bills exploded not long after he left the bank. Depending on it's placement inside his underwear and the force with which it exploded, I imagine this event may have caused the crazed look in his eye and his decision to seek refuge in a taxi cab.

After fleeing the cab, the man ran down a side street and broke into a house. He ran up the stairs, climbed out onto the roof, jumped onto the neighboring house's roof (like he saw in a James Bond movie), climbed up it and then jumped onto another roof, where he got stuck. Amid the shouts of police officers below and the clattering of television news helicopters overhead, he stood on the peak of the roof, looked out across the other rooftops and weighed his options... and sat down.

Leaning against a brick chimney, he took out his cellphone and called his wife. After a long talk with his wife, he asked the police, which had brought in a police negotiator to talk him down, if they could throw him a smoke. They did. And while he sucked on a couple of butts the cops brought in a tall ladder, which they used to help him down and into an awaiting police cruiser.

The next day in court, the hapless criminal watched impassively as the prosecutor ran down a litany of charges that included unarmed robbery. The man's wife slunk into one of the benches in the gallery, shielding her eyes from a TV news camera jammed in her face. Trailed outside by the news crew, she said that she didn't understand it. She insisted he was a good man. He just had a very bad day.

After patiently answering all the sergeant's questions, Harari--unfazed--got back into the cab and finished his shift. Cashing out at the end of the day, Harari was asked about all the excitement. He stuffed the small wad of cash into his pocket, held out his hand palm down shaking it as if say “So-so,” then said, overall, it was a slow day.

Show business

2009-11-20T13:49:00.000-08:00

I was stopped at a light. It was late. The bars had all let out, and the only work left was catching the few stragglers and drunks left on the streets. I was debating with myself about whether to call it quits or cruise around for a final circuit when they stumbled in front of the cab, appearing seemingly from nowhere, a young man and woman, clinging to each other, flushed and laughing.

I waved for them to get in and the two made their way to the side of the cab. The guy flung the door open and threw the girl onto the back seat, her head hitting the opposite door with a loud thwunk! She groaned a little and giggled. He got in and gave me an address in the South End around Northeastern University. I punched the meter and pulled out.

"Can you put on some music?" the guy shouted, as if he was still in the bar he had just left.

Yeah, sure, I answered, tuning the radio to one of the city's alternative stations. The Clash's "London Calling" filled the cab.

"This song ab-so-lute-ly rocks!" slurred the girl. "Thanks mister."

I pretended not to hear. I was tired, and didn't feel like trying to socialize with a couple of stupid drunks. It didn't matter anyway. The two in the back were onto other things, and seemed to be cooing to each other.

Flock of Seagulls, a band I always hated, was about midway through their hit song "I ran," when suddenly there was stirring in the back seat.

"Hey!" the girl shouted. "That fucking hurt!"

"Ah, c'mon," the guy said.

"No," she continued. "That really hurt."

"Look, I was just trying to have a little fun," he countered.

"Get your fucking hands off me."

"Hey, what's the big deal?"

"You're a goddamned pig, you know that?" she screamed.

"What the hell do you know?," he shouted back.

"A lot more than you think, you pig. Maybe you're wife would like to know just what a sleazy fucking pig you are. Maybe I should call her up right now!"

This has now turned in a direction that I really don't like. I'm asking myself should I intervene? And if so, what can I do?

"You're nuts, you know that?" he said. He then leaned forward toward me. "Buddy, is it just me or is she completely out of her mind?"

Leave me outta this, I tell him, wishing now I had driven right past them and quit for the night.

"Yeah, pig, leave him out of it. Besides, I'm sure he knows all about being a sleazy fucking pig!"

What the...? I'm about tell her to shut up, too, but I stop myself. There's some rustling in the back.

"Hey!" he said. "Give that back!"

I could hear the tones of a cellphone being dialed.

"I'm calling her up right now," she said. "I'm gonna tell her all about her fucking pig of a husband."

"Goddammit" he said, reaching across the seat to grab the phone back.

I could feel the phone fly past my ear. It hit the front windshield with a heavy smack!

That's it. I pulled the car over. I picked up the cellphone, which landed on the seat beside me. I turned around. I held the phone in front of the guy, and was about to tell them both that they either shut up or the next stop was going to be the police station when the girl grabbed the phone, opened the door and bolted from the car.

"Crazy bitch," he said, as she crossed the street and disappears around a corner. "Look, I gotta get her. Wait here and we'll be right back, honest." Sure, I said, shaking my head. He took off, and I'm left cursing myself for not getting him to leave something behind. Sure enough, three, five, then seven minutes passes and there's no sign of them. They're gone.

I noticed then that I'm within a block of the address they gave me, and it occured to me that I've been played. This was a set-up from the beginning. All the screaming and the drama was a ploy to beat the fare, an elaborate charade to fool some dumb cabbie. And I fell for it. Probably next night they'll come up with a different routine, maybe where one of them pretends to get sick, or needs to run into a store for cigarettes. Who knows?

The $7 fare I have to eat. I should have quit when I had the chance.

Get Busy...

2009-10-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

"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

2009-10-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-04T05:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

"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.

Our Cheatin' Heart

2009-06-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

I arrive at the garage and the owner is outside. It's odd, because the owner is almost never outside, prefering to lord over his domain from behind his desk in the back of the office like the pope or Jabba the Hut from "Star Wars." Seeing him outside is like seeing Count Dracula in daylight.

Something is up.

One of the mechanics is laying flat his back underneath the dashboard, his legs splayed out the driver's side door. The owner is yelling something incomprehensible, waving his arms and gesticulating wildly. He sees me and glowers, giving me a look that says, "You. You did this." I shrug, not having the faintest clue what's going on.

One of the other drivers standing around waiting to begin his shift tells me another driver tried to disable the odometer by pulling a fuse, hoping to hide from the boss excess mileage from running unbooked flat rates, fares not run off the meter (there are some legitimate flat rates, such as from some hotels to the airport). To guard against a driver running private flat rates, drivers have to turn in our mileage along with our meter tally at the end of each shift. The miles driven, in general, should be about half the meter's total for the shift. If not, we better have a good explanation why not or the boss will penalize us $2 per mile. But in pulling the fuse, this knucklehead also broke the speedometer and air conditioner, leading to the boss's current overheated condition. So now the mechanic has been ordered to seal every fuse box against tampering. Some guys have tried to disable the odometer by fishing a paper clip or wire through the dashboard to jam the odometer's wheels.

Such a ruse, however, would only work with drivers who, like me, work "on the waybill" (See "Lucky Numbers" post, Mar. 23, 2009), splitting the fares with company. Most cabbies lease their cars (at a rate of about $700 per week or $85 per shift). The company earns its money up front, and could care less about your mileage because you're paying for the gas.

