TAXI ARCHIVES

    Follow Philropost everyday. He's following you.
No child ever viewed with strains of emancipatory anticipation that glorious day when he or she could announce to gathered family and friends that he or she had grown up to be a taxi cab driver. Some may have seen this destiny approaching or may have looked upon it as a failsafe position that would Bonus Size their income. But no one ever extended nighttime prayers by begging any Deity to make life worth living by adding the blessing of taxi driving to the employment resume. So grotesque is the very suggestion that even the criminally insane do not yearn for it, although run of the mill mental defectives often explore the occupation.

     I drove a taxi for three-and-one-half years, equating to thirty-seven years in human time. Therefore, I feel somewhat qualified to form and express an opinion as to what type of individual selects this profession. There is something very wrong with the majority of these people. As to the few who are not disturbed prior to joining the ranks of the perpetually late and lost, it may be safely assumed that they will have fallen from Grace by the end of the first week of transporting other people for a living. Gambling, drinking, doping and womanizing are—in that order—the most common addictions to lead one into the beneath-the-radar world of the professional hack. Anyone damaged enough to believe that the glint of reflection from a poker chip, an ice cube, a hypodermic needle or a stripper’s eyes in any way leads to long term happiness is well-suited for this business, as is the distraught fellow who cons himself into believing he can actually get ahead in such a racket.


     I fell into the latter category. After being robbed three times in two months, I decided I needed a different sort of clientele than one tends to find by taking calls off the dispatch radio and so went out on my own. I became a gypsy. I bought a high-mileage Lincoln Town Car, swerved through the minimal bureaucracy required for legality in Arizona, and handed out stacks of business cards.
     Nearby hotels were enthusiastic. What I lacked in experience I made up for in contrast to my distant behind-the-wheel colleagues by capitalizing on the unfortunate bigotry possessed by my new select clientele. First of all, I owned my own vehicle. That meant that I kept the car in good working order and took quiet pride in the fact that whenever the Check Engine Light came on, I actually checked the engine rather than using the typical taxi driver’s solution of applying a strip of electric tape to blot out the warning signal. Second, I was not addicted to drink or drug. Third, I prioritized personal hygiene far above getting my pencil sharpened down at Madame Leah’s House of Obedience. And finally, I did not appear to come from the country of Somalia.

     Six hotels accounted for ninety percent of my business. Most of these were Marriott properties and the majority of their customers were exhausted business travelers, most of whom required very basic transportation to and from the airport. The next largest chunk of my customers were personals, or what the rest of the world would call local individuals who call one specific driver for all their transportation needs. After that came a small number of drunks and occasional mystery callers whose source of referral would be murky. This latter type often may have been infuriating, but also tended to yield the best compensation, so it was a rare thing for me to pass on one of these calls, just as it was unusual for me to enjoy it.

     I was asleep. The telephone rang. I grunted a greeting. It was Bobbi Jo. She said, “One of the dancers has a customer whose brother has a friend who says he might need a ride Tuesday, sometime, he’s not sure when. Are you available?”
     “Who is this?” I asked, hoping to stall until my brain returned to its normal alignment.
     “This is Bobbi Jo! Come on, Phil. You know who it is. Are you free Tuesday?”
     I asked my dog Roscoe to check my calendar.
     Bobbi Jo would feed me business like this once in a while in exchange for a free ride home from work. I remembered that I almost always got the better part of these deals, so I said “Yeah, sure,” and went back to sleep.

     Sure enough, Tuesday came and a voice I did not know said over the telephone, “How long will it take you to get here?”
     Some small number of people presume that their taxi driver has mental capacities which allow him or her to know everything about the customer, every detail from what the anonymous stranger looks like to his or her present location. Much as I hated to dispel this illusion, I asked, “Where are you?”
     “Residence Inn,” came the soulless charcoal voice. “Eighty-Third Avenue and the 101 Freeway. I’m going to the Airport. I’m wearing a blue leisure suit. Hurry up.”
     I hate being told to hurry up. Nevertheless I arrived in seven minutes. The man was not joking about the leisure suit.

     I introduced myself. He slumped into the backseat. “Can I trust you?” he asked as we roared off.
     I told him I thought so.
     Watching my expression in the rearview mirror, he asked, “Do you know the name Cokie Roberts?”
     I told him I did. “ABC News? National Public Radio?”
     I watched him nod. He said, “I’m her father. I find myself in a bit of trouble. The young lady who recommended you swears that you are reliable. Do you think you can help me?”
     I know my share of history, even when I’m delirious from lack of proper sleep. “Cokie Roberts’ father, you say? That would make you Hale Boggs?”
     “Correct.” Pure charcoal, no soul.
     “Congressman Hale Boggs from Louisiana?”
     “Indeed.”
     I adjusted the mirror and gave my passenger a long, soft stare. “You disappeared back in 1972, you and a guy from Alaska.”
     “Congressman Begich.”
     “Your plane was never found.”
     “I see.”
     “And yet here you are in the backseat of my car.”
     “Here I am.”
     The man plopped into the rear of my Town Car with only two briefcases for luggage certainly looked old and crafty enough to have been a politician. I smiled into the mirror. He smiled back. I said, “Hey, you know, a lot of people have been worried sick about you! Where the hell you been?”
     The normal ride to the Airport took twenty minutes. This was not an ordinary ride. So I shut my sarcastic mouth and listened. He told me that he had made trouble for himself a year before he officially disappeared. “I’d been in World War II. I’d met dignitaries and the hoi polloi. So when that pipsqueak Director of the FBI tapped my phone, well, young man, I was mortified. I marched right into the House Galley and called for the resignation of J. Edgar Hoover. Only two people had ever done that before and both of them were dead: John and Robert Kennedy. Shoot, I’d been on the Warren Commission. I knew what these FBI bastards were capable of doing. Well, the excitement died out after a while. I calmed down and after a time I didn’t give the matter much more thought. Then one day I had a visit from a fellow in New Orleans. A public figure there. He gave me information that linked the then-recent break-in at the Watergate with the assassination of JFK. He wanted my help.”
     I liked this. It was much more interesting than the guy who told me he was Paula Abdul’s illegitimate grandson.
     My passenger pointed to the Freeway exit, which was not the way to the Airport. I followed his instructions. He continued with his story.
     “October 16, 1972. I was scheduled to board a Cessna 310C in Anchorage and fly to Juneau. My friend in New Orleans called my hotel and said I should miss that plane. So I did. I learned later that night that the plane disappeared. The Coast Guard and the Air Force searched for thirty-nine days and never did find it.”

     We hopped on Route 60 westbound towards Wickenburg. I was getting uncomfortable. I asked where he had been all these years.
     “I took up with an Inuit woman and we muled for some Chinese heroin traffickers. Well, we did until Sak Red—that was her name—until she burned one of the Tibetan juice guys. Since then I have been holed up on Nogales, biding my time and watching a lot of TV.”
     “That’s some story,” I said, following his instructions by taking the 303 Freeway southbound. “How may I be of service, sir?” This was where I expected to be asked for a donation. But he surprised me.
     He patted my shoulder. “I’m old, son. May not have a lot of spare time left. I want you to take this Route over to the I-10 and go east. That’ll take us to the Airport. Long way around. I’m going to leave one of these two briefcases in your car. Cokie’s at the Biltmore tonight. You bring her the briefcase. Tell her it’s from Tom.”
     “Tom?”
     “She’ll know. Do not ask her a truckload of questions. Don’t go into any detail. Just do this for me. Here, take this.”
     He folded four one hundred dollar bills into my hand.
     “I’m not happy about this,” I said.
     He again patted my shoulder. “We’re public servants, young man. Happy doesn’t enter in to it.”