But there are other ways to scam the system. The most obvious, of course, is to cheat customers, taking some unsuspecting tourist a roundabout route instead of a more direct route. Cynical fares probably assume we do this anyway, which is why a lot of people get in my cab and start barking directions at me. Others might consult online sites such as http://www.taxifarefinder.com/ to get a ballpark estimate of what a fare should be. In our defense, the best route in Boston can be a very subjective matter. By "best" do you mean shortest, or fastest? This can also vary greatly depending on the time of day and the traffic. A lot of drivers end up taking roundabout routes in order to avoid Boston's notorious traffic jams. Myself? My objective is to take as many fares as I can during a particular shift. The $1 or $2 gained in cheating a fare is time and money lost carrying another fare. Besides, why risk getting fired or, worse, having your hack license suspended?

Another way to skieve the system is to pick up fares outside of your area. Say you catch a fare from Boston to Cambridge. On the way back, you see a couple of kids with their arms outreached hailing you. Its dark, cold, raining and there's not a soul in sight. So you decide to give the kids a break and pull over. That's when the flashing blue lights of a city cop fill your rear windshield. Cities and towns in the state are very territorial when it comes to protecting their taxi business. In Boston, the city for years has been trying to crack down on "gypsy cabs", unlicensed taxis or out-of-town cabs picking up fares. Those caught face a ticket and a $500 fine (about 2 nights work). Granted, it doesn't make much sense in an era of declining oil and soaring gasoline prices to have bunches of cabs driving empty past customers, but that's the way it is.

Cheating seems to be a compulsion for some drivers. Some guys will call in on a stand, putting them on a queue for any call-in jobs in the area, then drive around looking for street hails, essentially two-timing the guys patiently waiting their turn on the stand. These guys will drive to the airport, collect the $5.25 tunnel toll from the customer for the return trip, then sneak around the back way home over the Tobin Bridge to pocket the $1.25 difference in tolls (the state recently caught on to this one, fining drivers $50 if they're caught avoiding the Sumner Tunnel). Or at the end of a shift they'll short-fill the tank for the next driver, leaving it a quarter of half-gallon shy of full. I can only hope that bad karma and/or bad luck will follow these guys to the end of their days--at least, their days as a cab driver.

But let's face it. Some people deserve to be hosed. A fellow driver at the company hit a pothole one day and blew a tire. The car jerked to the side and ran into a guardrail or barrier, causing perhaps $2500 damage. The boss is insured, the loss is covered. But he tells the driver he has to cover the deductible--something like $1500. This driver's got four kids and an ailing wife and is so poor he can't even afford a car and has to ride a bike to work. But he says nothing, and over the next couple months has the $1500 taken out in increments from his pay. I'm outraged for the guy. It wasn't his fault. Things like this happen. I ask him why he didn't protest more or try to challenge it. He says not to worry. The 2-to-1 ratio of fares-to-mileage is skewed a bit to the driver's advantage, he explained. Each shift, he'd pocket one or maybe two flat rates for himself. By the end of four months, the boss paid for the deductible three times over.

Not bad.

Half-baked

2009-06-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

"I have a question for you," the young woman in back asks me cheerily, seeking to resolve a minor dispute she's having with her boyfriend, who's sitting beside her.

"Who would you value more as a friend: someone who's good at baking--you know, cookies and cakes--or someone who's just a good person?"

I ponder the question, thinking about how this relationship may depend on my answer and how I would enjoy a lemon square just about now.

"It depends on the circumstances," I say.

"Yeah, see?" the boyfriend nearly shouts, as if they had made a bet on what my answer would be.

"Say you're trapped in a blizzard inside a remote cabin stocked only with baking supplies," I continue. "Or suppose or you need to borrow two-thousand dollars from someone. It really depends."

"Exactly!" the boyfriend says.

"I don't get it," the girlfreind says. "You'd like someone who bakes cookies as much as someone who's a funny, decent person?"

"Well," I say, wondering silently if there's some other reason the girlfriend doesn't like this particular cookie-maker, "I know I have different friends for different activities, and then I have friends I just like to hang around with. Perhaps you could make a place in your life for both."

"That's what I've been sayin'," the boyfriend echoes.

"I suppose," the girlfriend says glumly, clearly not happy with the direction of this conversation.

The boyfriend picks up on this change, too, and decides to change the subject. "You want to go see a movie after dinner?"

"I dunno," she says curtly. "We'll see." They sit in silence the rest of the ride.

This, I tell myself, could be a long night for this guy.

Graduation Day

2009-05-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

Two-thirty in the morning. That time during a shift when all there is for work is picking up the dregs of the night: the drunken stragglers, the hookers, the drug addicts or the lost souls looking for a place to go and a warm place to sleep. For me, it's time to think about gassing the car up, bringing it in and going home. But then there he is: his arm at his side, his finger lazily pointing into the street as if uncertain he even wanted a cab, his head nearly resting on his shoulder, apparently too heavy from drink or a desire to sleep. At any other time of day I would have driven right by without a second notice.

"Thanks, man," the kid says as he slides in.

Not a problem, I say. "Where to?"

He gives me an address in Brighton. I put the car into gear and we're off. With his sport jacket, wire-rimmed glasses and trimmed beard and moustache he looks like Leon Trotsky.

"Good night?" he asks.

Not really, I say. A bit slow. That or perhaps I just was in the wrong place at the wrong time all night.

"Yeah, I've felt that way a alot lately," he says with a laugh.

You a student? I ask.

"Yup," he says. "This is my next to last night."

Graduating?

"Yeah. I guess I'm celebrating. I've spent the last five years in Boston. I got a degree in philosophy. Now I'm going home to the West Coast to live with my Mom. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how I feel about it all."

That's understandable, I say. Uncertainty is part of the college experience. Besides, Boston can spoil you. It's a great place to be a student. The town where I went to college was a pit. The first thing they told freshman coming in was to NEVER LEAVE THE CAMPUS.

"Really?" he laughs. "Where was this?"

New Haven.

"New Haven?" he asks. "What school?"

Yale.

"Ya...?" his voice falls away, sounding as if he has suddenly seen a ghost. Either horrified or dumbfounded, I sense him staring at me seeking to explain this apparent disconnect. That or he is wondering if perhaps the ghost he is seeing is that of his own future.

"But wha... what did you study?"

American Studies, history mostly.

A long silence followed. Rather than try to explain to him how an Ivy League grad could be so woefully underemployed, I let it rest. Maybe he felt sorry for me, thinking, "Gee, times really must be tough." Or maybe this newly minted philosophy major started making plans for applying to business school as soon as he got home to Mom's. Or, who knows, maybe he thought to himself: "Hey, this guy seems reasonably happy. Maybe it isn't such a bad job, after all?"