     I dropped him off at Terminal 2, the United Airlines ticket counter. He left the briefcase with me.
     I floored the gas and shot over to the Biltmore Hotel. I parked alongside the jogging path, turned off my top light, and examined the case. Oxblood, fake leather, not too heavy. I pictured myself getting arrested by federal agents for handing Cokie Roberts a case full of anthrax and dynamite. I pictured myself screaming at the TSA guys, “Wait! You don’t understand! This belongs to Hale Boggs, the missing Congressman!” That did not provoke much courage in me so I flicked open the dual locks and looked inside. All I saw was a manila envelope. I took it in hand and tore it opened. I found some photographs and a note that read: “Come to my garden at Trenton and Main where the crows and the alligators stick in the drain.” Dr. Seuss had nothing to worry about. As for the pictures, there were seven of them, all shots of Cubans, all of them with the faces circled in red ink.
     It was very much out of character for me to buy into a lunatic’s delusions, having more than enough of my own to consume my time, but this was so bizarre that I wondered if any of it amounted to anything. While wondering, I parked the Town Car, walked right by the smirking valet and into the old world hotel. I approached the front desk, placed the briefcase on the counter and wondered what to say.

     I read the name tag of the brunette behind the counter. Jennifer asked how she could help me. I told her I had a car service and that one of my passengers had asked me to drop off something for one of the hotel’s guests.
     This Jennifer’s face took on the wide-eyed stare of teenage mania. “Oh my God! Is this the package that’s for Ms. Roberts on that TV show on Sundays?”
     I told her it was.
     “Oh my God! I could get in like just so much trouble for telling you this.” She stopped to breathe. “Ms. Roberts was delayed or something and she won’t be here for like hours. I can put this in the hotel safe for her.”
     So surprised was I to learn that Cokie Roberts was actually staying at the hotel that I stuttered out my answer that what she’d said would be just fine. I gave Jennifer the briefcase. She inventoried the meager contents, placed everything in the hotel safe, and gave me a receipt. I tipped her twenty dollars. “Oh yeah,” I said, over my shoulder as I walked away, “Be sure to tell her that briefcase is from Tom.”
     I watched the evening news every night for a month, read the local and national papers, and even called a guy I barely knew at CNN. There was no news on Kennedy, Watergate, a long-missing Congressman, or anything else besides a raging war in Iraq and a booming economy for two percent of the people who lived in America.
     The truth is that I probably would not remember all this in such detail except for three things. First, I looked up Hale Boggs on the Internet and there was a faint resemblance to my passenger if you added thirty-five years and used your imagination. Second, it turns out the Congressman’s real first name, which he seldom used, was Thomas. And third, a black Mercedes 450 SLC stayed in my rearview mirror for a solid week. After that it reappeared on and off for another seven days. One morning it was simply gone and I never saw it again.

     The day after I dropped off the briefcase, I called the Biltmore to make sure Cokie Roberts had picked up the item I’d left for her. The front desk person sounded bewildered and transferred my call to the assistant manager, a fellow named Jeffrey. This Jeffrey told me it was against hotel policy to discuss guests with anyone and certainly I could understand that, couldn’t I? He reckoned thus even though I was obviously confused because they did not have anyone named Jennifer working at their hotel and as far as he knew they never had.
     I hung up and grabbed my wallet, where I’d kept the hotel receipt. It had apparently fallen out during one of my few financial transactions.
     My only other clue was Bobbi Jo, a long shot at best. I called the bar where she worked. She had been fired. Nobody knew why. The world was crazy as a soup sandwich. I taped the message about crows and alligators to my car’s visor, just for old time’s sake.
     I continued to take mystery referrals over the next couple years. They helped me pay the bills and buy a little relief here and there. I never did enjoy a single one of those mystery trips, but as a wise man once told me, happy doesn’t enter into it.

Soup, Soap and Salvation

Phil Mershon

     It may not have American roots in the Great Disappointment of 1843, but the Salvation Army links itself with the hard labor of redemption in the purest sense of the domestic dream of the Protestant Work Ethic. Work hard, they say, then work harder, give of yourself, induce others to do the same, never let up, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Oh yes, you also need to stay away from tobacco, drugs, and alcohol if at all possible.

     That interpretation may be straight out of the Southern Baptist Convention, but that was my impression of what some of the 122 countries where they operate call The Sallies, the institution that is the Salvation Army. I worked for them as a bell ringer for twenty-seven days, from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, 2010. I earned for this charitable organization a meager average of $175 each day for a total just shy of five thousand dollars, a figure that is impressive only when multiplied by the other bell ringers in Phoenix, a number which, by season’s end, came close to only about thirty full time employees. It is a number which loses much of its panache, however, once I freely admit that at the time I had no idea whatsoever to what uses that money would be put. And that is fair enough, I suppose, considering I shook my clanging rattle for no other reason than to earn cash for myself, which turns out to be where some of the money went. People asked me the question often and loudly: “Where does the money go, fella?” to which I initially replied, “In the kettle,” and then learned to respond, “For food, shelter, clothing, and the occasional rehabilitation.” After the fact, I learned the fuller solution to this mystery, but before revealing it, I will offer an examination of the short happy life of a Salvation Army bell ringer, and thank you, Ernest Hemingway.

The author on his way to the Army (first day)

     Adherents call the downtown facility The Citadel, an image very much in keeping with the militaristic ambiance this community of warriors strives to maintain. The commander in chief of The Citadel is a prim, sixtyish chap who calls himself Major Lacey. He dresses in Salvation Army finery, straight out of the unit’s haberdashery, no doubt, featuring a starched shirt so white it would make ghosts blush, military bars on both shoulders, a thin belt that probably once belonged to Walter Slezak, and slacks and shoes neatly pressed and shined. His glance at this collective body of recruits comes angled through his tiny spectacles and the swollen red nose in the center of his face leads me to suspect that at one time or another in his life of service the Major may have been a drinking man. It is his adenoidal speech one hears on the voice mail and this garnering of Christmastime donations is very much his party, one he only appears to delegate to his subordinate, the stout and territorial Ann Girard. As the Major concludes his visual examination of the troops, he takes a few steps away from the lectern and signals his soldier to attention. Ms. Girard proclaims her seventeen years of service with a proud sigh and implies more than once during the two-hour orientation that she has seen, heard and smelled every scrap of nonsense the limited imagination of a seasonal bell ringer could conceive and that therefore it would behoove each of the original 150 of us to dismiss any notions of enjoying so much as an instant of this vital assignment. Major Lacey may write the edicts, but Ann Girard is his alpha dog.

Elvis impersonator outside the Walgreens

     Even in celestial time, the orientation was long and only thirty seconds of it was devoted to the actual task of ringing the glorious bell. While Girard and her team of assistants (Shakey, Mad Dog, Bovine, Prune Face and Lardo, although we suspect these may not be their given names) reviewed such issues as invocations, daily prayers, the loss of many store locations, and the generally sad condition of the present day silent solicitor, my friend Lester Wolfe and I asked ourselves such questions as: Why a bell rather than some other attention-getting device, such as a fog horn or outboard motor? How and why did this unique approach to begging begin? What do the various Salvation Army symbols and slogans mean? And why would uninformed strangers feel inclined to slide their hard-earned currency through the slot of a little red kettle?

One of the kids who made regular donations, even though they could not afford to do so.