Cab Ten-Twenty-One, Where Are You?

2009-05-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

"Hey, Cab Ten-Twenty-One, where are you?"

I couldn't hear 1021's response. The radio system allows us to only hear the dispatcher's side of a conversation. Evidently, Cab 1021 has gone missing again. He's been lost most of the night. This time, apparently, his fare has called back twice to ask how much longer it will be.

"Cab Ten-Twenty-One, do you know where you are? The customer is waiting!"

This must be 1021's first night on the job. After getting hired, all newbies are supposed to ride around with an experienced driver for a couple nights in order to learn the ropes. But it seems 1021 either lied, telling the owner he already had experience, or that somehow he fell through the cracks and was inadvertently sent out onto the streets cold. That or he is just a really, really slow learner.

"Cab Ten-Twenty-One, do you have a GPS?... Yes? Well, USE IT!"

Granted, Boston is not the easiest city to navigate. Unlike Manhattan, it does not have streets laid out in a straightforward grid. They turn and twist--so crazily in places (such as downtown) they seem to doubleback on themselves. In other places (such as Back Bay) a street will start in one place, then stop, then start up again several blocks away. There are streets that go one way in multiple directions, so that depending on the address you have to know exactly where to enter the street. The signage, where there is any, is horrendous. On many thoroughfares, only the cross-streets are marked, so unless you already know what street you're on you will simply have to guess. But even if you did know you could still be lost. Say you're on Washington Street. Okay, which one? Boston has several. There's Washington Street that wends its way from downtown to the South End, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Roxbury and West Roxbury. But there's also a Washington Street in Brighton, another in Dorchester, another in Chelsea and yet another in Hyde Park. In cases such as this, a GPS is of limited use.

Boston, like most big American cities, only requires that potential drivers pass a brief course to get their license. The course reviews the city taxi regulations, including driver qualifications, vehicle requirements, the meters, and so forth; explains some rules of the road, such as how to use cab stands, using the radio, basic traffic laws; offers tips on etiquette, grooming and safety; but does little in the way of making sure drivers know their way around the city. This is done on the job.

In Europe, where taxi driving is more a bonafide career, drivers tend to be more extensively trained. In Paris, drivers undergo an average of 400 hours of training before getting their license. Drivers of London's famous "black cabs" go through the world's most rigorous training course. Expected to decide routes immediately without relying on a map or GPS system, drivers all must complete the Knowledge of London Examination System--better known simply as "The Knowledge"--before getting a license. In addition to the street layout, drivers must be familiar with the city's places of interest and traffic patterns in order to whisk passengers to their destination. It takes an average of 34 months to prepare for the examination, and most applicants will flunk it 12 times before passing.

"Cab Ten-Twenty-One! Cab Ten-Twenty-One! Who trained you, sir? ...Cab Ten-Twenty-One, were you trained?"

I know how Cab 1021 must feel. My first couple of weeks I could only find my way to the most obvious landmarks: Quincy Market, the airport, Boston Garden, South Station. It seems I spent half my time completely lost. I lived in dread of having to find an address in some out-of-the-way neighborhood, especially if the passenger couldn't help with directions. Too cheap to buy a GPS, I began each trip with a five-minute consultation with a street atlas. I remember picking up three businessmen from a hotel downtown who needed to get to an urgent meeting at address in the hospital district. After each wrong turn, the leader of the group would call the meeting's hosts and say, "Sorry, we'll be another five minutes." By the time they got out, they were 45 minutes late.

"Cab Ten-Twenty-One, the customer just canceled."

One night, I picked up a fare in Charlestown needing to go to Boston, usually a five to ten minute trip over the Charlestown Bridge. But traffic was being detoured around Bunker Hill Community College for a motion picture being shot, and the next thing I know, I'm bumping along an unpaved road underneath Interstate 93 trying to find my way around a surreal forest of giant concrete columns supporting the elevated freeway. My fare asked me if I knew where I was going. Oh sure, sure, I said, trying to make it sound like I was taking some exotic shortcut. I find what appears to be a way out, but the roadway leads me into a tunnel that goes God Knows Where. Before we know it, we are climbing the Tobin Bridge, and it's obvious that we're going the wrong way. I apologized to my passenger and assured him we'll get right back on track. But road construction in Chelsea closes the first exit, so I have to get off at the next exit, where another detour leads me into Everett and Chelsea. After ten minutes of wandering around an industrial wasteland, I finally found an on-ramp to go back over the Tobin Bridge. By the time I drop the fare off in Boston, 30 minutes passed and the meter read $22.45. I apologized again to the fare, who got out of the car, pulled a ten dollar bill out of his wallet, crumpled it, threw it at me, and said, "Go fuck yourself." Another driver might have gotten out and picked a fight, but I understood how the guy felt. I probably would have done the same thing. So I just put the car in gear and drove off, knowing the other $12.45 would taken out of my cut at the end of the night. A rather expensive lesson in Boston geography.

"Cab Ten-Twenty-One, tell ya what, gas it up and bring it in. You either have to be properly trained or think of something else. Right now, you're not cut out for this."

Having been there, I secretly wished for Ten-Twenty-One tough it out, even though I have absolutely no idea who he (or she) is.

Behind Closed Doors

2009-05-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

You want to know what people say about you after you've separated for the night? Ask a cabbie.

I pick up young a couple outside a popular Back Bay bistro. They hop into the car and direct me to the North End. I punch the meter, and put the car into gear.

"Whew! I'm so glad you did most of the talking," the guy says. "I don't think I could have done it."

"Why not?" she answers. "He's one of your best friends."

"Since he moved in with her, he's become one of those guys we used to make fun of after they've moved in with their girlfriend. 'Yes dear'... 'No dear'... 'Can I get you anything else, dear?' He's practically turned into her butler. I mean she's very pretty, but what a pain in the ass."

"I think he must have sensed that from you because he opened up when you went to the bathroom."

"What'd ya mean?"

"I mean, he let his guard down and talked to me."

"And?"

"And he said he's very much in love with her..."

"Yeah, so?"

"But they've never slept together."

"Really? You gotta be kidding me! And they've been going out for a year, living together for nine months, sleeping in the same bed?"

"She told him that she respects him too much... that she's just not ready; that she's waiting for, what, I don't know, that perfect moment, I guess."

"Oh gawd... now I know it."

"Know what?"

"That she's sleeping around. There has always been something about her that bugged me. Something... I don't know... I guess you could say I had a hunch about her. But now I know it. She's just using him as a meal ticket until something better turns up."