     The legend is that near the end of the nineteenth century, a crusty British ship captain named Joseph McFee, docked in San Francisco, was moved by the spirit of giving and set up a seaside kettle alongside a sign that urged donors to “Keep the pot boiling” with financial contributions, and in the year 1891 raised enough money to feed 15,000 Bay Area indigents over the Santa Claus holidays.

     A little more than a decade earlier, a London preacher, William Booth, responded to the stodginess of Victorian England church officials by founding an assembly that would welcome society’s outcasts. This led, over the ensuing years, to the Army becoming involved in everything from feeding the poor to providing disaster relief to tracing family histories. Booth connected with expatriate Eliza Shirley, who moved from England to the United States in search of her own family. Lieutenant Shirley launched the first U.S. division of the Salvation Army, an operation that today splits the country into four divisions, ours being the Western, headquartered in Long Beach, California. Today it strikes some as peculiar that Booth opted to call his forces an army, what with most of the inspiration being more of a sea-faring nature, but perhaps he feared the repercussions of the naval acronym Never Again Volunteer Yourself.

How nice it gets in Phoenix in the winter

     Our first day out was a long one: ten hours, plus waiting time. In the life of a fruit fly, ten hours is half a lifetime. It seemed the same to Lester and me as we stood on platform pavement, hollering, “Good morning! Merry Christmas! Thank you so very much!” while trying to develop some rhythm with the bell that would accompany such dubious holiday classics as “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and “Oops I Did It Again.” The day being what some morbid malefactor called Black Friday, our kettles were scarcely in place before the folded currency disappeared inside the cast iron. “Thank you,” we said. “Thank you,” they responded. Lester Wolfe, perhaps having more sense than myself, hung up his red jacket and silver bell after that first day. Thereafter, I was assigned to a Walgreens pharmacy in the north valley where I clanged and reciprocated jolly wishes day after agonizing day.

     It was not much fun. For one thing, those bells are tuned to a tone and pitch that caused more than one child and elder to flee into the store, hands pressed over ears, pleading for surcease. But the painful monotony of the tintinnabulation is small compared to the unending gravity of smiling in cold rain while the same gaggles of shoppers lumbered in and out of the store, rolling their eyes like dying calves while our knee joints and ankles screamed for an elixir of Icy Hot and Ben Gay. And all of this was exacerbated by the fact that we could not count on quitting once the day was over. So, for instance, after bell ringing from ten in the morning until eight in the evening, each of us had to wait around until a van driver for the Army showed up to collect our kettles, and while waiting an extra thirty to sixty minutes for this to happen, we were instructed to remain standing and to continue clanging, all without financial remuneration, a violation of labor laws, even in Arizona.

Yellow cars never donated

     Perhaps no amount of pay—and ours was quite low—would have served as proper compensation had it not been for the ample opportunities to investigate as participant-observers that most unreliable of realities: human nature. I noted, for example, that no one driving a yellow car ever once donated anything except a snarl. I also recognized why the Army forbids its recruits from sitting down on the job: the prospective donor likes to see the bell ringer making a sacrifice to both mind and body. I further observed that all that was required for a slew of contributions to transpire was for one person to approach the kettle with cupped hand hovering over the slot. Similarly, if one person ignored the opportunity to give up something for nothing, the next twenty hominids would respond in kind. I noted, too, with some optimism, that much maligned youth typically were among the most consistent and generous givers of monetary tidings. Show me a kid with a gage in his earlobe, a ring in his eyebrow, an embarrassing haircut and a pseudo-Asian tattoo, and I will show you a kid who will smile, shake your hand, urge good wishes your way, and put metal in the kettle.

Me very own kettle

    

     According to the Salvation Army World Headquarters in London, England, the objectives of the Sallies are:

The advancement of the Christian religion as promulgated in the religious doctrines—which are professed, believed and taught by the Army and, pursuant thereto, the advancement of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable objects beneficial society.

     To accomplish this, the Sallies spend. In 2004 alone, their operating costs worldwide were $2.6 billion, a hefty portion of which was offset by a donation from the estate of Joan Kroc in the amount of $1.6 billion.

     What do the Sallies believe? They consider themselves a Christian nonprofit organization committed to the belief in the God-inspired holiness of the Bible. They honor the triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the faith that Jesus Christ is both God and Man. They believe in the Fall of Man from Grace and that only through repentance can man be saved. And repentance, they understand, is a full time job. They are also, according to the New York Times, opposed to hiring gay ministers and prefer not to pay health benefits to same sex partners. They also discriminate against toys based on Harry Potter or Twilight characters. Despite these and other controversies, the organization is media-savvy and tech-smart, with a nice website, bloggers, online donation devices, and links to Facebook and Flicker.

     Why the bell? The original bell ringers were British bodyguards who played songs to distract unruly crowds who were sometimes inclined to assault the Army’s soldiers. What’s with their flag? It is intended to be a symbol against sin and social ills. The motto of blood and fire refers to the blood shed by Christ and the holy fire that would certainly right the series of wrongs committed by the unworthy. Does the organization have a crest? Oh yes indeed. The crest in fact is the official emblem of the Salvation Army and if one looks closely, one can observe what looks very much like a dollar sign in the center, a symbol which, I am told, is purely coincidental. And as to the shield? Well, that shield represents the fact that the Sallies serve wartime functions such as ambulance service, chaplains, and Christian worship services.      

Marissa, the Walgreens employee who befriended me

     “What is this shit?” Lester moaned as he and I sat outside The Citadel’s inner sanctum, filling out the multi-page seasonal employment application. He was staring at the goldenrod-colored page that advised the prospective employee that a fat seventy-five dollar processing fee would be deducted from the worker’s first paycheck. “Christ, that’s ten hours pay right there! This can’t be legal.”

     All kinds of things turn out to be legal in “right to slave” states such as Arizona. But Shakey, the Parkinson’s-afflicted man who processed our paperwork, assured us both that we shouldn’t worry because they only selectively enforced that particular procedure if it turned out the employee had lied about being a convicted felon, which, his smile announced, could never be something that applied to us.

     It turned out the Phoenix Salvation Army used discretion in many regards. On the first morning of actual work, we met in the gymnasium at The Citadel along with throngs of homeless men and women sheltered in one of the central city warehouses, sitting in the midst of out-of-work teachers, laid-off technicians, and between-job laborers. Some of the residents of the shelters had been doing this bell ringing gig for many years and they were given top priority. These thirty-five folks were handed large red kettles and hauled into unmarked vans that took them out to the prime locations, such as Wal-Mart and Fry’s Electronics, where they would fair quite well. It was at this point that I realized that not everyone assembled here was going to be working today, and I hadn’t gotten up before seven in the morning just to be told to come back tomorrow, so I trained my eyes and ears on Ann Girard and her slavering minions. They were muttering among themselves about a Walgreens out in the north valley and how they didn’t want to spend gas money sending some unknown entity out there. I leapt from my folding chair and approached Her Majesty with a smile that I hoped said I was the solution to whatever problem that might be troubling this patch of divine humanity. “We have a car,” I said. “We can drive out there if you want. It’s no problem.” The others ignored me but Girard glanced up and studied my face for a moment, as if trying to recall any problems we might have had in our nonexistent past. At last she smiled and handed me two tickets, each bearing the name and address of the store in front of which Lester and I would shake our stuff.

     Lester called me about twenty times that first day, asking if I was ready yet to commit mutiny and simply run off with the kettles and forget the whole thing. I wasn’t loving life any more than he was, but I knew my roommate and I needed the money for trivialities like rent and food, so I kept assuring him that things would get better despite the fact that I knew such was not so. Sometime around 8:20 PM a van driven by a woman we named Bovine arrived in a huff to collect first my kettle and then, a bit down the road, the pot entrusted to Lester, the latter making it quite clear this was his last day and night of work for this organization.

     That was all quite fine. I knew I could last the remaining twenty-six days and that between this and a check for a magazine article I had written, the two of us would live to celebrate the forthcoming holidays in fine order.

     This was all despite the Salvation Army’s curious list of rules. I quote from a document called Bell Ringer Guidelines and Policies: Clothes must be neat and clean. . . The red windbreaker will be worn at all times. . . A badge will also be worn. Hair must be clean, well-trimmed, and combed or styled in a conservative fashion. . . A pleasant personality and sharp appearance are extremely important. Smile and be interested in your work. No smoking or eating at the kettle. No consumption of alcohol or drugs while at work! Acknowledge every donation with an appropriate response [such as] Thank you, Merry Christmas, God bless you, etc. Do not ask for donations. . . Do not wander back and forth from your kettle. Always stand near it, facing to the front. Do not leave the kettle unattended. Always stay on your feet. Do not lean or sit on anything. . . Do not take the kettle into the restroom or any other secluded area. . . No one is guaranteed a location or the opportunity to work. Whether you can work or not [sic] depends on many factors: punctuality, appearance, quality of your work, availability of locations, etc. Be courteous to all store employees. Do whatever they ask of you. If someone attempts to take the kettle by force, do not resist or put your life in any danger. No shopping while on duty. No headphones. No cell phone texting or long conversations.

     Some of these rules made a certain amount of sense, I suppose. I particularly approved of the rule about not leaving the kettle unattended. However, if any group of people should not only be permitted but rather encouraged to smoke, drink, and take drugs, it is the bell ringer. This combination of substances would likely ensure the smile that the Salvation Army so stridently seeks.

Joan, who no one dared defy

     There was one inconsistency that captured my attention and possibly that of others, although no one else mentioned it in my presence. In the first handout of rules, the date on which we would receive our final paychecks was listed as December 31. However, on a subsequent document and without any fanfare, the receipt date for the check was given to be January 4, 2011, a mere four days variance in human terms, but quadruple lifetimes in the existence of many bell ringers.

     When I arrived at The Citadel the second morning, I discovered that Lester was not the only person to have baled on this adventure. We were down approximately twenty people from the previous day, a condition that did not surprise Ann Girard, what with her troubled years of dealing with those of us considered by many to be the dregs of society. But even with our number reduced, she nevertheless did not send out everyone. Again, about half of those gathered and shivering were told to come back at the first of the week and to not despair because surely others less committed to the glorious cause would fall the way of attrition. It felt as if we were at a recruitment meeting for the Politburo.

     I must apologize if my tone here sounds cynical. But as Lester was quick to point out, many of the people in the Salvation Army’s employ were of the same economic stratum the Sallies claimed to want to help. And those poor folks were often treated in a very shabby manner. The constant waiting around and deathly monotony were bad enough. Added to this, however, was a daily ritual of rewards and punishments which would have sent the writers of The One-Minute Manager into fits of apoplexy. Employees began showing up at The Citadel a little after seven in the morning, hoping someone would remember to bring coffee and donuts. Around nine o’clock, Girard sashayed into the gym and her assistants proceeded to announce the names and dollar amounts of those who had earned a bonus from the previous day. A bonus meant that the bell ringer had brought in at least $150. The names and amounts were called out and each person thus identified approached the altar where Mad Dog would hand over three, four or five one dollar bills. I bonused that first day, as did the never-to-return Lester, and quite a few others, two of whom bear special recognition. An old white guy named Vincent and a young black guy named Johnnie Walker brought in more than six hundred dollars each day. This still seems impossible to me and yet I cannot bring myself to challenge the veracity of The Salvation Army in this instance only because I can think of nothing the nonprofit gained by making such assertions. Perhaps the two of them danced in drag and played “Oh! Come All Ye Faithful” on kazoo to prospective electronics buyers. Maybe they used loaded weapons. I never did figure it out.

     One thing I did understand and quickly was Girard’s habit of singling out underachievers for selective humiliation. “Ellen,” she would say. “You were at the Food City all day yesterday and only took in $37.50? That is really inexcusable. If you can’t do better than that, you can’t work for me. Darrell? Where’s Darrell? Yes, well, I see that you only did $47.22 at the Rancho Market? I know that store, Darrell. I find it—suspicious. I’ll give you one more day there. That’s the best I can do.”

     She could afford to publicly ridicule these folks because, again, there were plenty of people the first two weeks who were sent away without so much as an apology because the Army had failed to secure enough stores. If the underachievers didn’t like it, there were plenty of starving homeless to take their places, a somewhat disturbing attitude for a Christian organization to take.

     On the third day of this misadventure the Phoenix weather turned cold and rainy. But we had no need to despair because our employer came forth with sanctuary. We were informed during the morning meeting that they would sell us knit caps and would even be so generous as to deduct the cost from our paychecks if we hadn’t the resources already. I was in the midst of trying to decide who I wanted to punch first when my consternation was further assaulted by the offer of a pair of paper thin gloves for an additional five spot. While I was in the fortunate position of needing neither of these “gifts,” that was not the case for the majority of my job mates and I was considering vomiting right in the gymnasium when I noticed that almost all of the gathered throngs were applauding the perceived generosity of Girard and her thugs. I flashed on that scene in Cool Hand Luke where Paul Newman antagonizes George Kennedy for endorsing the warden’s position on maintaining order. Then I fell silent as I remembered that Newman took quite a beating for his insolence. But I remained fascinated by the crowd reaction to their own dehumanization. “We probably won’t need many of you this Saturday,” Girard pronounced with optimism. “We have about twenty-five volunteers coming in and that’ll save us from having to pay many of you.” Now, one might expect that the notion of unpaid scabs coming in to do our work for free would be the last thing that homeless and hungry people would want to hear, but the reality was that her declaration was met with enthusiastic applause. And before I come off as too self-righteous to live, the sorry fact remains that I continued to work for this band of bullies for the entire season. The line separating the homeless from the well-housed can be a thin one. 

     Some good did come my way. To shatter the deafening monotony, I occasionally kept an eye on potential shoplifters. Under normal circumstances, I would have been foursquare on the side of criminality, but over the days and nights, I came to recognize and respect the amazing hard work of Margie, the Walgreens manager. So when two teenage girls fled the premises in a huff of diversion, I ran after them and managed to copy down their car license number which I turned over to the local LEOs. Subsequently, a young man with a wireless device pressed against his ear staggered out of the store, attempted to knock me over and called the hardworking Margie a bitch. I pushed him back and shouted “I didn’t hear you! Say it again!” He fell into the backseat of what I suspect was his grandfather’s car. I walked right up to the driver and told him the kid had better watch his mouth. The old man behind the wheel said that the kid wasn’t talking to me, so I kicked the side of the car and begged the young man to come out and repeat himself. They fled amidst a string of obscene gestures, none of them terribly original. The holidays bring out the triteness in many people, not least of whom being myself.