"Wow. Can you imagine? It's like having all the worst parts of a relationship but none of the good parts."

"And he's like some poor schlump trying to push a boulder uphill while eagles are trying to peck out his eyes... aarhg! aarhg! aarhg!"

They both laugh. I'm grinning broadly, trying my best to keep from laughing out loud myself.

After the next block, they ask me to pull over. Right here's close enough, they say.

"You know what?" she says. "Maybe you should talk to him. Try to get him to see the light."

"No way," he answers as he reaches across to hand me a crisp $20 bill, telling me to keep two bucks for the tip.

"Why not?" she asks.

"Because he's gonna get his heart broken by this bimbo, that's for sure. And when it happens, it will be so awesome!"

They both laugh again. As they climb out of the car the woman leans in before shutting the door, "Gee, sorry you had to hear all that."

Not a problem, I say. Actually, you made my night.

You Are What You Drive

2009-05-02T08:32:00.001-07:00

Cabbies like to think of themselves as good judges of character, able to size people up and put them ease, making them at home in the brief amount of time they spend in the car. It's self-interest, of course: We're just angling for a better tip. We also learn to judge people simply by the cars they drive: expecting the doofus in the minivan in the adjacent lane to suddenly swerve in front of us without using their turn signal; waiting before proceeding into an intersection so the guy in the Dodge Dakota pickup coming the other way can run the red light; learning that it's better to cut off the Mercedes versus the rusted out Bonneville, the logic being that the guy with more to lose should always give way.

The following list, started about 15 years ago and revised and updated over the years, is a thumbnail sketch of the personality types associated with various car models. I've tweaked it, but can't take credit for all the descriptions.

Feel free to add your own.

Acura Integra –I am impotent
Buick LaCrosse – I am older than 4 of the 50 states
Cadillac DeVille – I am a very good Mary Kay salesman
Cadillac Escalade – I am a pimp
Chevrolet Aveo – I delivered pizza for four years to get this car
Chevrolet Camaro – I enjoy beating the hell out of people
Chevrolet Corvette – I'm in a mid-life crisis
Chevrolet HHR – I wouldn't be caught dead in a PT Cruiser
Chevrolet Monte Carlo – I enjoy putting out engine fires
Chrysler Sebring Convertible – I have always wanted to own the Buick of sports cars
Chrysler Town & Country Minivan – Let me tell you about my kids
Dodge Caravan – (see above)
Dodge Magnum – I have a switchblade in my sock
Dodge Viper – I have an armor-plated prenuptial agreement
Ferrari Fiorano – I am known to prematurely ejaculate
Ford Crown Victoria – I enjoy having people slow to 55 mph and change lanes when I pull up behind them
Ford Escort – I teach third grade and voted for Eisenhower
Ford Focus – I have just graduated and have no credit
Ford Mustang – I have a kilo of cocaine in my wheel well
Ford Shelby – I slow down to 85 in school zones
Ford Taurus – I work at WalMart
Honda Accord – I lack any originality and am basically a lemming.
Hummer SUV – I have a three-inch weenie
Hummer H2 – I am leading a militia to overthrow the government
Infiniti Q45 – I'm too bland for German cars
Jaguar XJ6 – I am so rich I will pay 60K for a car that is in the shop 280 days per year.
Jeep Wrangler – I enjoy skinny dipping
Lamborghini Gallardo – I only have one testicle
Lexus GS – I am a physician with 17 malpractice suits pending.
Lincoln Town Car – I live for bingo and covered dish suppers
Mercury Grand Marquis – (See above)
Mercedes S Class – I will beat you up if you ask me for an auto-graph
Mercedes M Class – I have a daughter named Bitsy and a son named Cole
Mazda Miata – I do not fear being decapitated by an eighteen- wheeler
MGB – I am dating a mechanic
Mini – This car is my life
Oldsmobile Cutlass – I just stole this car and I'm going to make a fortune off the parts
Pontiac PT Cruiser – I have a thing for coffins, too.
Peugeot 505 Diesel – I am on the EPA's Ten Most Wanted List
Plymouth Neon – I sincerely enjoy doing the Macarena
Porsche Boxter – I have yet to complete my divorce proceedings.
Porsche Carrera – I am dating big haired women who otherwise would be inaccessible to me
Rolls Royce Phantom – I think Dick Cheney is a tad bit too liberal
Saturn Astra – Someday my car will be a collector's item
Smart Car – I always wanted to be a circus clown
Subaru Outback – I am still in the closet
Suzuki SX4 – I will start the 11th grade in the fall.
Suzuki SX4 – Crossover I will start the 12th grade in the fall.
Toyota Camry – See Honda Accord
Toyota Prius – I am a friend to animals and talk with my mouth full
Toyota Yaris – I don't know what it means either
Volkswagen New Beetle – I'm out of the closet
Volkswagen Jetta – I do not give a damn about J.D. Power or his reports.
Volkswagen Microbus – I am tripping right now
Volkswagen Touareg – Don't ask me to pronounce it
Volvo V700 Wagon – I am frightened of my wife

A Change of Luck

2009-04-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

It's a slow night, nothing is moving. The radio is quiet and the stands everywhere are full of idle cabs. Some drivers cruise the streets downtown hoping to catch a fare, others give up and call it an early night, others resign themselves to the situation. They park on a stand and wait. To relieve the boredom, they pull out a newspaper or book, talk on the phone, get out and chat with the other drivers, eat, sleep... anything.

What the hell is going on? Everybody is out but hardly anybody is taking a cab. Is the economy so bad no one can afford taxis anymore? Has everybody spontaneously decided to lose weight and get in shape by walking everywhere? Or is it a case of spring fever in which everyone has embraced the promise of summer by hoofing it around town?

Whatever the case, it's misery for cabbies. I've read through the paper twice, something I've never done, ever, not even when I worked at a newspaper. Perhaps sensing my frustration, the dispatcher takes pity on me. "Two-Zero-Five, Cab Two-Zero-Five." In a teasing voice he growls, "Would you like a little job, just a short local, or perhaps you would rather stay put and watch the pretty girls?" I ponder the question, not because I'm debating whether or not I want the job, but whether or not I want to give him the satisfaction of goading me with his show of munificence.

As I roll up to the address, there's a stocky, middle-aged woman standing on the sidewalk holding a couple of overstuffed shopping bags. She opens the door, pushes her stuff over, then heaves herself into the car.

"And how are we doing this evening?" says the woman in a voice that could fill an auditorium. It's a curious change in protocol, as I usually do the greeting.

Fine, I say.

"Busy, tonight?"

Not really. In fact, it's been pretty slow.

"Well, maybe I'll change your luck for you," she says in cool, reassuring voice.