     The most frightening incident came about when a rather puffy man on a Harley parked his bike in the handicapped space and went into the store without first turning off the bike’s motor. I recognized this happened because he was having trouble starting the cycle, but that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t hear my own annoying bell over the roar of the idling U.S.-made monster. After a few minutes of impatient waiting, I walked over to the machine and turned off the engine. The silence brought bliss upon the vicinity, a serenity that was shattered when the biker emerged from the store with an envelope of photos and separated the distance between the two of us at an alarming speed, demanding to know if I had shut down his hog. “It was really loud,” I said, wondering what eternity held for my soul. His mangled mouth made a broken grin. “Suppose it was,” he said. “Sorry.” And with that he straddled the motorcycle and after fifteen minutes or so, roared off into whatever desolate Cro-Magnon cave from whence he had come, possibly hoping to share with his tribe the newly discovered secret of fire.

     It was not all bad, however. I met a wonderful young girl named Lauren who helped me wile away the hours by discussing Christopher Moore, Philip Roth, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. She wanted to teach English when she grew up, she said. When you grow up? I asked. “I’m only fourteen,” she informed me. Jesus wept.

     Then there was Marissa, another young lady on the threshold of the future. Marissa was a sales clerk at Walgreens who had just turned in her notice when I first met her. She typically stuffed some of her change and bills into the kettle while telling me how much she looked forward to her career in the U.S. Army as an interrogator. Images of Abu Graib clashed with my memories of her offering cigarettes to a homeless guy who often made the rounds of that neighborhood, as well as of her determination to overfill the kettle with as much money as she could conceivable afford. 

     Perhaps the most moving occurrence came during the second week when a boy on a small bicycle approached me and drew six dollars out of his jeans pocket and forced them into the red kettle. This child, who looked to be six or seven years old, frowned at me and admitted that at one time he and his family had been on the street and he hoped this contribution would help somebody else out.

     By the beginning of the final week, the workforce of the local Sallies’ bell ringers had reduced itself to thirty. It was at this point that I became aware of a distinct upturn in the previously murky attitude of Major Lacey, Girard, and the stooges that attended them. When one of my paychecks was delayed due to what Ms. Girard termed a “processing error,” I protested and threatened to seek redress through the local headquarters. Much as she distained my arrogance, she did resolve the problem without delay. It was also at this juncture that my bonus “rewards” of three dollars per day began flowing regularly from their coffers and into my wallet. I even observed that Lacey, et al., began using the same courteous manner with me that they insisted we use with others. This shift in their behavior coincided perfectly with the drop in the number of active ringers which in turn correlated with the hastening approach of the Christmas holiday.

     The final day of this project was December 24, by no means the shortest day of the year. By this point my legs and feet had taken on the dimensions of a triathlete’s and my mind sloshed like a bowl of tortilla soup tied to the top of a helicopter. I was exhausted and grouchy, although not a bit disparaging of the holiday or of the season surrounding it. I was simply looking forward to my duty being finished. This being the last day, I saw no sense in toeing to every last rule, so I made a point of periodic leaning, sent text messages to complete strangers, and expunged the words “thank you” from my vocabulary. In the words of the songwriter, I “tried my best to be just like I am.” It paid off. Two events, great in the scheme of things, occurred which left me feeling some of the festiveness we had been instructed to goad others into. First, I brought in $459 that day, my personal best, accomplished without breaking a sweat or with the use of weaponry. Second, and of far more importance, I met a woman named Joan who expressed a determined interest in joining in on the fun. She approached me with a friendly confidence that quickly caught my attention and proceeded to berate people who entered or exited the Walgreens without pausing to make a donation. “Come on!” she bellowed. “You people have money to buy things nobody really wants, but you won’t put a buck in the pot? What’s the matter with you folks? Come on, put some money in the kettle! Let’s go!  That’s it! That’s the way to do it! Yes, keep it coming!” She was amazing, to say the least. Near the end of her participation, she said she would love to work for the Salvation Army next Christmas. “They’d probably fire me for being too aggressive,” she reckoned.

     “On the contrary,” I said, thinking of Ann Girard. “They’d make you the boss.”

Although I drove a taxi in Arizona for a few years, I no longer do so. There are three excellent reasons why I stopped doing this. First, twenty-five hundred taxi cabs are licensed and operating in Maricopa County, which is about twice as many as are needed. Second, many of my passengers were too strange for my taste. And third, I became tired of being robbed at gunpoint. (I did not care to be robbed in any manner, but guns are much more distressing than, say, a slingshot or a water pistol.) Anyone who has ever ridden in a taxi (or robbed one) may find my point of view on the subject enlightening. 

     When I began driving a cab in 2005, the state had licensed only about 1,200 taxis in Maricopa County. At that time I owned my own taxi and my business was very good. Granted, I worked fourteen hours most days, but the money was excellent and because there were far more people who needed me than I could possibly accommodate, many customers were literally begging for my business. I liked it when the customer begged. It gave me a sense of being in control. But far too soon, the State of Arizona began issuing licenses to almost anyone who could pay the fee. As a result, in Old Town Scottsdale, for example, hundreds of cabs would circle the blocks for hours hoping for a fare. Fortunately, I charmed my way into the good graces of some front desk people at nearby hotels and their business kept me going. But the money was not quite as good. 

     Another thing that changed with the times was the nature of my passengers. When I began the job, most of the people I picked up were professional types who wanted to go to the airport or to some other easily identifiable location. But as more and more cabs flooded the market, many of my customers became quite odd. Many were intoxicated. I recall one evening in Old Town, five drunken women tried to get into the back seat of my Lincoln Town Car. There was not enough room, so one of them crawled over the seat and climbed up front with me. In the process of doing this, her six inch heel punctured a styrofoam cup of mine that was filled with Coca-Cola. Once she finally disgorged her heel from my drink, a thin spray of soda shot out through the hole and landed in her lap. She drew her hands up to her face, turned to her friends in the backseat and told them she had wet herself. I did not bother to correct her. I had really planned on drinking that Coke myself. 

     To be fair, I could have endured both the unfair competition and the insane passengers were it not for the added disgrace of getting robbed. After the first time someone held me up, I wised up a bit and began carrying two wallets: one with thirty dollars in it and another with my real money. Few robbers expect a driver to be smart enough to carry two billfolds. Then again, I did not expect a robber to be smart enough to figure out my scheme. Maybe intelligence thrives on holidays. I say that because on Christmas Morning, 2007, I was parked near Broadway and 40th Street, standing outside my taxi, trying to read my map and figure out where in the world I was going. I heard a voice behind me ask if I was lost. It was such a stupid question that I ignored it and went on scanning my map. The voice repeated itself. I was very flustered by now and spun around with the intention of telling the guy off, when I noticed he was wearing a floppy Santa Claus hat, holding a small revolver and pointing it at me. He took the wallet I handed him and then asked for another. At least he did not wish me Merry Christmas.
     I hung up my keys the following day. Since that time I have worked in a few other capacities in different industries, none of them having anything to do with transportation. The jobs have not been especially interesting, I’ll admit. But so far no one has punctured my cup with her shoe. And no one has robbed me on Christmas Day.