I'd appreciate that.

"Say, you don't sound like you're from Boston."

I grew up in Colorado.

"A cowboy, huh? Actually, you sound more like a TV newsman."

I've been told that before.

"You go back home much?"

No, not for years.

"That's too bad. You still have family there."

Just a sister. Both my parents are gone.

"I'm so sorry. You don't visit your sister?"

No. We don't really get along.

"Why not?"

This woman has now ventured into territory I don't usually go with anybody, much less a stranger, but there's something about her manner, that and the atmosphere of a cab, that sense anonymity and isolation that makes a cab is a kind of sanctum, a place where truths are told and secrets revealed. And it cuts both ways. While I usually do the asking, I now find myself doing the talking. For the next few blocks, I tell the woman a bit about growing up, my family, about how my sister became estranged from my parents and how that, in turn, estranged me from her.

As she gathered her things, she told me, "You need to get in touch with your sister. You need to repair that relationship, even if it means betraying your parents. They're gone. You can't hurt their feelings, and she needs to have that validation. God bless you."

As I drove away, my head was swimming. Would I do as she told me? I didn't know. Still don't. But it certainly got me thinking. And, wouldn't you know it, my luck did change.

I booked more than $300 in fares. Not bad on any night.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

2009-04-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

People ask if driving a cab is scary, if I ever feel threatened.

Naw, I say, I just stay alert and do my best to avoid trouble. But, they ask, what about the glass partitions? Isn't there a reason the city requires those?

From what I understand, the city made the partitions mandatory about 20 years ago following a wave of robberies and shootings of cab drivers. But me? I think they were really installed to protect passengers from cab drivers.

Take the other day. I pull up to a cab stand, getting in line behind two other cabs in front of me. I proceed to read my newspaper when I look up and notice the driver of the lead cab animatedly talking to the driver behind the wheel of the car directly in front of me. The guy is completely engrossed in what he is saying, waving his arms excitedly, when he points directly at my car, no, directly at me. This gets my attention, as I don't have any idea who this driver is. They continue talking for a bit when a woman walks up and gets into the lead cab. The driver breaks away from his conversation and runs back to his cab.

After he pulls away from the stand with his fare, the driver of the car in front of me gets out of his cab and walks back to my cab. I roll down my window.

"You da guy?"

What guy? I ask.

"Da guy who stabbed Georgie?"

What!?

"You were driving dis cab last night?"

Yeah, so?

"Da guy said da guy driving dis cab stabbed Georgie, dat Georgie cut in front of you on a stand and dat you got into an ahgument and stabbed him wid your key. Sent him to da hospital."

No kidding?

"But tell me, how'd ya get out of jail so soon?"

Now, I don't know this guy, never heard of Georgie (although some of the other cabbies later told me that Georgie is well-known nutcase with hair-trigger temper), and though I was driving this cab the night before, anyone who knows me knows I would never get into big argument over who's ahead of whom on a cab stand, much less do anything violent, no matter how wronged I was. This clearly was a case of mistaken identity.

Yeah, that was me, I said.

"Holy shit."

Don't ever cut in front of me on a cab stand. Now, scram, before I get irritated.

Being a badass never felt so good.

Last Fare of the Night

2009-04-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

"Hey, over here, this guy speaks English."

The guy was shouting to his girlfriend, who was negotiating with another cab driver sitting on the stand in front of me. They were two kids, mid-twenties, maybe, and were both a little wobbly from a night out drinking.

"Hey, mister, can you help us, we need a hotel room?"

Whadyamean?

"Every hotel around here is sold out."

Yeah, well, it's Marathon weekend, and with the Bruins and the Celtics in the playoffs and the Red Sox, I'm not surprised. What do you expect me to do?

"Don't you know a place?"

I know a lot of places, but I can't tell you if they have a room. By the way, it's three in the morning, you picked a hell of time to begin looking.

"Yeah. But the subways and buses are shut down. Can't you just drive us around to hotels until we find a place?"

My cabbie ears prick up. This, I tell myself, could be extremely lucrative. But right now I'm at the end of my shift. I'm tired, and I just want to go home. Besides, these kids are so goofy and pathetic, I kinda feel sorry for them.

Look, I tell the bleary-eyed couple, I could drive you around but that will cost you a small fortune. I pull out my Boston-area street guide, which includes a listing of area hotels and their phone numbers. I hand over the book and tell them to start calling. After a few minutes they find a place in Somerville. I start the meter and start driving.

"Thanks, mister. You're the best."

Along the way, they insist on talking, so I ask them if they just dropped into town tonight.

"We used to go out together, but haven't seen each other in a long time," the boyfriend says. "Yeah," the girl chimes in. "I got into town and called him up. We met at bar and had a bunch of drinks."

You mean, I ask the boyfriend, you live in Boston?

"Jamaica Plain," he answers.

So, why aren't we driving to Jamaica Plain? Why are you going to spend $200 to stay the night in a hotel?

"It's a little complicated," the boyfriend says... "He's married," the girlfriend answers. "Oops! I shouldn't have said that," she says with a giggle.

Look, I don't care one way or another, I say. I just asked.

"It was a big mistake," the boyfriend says. "Getting married, that is."

And what, I ask myself, will he be thinking tomorrow morning? And what will he be telling his wife about his whereabouts the night before?

"We are soooo lucky," the girlfriend says. "We not only got a cab driver who speaks English, but a really cool cab driver." The boyfriend leans over, sticking his hand across for me to shake. "Hey, what's your name. I'm Trevor. I just want to shake the hand of Boston's coolest cab driver."

This makes me wince. I hate it when fares try to get chummy with me. I ignore the extended hand and give him a name, any name.

By the time we reach the hotel, the two are cooing and giggling in the back. At the hotel, they again thank me profusely, hand me the fare and a decent tip, and walk through the sliding glass doors--a disaster in the making.

I cash out for the night. At home, I lean over and give my wife a kiss on the forehead. She moans softly and rolls over. I go downstairs, crack open a beer, and watch the early morning news.

Cabbie Economics

2009-04-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

"Tom, did you turn in all your receipts, yesterday? Did you forget any vouchers?"

It was my boss. Actually, it wasn't yesterday. It was today. I had gotten off work just five hours before, around 4 a.m. It was now a little after 9 a.m. and I had barely 3 hours of sleep under my belt. What the fuck?

"Your waybill. It was short."

"No, I turned in everything," I answered. "And what do you mean, it's short?"

"Four dollars. Your total was off. You owe us four dollars."

"I didn't add it up," I said. "The dispatcher added it up, just like he always does. Take it up with him."

"You owe us four dollars."

Jeeezuz H. Christ. He wakes me up over four bucks? Look, I say, double-check with the dispatcher. If it turns out I owe you four dollars, I'll square it at the start of my next shift, okay?"

"Right," and he hangs up.

There might be cheaper species on earth, but taxi drivers, and particularly taxi owners, have got to be the cheapest. I've seen drivers fight over the right to take some old lady four blocks to the grocerey store for a loaf of bread and a fifty-cent tip, or nearly come to blows over whose turn it is to pay six bucks to get the car they share washed.

Owners, however, take it to entirely new level. At my garage, the owner this past winter refused to heat the garage. The mechanic ended up wearing two sets of long underwear under his overalls in order to try and stay warm. His hands were so cold he had a difficult time holding tools he needed for repairs, and his feet were numb by midway through the shift. Two assistant mechanics quit rather than deal with the indignity.

The garage staff--office, dispatchers and mechanics--all share a single restroom, a dank, dark cubby that is a converted closet. Like the garage, there's no heat, the floor's constantly wet, and there's no door, but privacy isn't much of an issue because there's no light, either.

Unless it's a safety issue, defects in cars go unrepaired for weeks. This includes seat belts, horns, interior lights, radios--the kinds of things that are really necessities when driving a cab. Drivers who hit potholes and are unlucky enough to blow a tire can expect to be charged for the replacement tire. Same goes for minor damage not covered by the owner's insurance.

Ironically, driver's--including myself--put up with it all. The alternative would be going out to find a "real" job.

Time to get some sleep.

Lucky Numbers

2009-03-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

Every shift begins the same. I'm handed the waybill. The waybill is a record of the work for each night. Regulations require every cabbie to keep a waybill for every fare they carry. In this case, it's an envelope. Inside are the car keys. Outside is printed a grid on which each fare is documented: where and when, the number of passengers, the total fare. On the opposite side are lines summarizing the work: the cab number, the odometer reading at the beginning of the shift and the end of the shift, the meter reading at the beginning of the shift and the end of the shift, and the total tally. When I finish my shift, the dispatcher adds up the numbers, tells me what I owe the company (I keep 45 percent plus tips). The money is stuffed back into the envelope for the owner to count later and a new waybill is written up for the next driver.

I turn the waybill over to check the cab number. Cab 77. Dammit.

"Cab 77?," asks Steve, who is cashing out at the end of his shift. "That's a good cab; a good number."

Who is he kidding? Cab 77 is a piece of shit. All these cars are pieces of shit, second-hand police cruisers driven into the ground and sold at auction. The mechanics do their best to put them into shape--after all, they have to pass inspection--but the cars are dogs to begin with and Boston streets and traffic only beat them up more. Rare is a cab that doesn't have something wrong with it: doors or windows that don't quite shut, a broken defroster or a heater that won't turn off, wipers that merely smear the windshield. In most cases, the defects are minor annoyances. In some cases--such as bad brakes or stearing alignment--it's a real problem.

In Cab 77's case, the horn doesn't work, and in Boston, I'd rather drive on four flat tires than not have my car's horn. Not an hour goes by that some idiot on a cell phone doesn't start drifting into my lane, or hesitates pulling into the intersection when the light turns green. When someone does something moronic like that, there's nothing like laying on a long, angry burst of the horn to get even. Without it, I feel powerless and vulnerable. It's a stress reliever, and after 12 hours of driving Cab 77, I'm so cranked up and irritable that it takes a six-pack to calm me down.

So Steve's comment about 77 being a good cab just ticks me off. But Steve, like a lot of cabbies, is superstitious. He believes that providence, not dumb luck or perseverence, is the secret to success. He's played the same lottery number for years after winning $500 with it once; he begins every shift by playing the same cab stand, swearing that it's his "lucky stand," no matter the time of day or how many cabs are backed up on the stand; and he never, absolutely never, will stop for a street hail for someone wearing a green overcoat. Why? Perhaps it's because Steve is Haitian. Maybe it's cultural, and has something to do with all that voodoo stuff. Who knows? Maybe it's just Steve.

I tend to take a more practical view of the job. Just sit down in the seat and drive.

A Room with a View

2009-03-03T04:02:00.000-08:00

One of the benefits of driving a cab is meeting people. At least, you better think so because you are going to meet a lot of them. Most cabbies probably don't remember the first fare they ever drove. Heck, most cabbies don't remember the first fare they carried at the beginning of a shift (For the record, my first fare ever were three guys who flagged me off a street corner at 5 o'clock in the morning. They were so drunk they couldn't remember their own addresses; I drove them a couple of blocks and let them out.). As personal interactions go, these exchanges are generally brief, to the point and detached. Occasionally a fare will chat me up, something I don't mind doing, but most people prefer to sit quietly in the back, reading the paper, watching the scenery go by, talking on their cell phone or texting to a friend.

For some reason, however, when couples or groups get into a cab they become very unselfconscious. Business meetings, drug deals, marriage proposals all take place in taxi cabs. Things that people would never othewise do in public they'll do in the back of a cab, assuming a level of privacy that is extraordinary considering they're still on public streets and that a total stranger is sitting less than two feet away. There's something about the sense of anonymity of riding in cab that gives people a sense of freedom. I've had couples break up, fall in love, and even make love in the back of my cab.

Once, I had all three happen during the same cab ride. I was a new driver, and still getting to know the city. I had picked up this couple outside a club right around last call. They tumbled into the back set laughing and giggling and gave me an address downtown near the Financial District--a twisting knot of one-way streets that still confuses me. I turned on the meter, put the car into gear and headed toward town. I hadn't driven a half-block when the mood in the back suddenly changed.

"I couldn't believe you tonight," said the girl in a lilting British accent of someone perhaps from India or Pakistan.

"Whatd'ya mean?" slurred the boyfriend.

"You acted as if I wasn't there... bragging to your friends, laughing grotesquely at your stupid jokes, going on about yourself. Really, I couldn't believe it."

"You seemed to have fun."

"You became a totally different person; someone I don't even recognize."

"Ah, c'mon."

"Really. I fell in love with a man who was gentle and sweet, a man who was sensitive and affectionate. Tonight, you were none of those things. That's not the man I love. That's not a man I can love."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I don't love you. No, I don't even like you."

"You know, you gotta quit drinking when you take drugs," says the boyfriend with a heavy sigh, "because that's the drugs talking."

"No, I mean it. It's so sad. I just think what a horrible waste of time. I just want to go back to India."

"Okay, whatever."

This, I thought to myself, was going to be a long ride for these two. We still had about 10 or 15 minutes to go. There was nothing but silence from the back seat.