The headlights were what bothered me the most. Exhaustion stretching up the back of my legs, sweat clotting on my eyelashes, a wrench of pain in my chest and a question mark controlling my spine--none of it was as bad as the headlights from cars turning left toward me onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue, revealing far too much of me and nothing of the men and women behind them, me looking like Jack Kerouac without the excuse of weed, whites, wine and talent, them looking like cones of ivory heat jutting out from the terror squeals of nocturnal indigestion. It's late August in Phoenix, Arizona, born in a coma, what does it matter, la dee dah, la dee dah, and thank you, Hoyt Axton. The temperature gauge in my mind says it must be over one hundred, even though the watch on my wrist says it's after midnight and by the way why aren't all the people who own these headlights in bed, don't these people have to work tomorrow and if they don't then why exactly is it that they think they can afford to drive up and down this street or avenue or boulevard as if they had all the money in the world while all I really want to do is find a nice comfortable place to fall down and sleep until the sun wakes me up or a cop runs me in or a pedestrian steps on my face and says, "Oh, dear me, lad. Didn't see you sleeping there. Terribly sorry, don't you know"?
    This is the delirium I found myself experiencing that hot August night, in a rush of eternity, with no place to go, no one to call, no telephone if I had, and a positive-negative zero sum-remainder of prospects, whatever the word prospects might mean as I slid on what was left of cold tennis shoes up and down the sidewalk beside a construction site fenced off from the rest of Fifty-Seventh Avenue as headlights roamed in pairs and packs, seeking out some refuge from the night. 
    Can a man feel this cold inside when the temperature is this hot? Is that a fever or more delirium? Have I at short-last tipped my hat to the Joker's Jailhouse and bid ado to all sanity or are my reactions appropriate to my condition? Do I even know what my condition is? Granted, I have been in this situation once before, four years earlier, but I was at least twenty years younger then and far stronger. Tonight, this night, I am far more weak and out of shape, cursed with friendships I cannot reach because of embarrassment. Those friendships torture me almost as much as the horrid headlights cutting through the black and piercing my eyes like daggers of the mind--thanks, Macbeth--because the last time out I would have traded my future for just one hour with the least of those friends and this night I will bargain with God not to let even one of those friends see me as I am, hungry, jagged, and red, even though the one hundred degree temperature out here is cold as space. 

    I fell face down onto a small pile of saw dust, my arms out in front of me, my legs backing off from the tiredness, my mind in the hands of some malignant being. If only those headlights don't interrupt me, maybe I can catch just enough rest here, I thought, enough rest to get back up and get the hell out of here and on my way someplace else. But of course that was just the fantasy of a lunatic because within seconds six cars followed one another left onto Fifty-Seventh Avenue as if some benign deity had sent Her minions out to find me and bring me back. I hid beneath my palms and wanted to cry, the tears just as stubborn as everything else this hot and cold night, refusing to cooperate with the weakest man alive. 
    I used the sudden break in the traffic to lift my head and squint through the dark at my surroundings. The hurricane fence--why'd they call it that? In Arizona?--the sawdust, the mounds of earth stacked neat beside some concrete building that would never be used for anything of value, muffled laughter from somewhere, cans bouncing across the street in the same heavy winds that had robbed my cap, leaving me one piece of clothing closer to nakedness. 
    A city park was somewhere nearby. I could tell from the smell of dog feces. I could tell because I could hear the sprinklers. I could tell because of some faint memory. So I pulled one aching leg out from beneath another and found myself standing more or less erect, spinning around in horrible sobriety, willing to confess to sins I hadn't committed, at least not yet, not for the escape route from this hell but simply for some explanation, lie or truth, it didn't really matter. I knew there were junkies and alkies and thieves and wife beaters out there inside those homes in the distance, and here was I, just escaped from three and a half years of cab driving without one day off and only in this situation because it was summertime in Phoenix and there wasn't much business for a self-employed taxi driver in the hottest cold city in America in August and so I had had to move out of the hotel where I'd slept for those three years, I'd had to sell my dog Roscoe to a nice guy for food money, I'd had to abandon the car I'd driven and couldn't afford new tires for, I'd had to leave my few possessions in the trunk of that car, I'd had to smile as I watched the tow truck pull off with the car I'd been sleeping in for the past week or so, wondering where the hell I was going to live now, what with the seventeen cents in pennies in my pocket not being much kind of a down payment on new digs.
    I got out of it. One always does, somehow or other. It wasn't dramatic or even melodramatic. It was just as stupid as I felt and it might not have happened if the damned headlights that had blinded me seconds earlier hadn't fallen on just what I needed. I didn't steal and I didn't beg and I didn't lie and I didn't hurt anyone. I just crawled and hopped and limped until in an instant I looked back and came upon a folded and rusty twenty dollar bill beneath that stinking pile of saw dust I'd fallen face down in, just as I was looking back at it to make sure nothing had fallen out of my pants pocket, the one with the seventeen cents in it. I probably wouldn't have seen it had it not been for the headlights, the ones I had cursed through dried lips only seconds earlier. That twenty bought me cold food--Spam, pack of tuna, pork and beans, peanut butter--which gave me strength to do day labor which bought me shoes so I could walk into the University with everything I owned wrapped in a pillow case and say to the friendly man with the graying beard that I wanted a job as an instructor, a job I received almost instantly and from which I have seldom taken the time to look back. 
    So now every smell, every trace of light, every instant of every day screams its peaceful magic at me. I can only with rare exceptions find anger at the world within myself because I treasure moments much more than the future and certainly rethink the past in terms of happiness rather than reality. 
    The stupidity of all this is not lost on me. I have no religion. I have only appreciation for the value of existence, in whatever condition. Thank you, morning. And please remember to dim the lights. The sun is up.

    I receive more direct (non-public) emails regarding the stories of my three years driving a cab than about anything else. Seeing as I feel hard pressed to think of anything else at the moment, I will share a tale or two from the days of motorvating up and down the city streets and nightmare alleys of Phoenix and environs. 
    The majority of the time I was driving I worked for myself, which is to say that I owned my own car and had no one to report to except me. That also meant I had to drum up my own business and take it where I found it. It was during one such excursion that I found myself in Phoenix at 19th Avenue near Bell Road, which, for the benefit of you out of towners, is in the northwest valley.  

    A woman about thirty flagged me down and I u-turned in the middle of the street during what might be thought of as an otherwise slow period, some time between three and four in the morning. She plopped down in the backseat with her mouth pressed up against a slimy-looking cell phone. "Fifth Street and Fillmore," she mumbled. 
    "Shit," I said to myself. "That's a scuzzy part of town. I'll bet this bitch ain't got no money." I always talked that way in those days because I wanted to avoid people saying things like, "My goodness, young man, you have quite the extensive vocabulary and refined erudition for a man in your position, don't you know?"

    I look at the woman through my rear view mirror. She was slumped into the backseat, leaning to one side, that phone cradled against her head as if it were a pillow.
    "Honey, you got any cash on ya?"
    She mumbled something I couldn't understand. I repeated what I'd said.
    "He'll pay you when we get there."
    That's what we in the business think of as bullshit. 
    I told her what I thought.
    She repeated herself.

    I was in a bit of a jam. The ride would earn me forty bucks if there really was a he waiting at the other end of this trip. On the other hand, she looked like a jumper, somebody who would open the door at the last second and run like hell through the dark night in a part of town where I personally did not relish running after her. On yet another hand, which I could have probably used, if I refused the trip at this point I would have to stop the car and somehow disgorge her relaxed body from the rear of the vehicle, presumably stranding her, assuming I could get her out without those three inch nails scratching me to death. 
    I decided to take my chances with the he. 
   She wasn't much on conversation. All I could hear her do was mumble into that frigging phone of hers as we rode through the night, passing pick up trucks hauling lawn mowers and smiling at police officers weary from long shifts. I turned onto Fillmore at Central and made a left. The farther we drove the worse it looked. To my left sat buildings that were probably shooting galleries, dilapidated rust factories, and empty parking lots. To my right loomed a string of box homes that should have been abandoned centuries earlier. I squinted at the curb on my right, trying to see the address she had given me. 
    "This is it," she said. I heard her try to unlock the back door. I had already master locked it. "You wanna let me out so he can pay you?"
    I saw a guy, I'm guessing he was about twenty, standing alongside the cab, right by my driver's side window. I clicked open her lock and she sprang out.
   I auto powered my window down about halfway and said, "$40.70, please," to the man.
    He smiled. I grinned. He pulled something out from under his shirt. I stopped grinning. Just as he was about to ram the pistol into my face I floored the accelerator, knocking him to one side as I roared away.