Then, from the back, I heard bodies shifting in the seat, the sounds of murmuring and kissing, of clothes being pulled at and unbuttoned. I glanced up at my rearview mirror, but saw nothing. They were clearly taking advantage of the rear seat couch.

"Say it," she whispered.

"Huh?"

"Say it," she repeated, followed by the sounds of more kissing and some slurping noises.

"Never," she said. "Never ever leave me."

The goings-on in the back were becoming a serious distraction. I really needed to fixate on the road. But soon, I was faced with another problem: I didn't know where I was going. I was hoping these two would finish up so I could ask for directions, but after another couple blocks I couldn't wait.

"Excuse me," I interrupted at the next stoplight. "Can you help me out with some directions?"

The two stopped what they were doing, pulled themselves together, and checked where they were.

"Go to the next light; make a left and then drop us off," said the boyfreind. "We'll walk the rest of the way."

In the time it took to drive less than 4 miles, these two had broken up, found each other, made love and devoted the rest of their lives to each other--at least until the next cab ride. At the curb, I stopped the meter. The fair was $16.75. The boyfriend handed me a twenty and told me to keep the change. Not a bad tip, either.

Cash 'n' Carry

2009-02-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

I just finished putting together my taxes for the year--never a pleasant task any year--but a rather eye-opening one this, my first year driving a taxi. Being paid in cash, and walking away from each shift with a thick, gambler's roll of dough in my pocket, I deluded myself into thinking that I was actually making good money. What a knucklehead!

Sure, many days I almost felt like a millionaire at the end of a shift with cash stuff in my socks (one of my rather lame systems of organization and anti-theft--what robber would possibly take the time to check my socks for money?) and my pockets. But, first off, all of the bills were all small, nothing bigger than a twenty. Second, by the time I gave the owner his cut (55 percent) and deducted the gas I paid to fill the car's tank (another $40 or $50 bucks), not to mention health insurance, time and money spent getting to and from work, and little things like snacks and bottled water over the course of the shift, the total amount dwindled by about two-thirds. Lastly, after factoring in the total time spent driving (12-hour shifts), I figured that, on an hourly basis, I earned less than most kids at Taco Bell.

Welcome to the real world, bucko.

But my naivete really showed itself when I walked into the owner's office a couple of weeks ago and asked if he did any kind of income reporting to the IRS for his drivers. His normally somnolent disposition, like a bull frog sunning himself on a rock, turned instantly to one of almost wide-eyed rage, like I had suddenly told him I was an undercover agent for the feds. "NO!," he shouted. "You report whatever you want. But..." he said, wagging his finger at me for emphasis, "don't go talking about this with the other drivers"--the implication being that not only did he not want to know if his drivers filed proper returns, but that he suspected many of them didn't.

"It's only a matter of time before they crack down on the cab industry," one veteran cabbie told me. "I mean, how many businesses are left that deal mostly in cash?"

He has a point. Having been through the unpleasant experience of an IRS audit once in my life, I'll play it safe and file.

Cash, and the lure of easy cash, make cabbies excellent targets for robbers and thieves. We are, in a world dominated by credit and debit cards, relatively rare. Though I haven't been robbed, just stiffed a couple of times, one driver I know has been. He was the unluckey recipient of a radio call one night to some address, only when he got there, he was jumped by three young hoodlums. They took his bankroll, his wallet, his cellphone and backpack, the keys to the car and ripped the hand mike out of the radio. Then, just for good measure, they slugged him, leaving him stranded on the streets. He was one of three cabbies from different companies robbed by the same gang in one night. When I asked the owner about it, he pretended not to know anything, which was total bs, because not only were all the drivers talking about it, but the police came by to search the company's dispatch records in order to find out from what number the call came in. We never learned if they caught the bastards, but to everyone's surprise, the driver showed up the next night for work as if nothing ever happened. Surprising because not from his standpoint, but that his wife even let him. Hell, I couldn't even tell mine about the incident or she'd never allow me to drive again.

Twenty Questions

2009-02-09T09:50:00.001-08:00

Before being let out on my own. The owner wanted me trained, so he had me ride around for two nights with Pat, a veteran driver of 30 years. Pat, the onwer said, "is one of the best," "a guy who's seen it all."

Pat's a white guy, pushing sixty, with bottle-thick glasses and carrying a beer gut that looks like he's swallowed a beach ball. Over it stretches a gray, coffee-stained sweatshirt that perfectly matches his gray, coffee-stained sweatpants. Topping it off is a ubiquitous Boston Celtics cap that I assume will be replaced by a Patriots cap come fall. For a moment, I wondered if this was what I'd look like in 20 years.

Most of the time, Pat sits on a cab stand, either outside one of the hotels or at the airport. He doesn't like crusing so much, catching street hails, explaining that it's a waste of gasoline, and most of those jobs end up being short jobs. He hates short jobs. He tries to boost his chances of getting more airport runs, which typically run between $25 and $40, depending on where the fare is going to or from. His strategy means he also spends a lot of his shift killing time on a cab stand.

All this time just waiting around gives us time to talk. Pat it turns out grew up in the projects in Charlestown, after which he went into the military, which he hated. He then got a job at a bank, which he hated more, so he quit, and began working in his brother's construction business, which he liked okay, but then he got hurt and had to quit. He then started driving a cab, something he's done ever since. I asked him if he ever thought at the time that he'd be doing it 30 years later. Pat gives me a kind of perplexed look, and tells me no, he never thought about it one way or another. What does he like about it? The freedom: no one's lookin' over your shoulder. You set your own hours, go at your own pace. Also, adds Pat, he likes people.

I then ask him the usual "Twenty Questions" about driving a cab: Ever driven a big-time celebrity? Just Bob Villa, television shill and former host of This Old House. Ever been held up? "Nah, I can usually smell trouble before it happens--in which case I won't give the guy a ride." Anybody ever have sex in the back of your cab? "Jeezuz Christ, no way. I wouldn't let that happen." Anyone ever thrown up in the cab? "God no, and I don't intend to ever let that happen, either."

A week later, I was driving my own cab. I got a call to pick someone up for an early morning airport run. I pulled up to the address and two women were sitting on the front steps, waiting for me. While I put the suitcases in the trunk, the two hugged and the old woman then got into the cab.

On the way to Logan, the woman began knawing on an apple and chattering on about her trip to visit her son and grandson, about how cute the kid was and how difficult it was to keep the tot interested so she'd invent games to play with him, but then he came down with a flu and she felt so sad for him but was also afraid she might get it herself; about how she regretted how far away they lived and how she hated to meddle in his son's affairs but worked really hard not to...

I was nodding, wishing she'd just shut up. I had just pulled into the tunnel that goes under the harbor to the airport when, all of sudden, she coughed and then fell silent. I turned around to see if something was the matter. She was bug-eyed with her cheeks ballooned out. As soon as I saw that, I had one of those moments when you realize something awful is about to happen. The next moment she spewed all over the back of the seat. But we were in the tunnel; there was no place to pull over. I immediately rolled down her window and she graciously stuck her head out and wretched over the side of the car until we reached the other end, where I could then pull over. I handed her a wad of napkins wedged into the pocket of the door. She got out and did her best to clean up, flinging off bits of apple mixed with cereal. Pale and shaking, she apologized, saying she hadn't thrown up in years. I assured her it wasn't a problem; happens all the time.

I dropped her off at the terminal, gave her the suitcases and suggested she might want to change clothes before the flight. The next two hours I spent at a self-serve car wash cleaning up the cab. It looked okay, but I wasn't quite sure, figuring my nose had been innured to the smell. There was only one way to find out.

My next fare was a long ride to Beverly with a businessman on his way to an important meeting. He buckled himself in, and told me where we were going. A young, friendly Irish guy, we talked about sports and his various travels en route. The fact that he didn't say anything told me I had cleaned sufficiently.

We were about halfway there when I turned around and noticed that stuck on his shoulder belt was a fleck of regurgitated apple. Horrified, I kept him talking, hoping he wouldn't notice, trying to think of some lame excuse if he suddenly stopped mid-sentence and asked, "Excuse me, what's this?" Luckily, he didn't. At his destination, he got out and gave me generous tip, after which I flicked the belt clean and gave the cab another going over. The rest of the day passed uneventfully, although when I handed the keys to the night-shift driver, I again worried he would ask, "Say, what's that funny smell?" I didn't tell him what happened. I figured I'd hear about it if he noticed.

So far, not a word.

Breaking In

2009-01-25T06:16:00.000-08:00

I'm still driving... almost 12 hours on the road and, oddly, I'm kind of enjoying it. I know I'll be wiped by the end of the shift, but when the meter is clicking away it's kind of addictive, like getting a streak in poker. You have a hard time pulling away from the table. It's my first week, and the hardest thing is not finding my way around. No, the hardest thing for me is understanding what the dispatchers are yelling at me.

These guys, who work in a dingy partition over a dark, grimy garage, are angry from the moment they sit down. This means that if you don't catch an address on the first pass they start yelling at you like you're an idiot. But between the radios in the cars--old, scratchy things that would make Sir Ben Kingsley sound like he's got a mouthful of mud--and the dispatchers' thick Arab or Boston accents, I can't tell what language they're speaking much less what address their giving me. And as they raise their voices, they just get increasingly unintelligible. Take the following exchange yesterday:

"Cab #77. "

"Cab 77, go ahead."

"Cab 77, go to 55 Behemoth Street."

Behemoth Street? I've never heard of Behemoth Street. So I ask, "Cab 77, say again."

"Cab 77, that's Five-Five Bee Myth Street" he yells.

"Bee Myth Street?" I answer back.

"NO!" he screams. "FIVE-FIVE BEE MYTH! ...B AS IN BALL."

Now I'm really flustered. I have no idea what he's saying. I apologize and ask for him to spell out the street name.

At the top of his lungs, the radio cracking in distortion. "SEVENTY-SEVEN, WUZ DA MATTA WISS YOU! I SAID BEE-MYTH. LIKE DA BILL GRIMS AND DA ROCK. B-L-Y-M-O-U-T-H... BEE MYTH."

Now I get it. "Oh, you mean Plymouth Street?"

"YES," he answers in total exasperation. "BEE MYTH. Geezuz, 77, clean out your ears or you will never make it in this business."

So far, I haven't been robbed, though I have been stiffed twice. One poor woman simply confessed shedidn't have the $6.50 fare. She knew I would have to cover it myself and felt bad about it. I knew she would have paid if she had the money on her, so I let it go. As it was, I was the one who felt bad for her.The other time the guy told me to wait outside while he ran upstairs to get some money. I never saw him again. Stupid me. I should have asked him to leave something behind.

Test driving

2009-01-13T06:20:00.000-08:00

We're rude. We're slovenly. We barely speak English, or if we do, we never shut up. We have no idea where we're going. That, or we intentionally take a roundabout route in order to jack up the fare and rip you off. We drive like maniacs, endangering both pedestrians and other motorists. The cars we drive are dirty and cramped. We are ubiquitous except, of course, when you really need us, when, like cockroaches after you turn on the kitchen light, we disappear all at once. Like sewer rats or street bums, we are a part of the city--a necessary evil, and one of the things people most like to complain about. We are Boston's cabbies.

There are 1825 licensed cabs in Boston, and some 7,000 drivers to drive them. As professions go, we rank somewhere between garbageman and a fast-food server, yet every day thousands of people entrust their lives to us. For the most part, we get them to where they are going unscathed. In return, we get a brief glimpse into their lives. That plus $2.80 per mile and, perhaps, a tip. These little anonymous exchanges are the grist for this space.

I'm a newbie at driving a cab. As with most my hack colleagues, driving a cab is not my life's ambition. If asked, I tell people that driving is my job; writing is my career. Unfortunately, writing doesn't pay the bills. That's where driving comes in.

So, how does one become a cabbie?

Other than a lack of marketable skills and a valid driver's license, not much.

In Boston, getting behind the wheel requires one to:

1: Go to the Boston Police Headquarters. There you will submit to a criminal record check, a driving record check and a drug test. You'll then be given brief interview before being sent to...

2: Taxi school, a 3 day course at Roxbury Community College. Here you'll learn the finer points of driving for-hire in Boston, as well as get some handy tips to make your new career more profitable. Such as: "Shower every day" and "do not mumble." After passing the test, you...

3: Get a job. This entails asking around among the local taxi fleets, which generally lease a car at a rate of $700 per week. The car is shared among two drivers, who work 12-hour shifts, either 4 am to 4 pm, or 4 pm to 4 am. I work for one of the few outfits that allow to work part-time, driving two or three shifts a week, and splitting the fares with the owner on a 55 percent to 45 percent basis (I get 45 percent of the fares plus tips).

Most of the real learning, of course, happens on the job. This includes getting to know your way around town, learning what cab stands or streets to play and when, maximizing your time, dealing with passengers as well as other drivers, and protecting oneself (although in some cases the plexiglass barrier in cabs seems more designed to protect passengers from the driver rather than the other way around).

Driving isn't for everybody. It takes a certain temperment. But I for one, find it relaxing. For one thing, it gets me out of the house. Writing is very solitary and mentally strenuous. Driving allows me to socialize a bit and is relatively mindless. How long will I do it? Who knows, but as long as I do, I hope to keep up this space.