    I would have roared away, that is, had the street gone all the way through, which it did not. When I reached Sixth Street, I hit a dead end and spun back around. My headlights caught a glimpse of the young man picking himself up off the ground. I couldn't see too clearly but my intuition told me he was not in a good mood. 
    I pushed the pedal down and hit fifty miles an hour on a street where fifteen is dangerous. He was feeling around on the ground for his gun. I blew my horn and brushed by him, neither of us all that concerned about the fare any longer. The woman threw something that bounced off the back glass. I ran the next stop sign and took a turn at a speed that lifted at least one wheel off the ground. I wasn't concerned that this made me look like a coward. When I am actually afraid for my life, disguising fear is low on my priority list. 
    I got a ticket, of course. The police officer thought my story was a little funny. He didn't care to investigate the veracity of my tale and I couldn't really blame him. It was getting cold. 



   What uplifting tale about the ruminations of humanity and other presumably superior creatures shall I impart today? Hmm. Well, I could always relate another spine-tingler about the gloriously bad old days when I drove a taxi, but you'd probably rather hear about something more pedestrian, so to speak, possibly something to do with nuclear fuel rods or the obscene uses to which a plumber's helper may be put. What's that? The cab story would be just fine? All right, then. So it shall be.

    I could tell you about the time late one night when I drove my cab across one of those spiked-out tire shredders as I attempted to make a less-than-legal exit from an insurance company's parking lot, only to find out to my redoubled horror that the fellow I had been trying to pick up was drunk and rich and wanted me to drive him to and from Las Vegas, a trip which would have earned me a little better than one thousand dollars instead of costing me six hundred to replace the tires that were now tapioca. But that tale sort of tells itself, doesn't it? Wait. I know. I will tell you about Super Bowl Sunday in Phoenix! Yes, that's the ticket.
    It was early February 2008, right smack dab in the heart of the Valley of the Sun, rainy as hell, if memory serves, and the city was crawling with out of town people who wanted to watch the big game. The Patriots were playing the Giants. The entire week was one jammed with excitement, even for those who, such as myself, didn't give a rat's hindquarters about the big game. I should even point out that I feel about the Super Bowl exactly the same way I feel about a TV show called "American Idol." I resent the very existence of the thing because I do not like the name of something bestowing a value judgment upon that thing itself when the judgment, it seems to me, should come from the viewer. The producers of "American Idol" are in no position to determine in advance that you or I are going to idolize the winner of the contest. In the save vein, the penultimate American football game may be great or it may be lousy. The determination of its "superiority" over other games is one that should be made by the fans rather than the networks, owners, or even players. Plus, there's just the fact that I simply don't care. So, I was only excited because it is kind of a furtive thrill to have a huge collection of strangers in town, people who will ask you what things are like here and who may be inclined to compare what they see and hear with how things are back home. 
    There was also the money.
    Oh my. There was a lot of it to be had and every scumbag with a cash flow problem was out in full force, embarrassing as an open fly on prom night. I heard all kinds of stories from other drivers about how much money they were going to make and all that brouhaha. I knew most of them were delusional and would spend the day in front of their TV sets rather than working. I also knew this fact was to my own advantage.

    I had quite an edge going into Super Bowl Week. Eleven major Phoenix hotels relied up me personally for their guests' transportation needs. I had spent much of the previous two weeks designing sign-up sheets for the hotels and explaining to the managers that anyone who waited until the day of the game to request a cab was going to be completely out of luck. Therefore it would behoove the manager to make sure his front desk people inquired of everyone checking in what their traveling requirements might be. I also worked out a deal with airport parking to circumnavigate the standard rules and regulations about picking up customers. Then I got on the phone and reached out to the five most trustworthy drivers I knew. Among the six of us we should have been able to handle all the business that would be lined up.
    By the Thursday before the Big Game I had to buy a second cell phone. My regular device did not stop ringing long enough for me to retrieve even one message. I was logging something close to twenty calls per hour, just from the hotels. I gave my assistants my second phone number and told them to talk fast whenever they talked at all. 
    That same Thursday I spent much of my day with a man named Roger Director. He had written a book called I Dream in Blue, a fine story of his fixation with the New York Giants team. He was in town to promote the book. I had heard of him because of his TV writing credits ("Hill Street Blues," "NCIS," and others) and because his is the kind of name that stays with a person. In between taking him from a remote local station set up in one part of town to a book signing in another, I handled phone calls, more often than not suggesting that people from out of town did not have any idea just how big Phoenix is and that such being the case they had best make their reservations now rather than later because later was going to be too late. 

    I did not get any sleep Thursday. The same condition applied Friday. I managed to get three or four hours late Saturday afternoon when I at long last turned off both phones.
    Sunday morning at five I sat in a McDonald's with my five assistants. I had already supplied them with enough business to pay all their bills for the next several months, taking people to the various activities at the University of Phoenix Stadium and to various nightclubs and restaurants throughout the week. But this was the day when no man or woman would sleep. This was the day of the Big Game. I gave each of my drivers a piece of paper with their pick ups and returns. Each sheet would translate to approximately $5,000 per driver for that one very big day.

    By this point I had recognized that I needed to relegate myself to the role of supervisor. We needed a point of contact for the hotels and their guests and I chose to be that contact. I told my guys not to deviate from the list of rides. I told them that if any passenger kept them waiting more than ten minutes that they were to leave without that person and go on to the next listing. I told them all what fares to charge. I made sure they all had plenty of credit card receipts and spare change. Their gas tanks were full. Their eyes were wide. We were all very excited.
    Most of the effort was well invested. I didn't make as much as my drivers because I only filled in when they got behind. That was okay. I had still made a ton of money that week and trusted that these drivers would do the right thing by tipping me for all these referrals after the game. Two of the five actually did that.
    The Giants won the game. Who cares?

    The next day, Monday, was still incredibly busy because everyone was heading back to the airport. I was driving a huge Chevy Suburban with seven sulking Bostonians to Sky Harbor when the gear shift control shredded. We were, of course, on the freeway at the time. I knew that if I stopped the vehicle, we would never get started again so I kept going in second gear as the automobile made hideous sounds that spurted and spewed from beneath the hood. The rains returned. The passengers were nervous and suddenly quite alert. 
    I pulled up alongside the curb at Terminal 2 and the Suburban died an ignoble death. I was so embarrassed at what had happened that I offered to not charge the passengers for the ride. I now realize that if the Patriots had won, the riders would not have taken me up on this foolish offer.
    My problems were not over. I had a huge money trip waiting for me in the other end of town. Once the tow truck drove off with my car, I flagged down an airport shuttle bus and gave the guy two hundred dollars for the use of his van.  was surprised he let me get away with that. I drove the thirty miles to my final appointment in just under twenty minutes in one of the worst rain storms I've ever seen. The passenger waved as I pulled up and I had a great time listening to his stories of Super Bowl Week in Phoenix, Arizona. He paid me with a credit card. The bill? $300. The tip? $50. The authorization? Declined. 
    What the hell? I let him go. I had brought in a little more than five grand for myself that week, an amount that would go a long way toward keeping me in and out of trouble until the next big event, some tractor-trailer rope pulling contest or whatever it might be. 
    Phoenix is due for another Super Bowl game in the next few years. That should be nice. I don't care who wins. All I know is that I won't be driving that day. Probably I'll stay home. Maybe I'll watch "American Idol." 


Back in 2006, I believe it was, and I was putting strong consideration into removing myself from the taxi industry, what with getting robbed on a fairly regular basis, having highly intoxicated people trying to either be my friends or abuse me in ways foreign to me, and a lot of the genuinely upstanding customers who seemed hell bent on calling me to arrange their transportation needs at hours which it would not be unfair to refer to as unGodly were beginning to bore me unto death. I was staring into my unplugged television screen thinking that just perhaps a fellow in my position--Master's Degree (granted, it was in Sociology, but still it was a degree), not too bad of a brain, even temperament, a skilled drummer, former corporate trainer, former steak house cook, former call center manager, former behavioral health specialist, former portrait studio owner, former magazine editor--that a man with my background, shall we say, should just possibly consider a line of work somewhat more akin to his experiences and interests than one which entailed going to bed at two-thirty in the morning and getting up at three-fifteen that same morning, driving nine hundred miles a day on prosperous days and three hundred miles on days that were less so, carting around strangers who were off on business trips, drug runs, drinking binges, and hostile takeovers, struggling to keep the parasitic local cab competitors out of my section of town while still having not all that much to show for such a time-intensive occupation. I sat in the hotel room where I had been living for a couple years just gazing into that blank TV screen, quietly hoping that the phone would not ring, that I could take one day off for the first time since I had moved in here, maybe walk around, talk to some of the neighbors, eat my breakfast at a sit down restaurant, read the newspaper and go back to bed.
    The telephone caught me in mid yawn. It was a woman named Carol. She worked for Child Protective Services in Mesa, Arizona. She apologized for the late night-early morning interruption. I forced the remainder of my yawn into my arm pit and told her I was happy to hear from her, my first lie of the new day.
    Two hours later I was halfway across the valley, pulling into the CPS respite facility in Mesa. I had never been to this particular place before. Truth be told, I hadn't known that it existed. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but I was until that morning unaware that a need existed for such a facility. 
    The need did exist. Boy, did it ever.
    For my immediate purposes, all I needed to know was that CPS wanted me to transport three sisters from Mesa to the town of Congress, Arizona. It was a two hour drive northwest. I could see no reason why this should be a big deal. Having selected the Dodge Caravan for the journey, I would be able to keep the kids in the back of the van while I drove. Even if they talked my ears off, it would all be over soon enough. The only alarm that went off in my mind was that Carol said the job paid $450, a bit high for such a presumably easy gig.

    The man at the respite facility took me into a back room and disabused me of any notions I might have had about this being a simple matter. "These three sisters," he told me, "have been through a lot. Now, you understand that I can't talk to you about the specifics of their case. But I should explain that where you're taking them is to their foster home. The foster parents needed a break from these young ladies. That's what we do."
    By now my eyes were opening a bit wider. I said, "Are you telling me these girls are incorrigible?"
    He shook his head. "I am telling you they may get on your nerves a little. They have been known to do some damages to other driver's vehicles. We've had reports in the past--"
    "Wait a minute."
    "--that some drivers have refused to transport these young ladies a second time because they were so unruly."
    "Wait. Damages, did you say?"
    "Yes. But CPS will reimburse you for any reasonable harm that comes to either you or your automobile."
    "Forget it."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I mean that this is not something that I want to do."
    "But you have to."
    "Pardon me?"
    "What I mean to say is that we have no one else to take them back to Congress."
    "That's a shame."
    "Please?"
    "What did you say?"
    He cleared his throat. "Please?"
    I am such a dope. Say that magic word to me and you can get almost anything. It's ridiculous the effect that one syllable word has on me. I shook my head but agreed all the same. 

    The girls' names were Mary, Madeleine, and Margaret. They were eight, ten and twelve, respectively. They were bright kids. They waited until we were on the freeway before they started cutting up the seat covers. That strategy spoke well for their collective intelligence. Had they pulled out their pocket knives and sliced into the seat cushions while we were still on the surface streets, I could have easily pulled over and taken away their weapons. But these girls knew how the world worked. They waited until we were doing 70 mph on the I-10 west before they brought their danger to my attention. I yelled for them to stop.
    Two of them continued exploring the intestines of my van's seats. The third, Mary, thought it would be more interesting to take out the ashtrays from the rear of the vehicle and hurl them against the back glass. Margaret retrieved a lipstick from her little purse and scrawled obscenities on the ceiling. Madeleine decided to scream, just for the hell of it.  

    I waited until we reached the off ramp for Route 60. I pulled over to the berm and stopped the van. The three sisters were oblivious. By now two of the backseats were in tatters, one could hardly tell the original color of the van's ceiling, and the back glass was sporting a new spider web of fractures. We had only been on the road ten minutes. I also observed an empty bag of Cheetos on the floor and a swath of orange dust on what was left of one of the seats. 

    I ordered the girls out of the van. They complied happily, Madeleine even saying that it was such a beautiful day that she thought she would take a whiz right on the Interstate.     

    By the time we were back on the road I had the three sisters secured with their seat belts. I had removed their knives from their clutches and had assured them all that if they did anything further to annoy me that I would tie them to the roadside cacti and laugh while the buzzards picked their bones.
    I kept thinking about what the CPS guy had told me. These girls have been through a lot. I had no idea what that meant specifically, but just the fact that they had been placed with Child Protective Services indicated that they had not had easy lives to this point. I even allowed myself to feel bad about controlling them through intimidation. That is, I felt that way until we pulled into the long driveway off the beaten path on the outskirts of Congress. 
    "No one's here," said Madeleine.
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Nope, no one's here," chimed in Mary.
    "That's impossible."
    "Nobody's home," sang Margaret.
    I stopped the car in front of the large house. I blew the horn. I turned off the ignition. I stared at the front door. Nothing.
    I told the girls to stay in their seats and jumped out of the van. I ran to the front door, knocked, waited, ran around back, hollered, waited, ran back to the van, told the girls to get back in the car, dammit, and honked the horn in vain.
    This was deepest summer and the temperature had to be over one-ten. I popped the hood and checked my radiator level. It was holding nicely. I walked around the van and admired the damages. The $450 wouldn't touch the harm these girls had done. But the man had said CPS would reimburse me, which meant, of course, that I would still have to go out of pocket initially, which was going to keep me from using the van until those repairs were made. I was semi-suicidal. 
    We waited nearly an hour, a period of time rarely measured in geologic time, but one which stretched like the Protozoic Era. I tried to pick up from their whispered conversations some clues as to what tortures the three sisters had endured, what evil had transpired to cause them to strike out so violently at a person who was simply trying to take them back to the only legitimate home they presumably had. Nothing came of my eavesdropping. They were too wise and guarded to let anything slip.
    When the foster parents returned I met them at their car door and thanked them for being there.
    The man said, "I know those gals can be a handful, buddy. I sure am sorry."
    The woman swept her arms around the kids as if they had been rescued from kidnappers. "Did you have a nice ride?" she asked.
    Madeleine shot me a look and then didn't say anything. I leaned against what was left of my van, hoping in vain for a tip that never came. 
    My idle threat about cacti and buzzards made its way back to CPS but that didn't stop them from asking me to transport the girls again three months later. Carol, my contact there, reminded me that they had been through a lot. 
    "So have I," I told her. 
    "Please?"
    I hate that word.