Breaker, Breaker.

Whoa, Crew, whoa.

It seems like forever since I rapped at ya. Comomusic just came back up from a bitter winter's hiatus. I worried my link to 5 anonymous people was lost forever. I plowed through somehow, but my writing was, coincidentally, bitter. Or perhaps that was just because driving a Taxi totally sucks. Seriously. There's no punchline to that.

Yes, it does seem that the honeymoon is over. And the Taxi world isn't even letting me down easy, rather it is holding my CDs and DVDs hostage, as well as my favorite shirt. The well-worn Ely blue chamois work shirt I got at the Mexican thrift store in Omaha after my friend Galen's wedding. Yeah, the thin one that you could read my Fat Possum T-shirt through. They are but innocent pawns in this sick, tawdry game.

Yeah, so, it's been a couple of days. The wind has blown fiercely and my cats finally knocked over that beer bottle on my desk. My fault for leaving some warm swill at the bottom. I promise you it was only a few sips. That is the only danger of the neoprene coozie, that you may lose track of the last few gulps of your cold one until it is too late. I'll still drink it once it turns warm, but not the next day when it is stale and syrupy. which is now what's on my desk. At least it was thick enough not to warp the particle board furniture, and, with any luck, the cats will have it licked up before the week is out.

All I have done since my last post is work, with the exception of today. I slept in until about 3:30. I did some pickin' and ate some BBQ. A jumbo turkey sandwich from Smokin' Chicks. It only takes a couple of hours for my fingertips to get tender now, because I go a couple of days between picking and chew the calluses off on those long, slow, cold nights in the cab. That's borderline OCD for you.

Not much new on the personal front. One of my cats is coming back around. I think she was put off by my new work schedule and had become increasingly less involved. She's still guarded, but we bonded some this evening. It's progress. The other kitty is retarded. So, she loves me pretty much unconditionally, even when I try to close her in the bathroom door after a few cold ones. It's really her own fault for being too polite to shriek when I can't figure out why the door refuses to latch. Garner Sutterfield: Cat Psychologist.

I had a couple of cold ones tonight. Bitter cold ones. Not bitterly cold, but cold bitter beer. It was some Bud Lite I bought for Thanksgiving, in case we had any guests with vanilla taste buds. It went un-drank on the patio, because we ran out of room in the fridge. This made it even more shitty. I drank what was left and then a couple of red plastic Solo brand cups full of Merlot that Ely had. Desperate times.

And the times are desperate in large part due to my total lack of earnings with the cab. When I applied for the job they told me an average slow night on the meter was about $160, which would send me home with $56 plus tips. Friday I ran $131, Saturday I ran $145, and last night (Tuesday) I ran $108. That means I took home $38 plus a handful of paltry tips last night, for 12 hours of labor. The lowest paying job I ever had was at age 15 for $5 an hour, when minimum wage was $4.25. Last night I made about $4 an hour, and this is after 7 years of college.

Plus, the cab company hangs me out to dry. On Tuesday they were running way behind. Not sure why, but it comes from the dispatch office. So, I'm dispatched for calls that are an hour late. And I've barely been on the job 45 minutes. Even if people aren't pissed at me personally they're still pissed. One call was a 4:45 time call. I was dispatched at 4:50, and was 15 minutes away. So the guy was 20 minutes late for work. Apparently he uses us regularly, and this happens regularly. So, the boss radioed to tell him that his ride would be free. That was a $20.30 fare that just went 'poof.' Yes, $20.30 isn't too much, and my share of that is about $7, but goddamnit that means something to me when I only make $38 on the fucking night.

So, yeah, I was pretty slow and pretty bored. For a while I tried to work on song ideas in my little notebook. For a while I circled downtown. For a while I tried to nap. For a while I sketched the Eastside Tavern logo, planning to make Sal a marquis for Christmas. For a while I imagined crashing the '88 Lincoln Towncar off of the top story of the Hitte Street parking garage. For a while I imagined ducting the exhaust into the cabin of the Lincoln and wondered how bad my eyes would burn and how bad of a headache I would get before I had successfully asphyxiated myself.

A week ago Tuesday I picked up a fare at the Marriott Hotel. I took him to Stephanie's Cabaret. He was Canadian, something I suspected right off (his lack of pronunciation of long o's) and which was confirmed when he broadly proclaimed it and turned down my heater. I told him I always fantasized about being Canadian, and he didn't believe me. Canadians have a wonderful relationship to their country. It seems apologetic and wholly without the provincialism and underdog pride Americans exhibit. Yet not at all shameful. They are proud, but their pride is not exaggerated or manufactured. They seem to have a healthy attitude about their place in the world. They recognize that they lack the glitz and glamor of their southern cousins but also relish the fact that they are without our problems and fractured sense of self-importance. At least that's the impression Iget from TV and the couple of Canadians I have met.

Anyhoo, this guy was Canadian, and works out of the St. Louis area as a fire protection engineer, which is a union position overseeing the design and installation of sprinkler systems, an area, I am told, which has exploded in new construction following 9/11. Though our backgrounds were far separated geographically (he had polar bears in his back yard) they were close enough in social status and income. Yes, Virginia, they have mobile homes in the snowy north of Manitoba, Canada. So, taken with my wit, skill, and sincere desire to work, he offered me a job.

It's a union job with good pay and benefits. Banker's hours. I told him I'd call but scuttled a bit the past week. I had just started the cab gig and it has somehow awakened my creative spirit. I was no longer just another working stiff, but someone with a unique, creative employ which provided ample opportunity for creative advancement. That bullshit all came crashing down after pulling in $38 last night. I called him today. I should have an interview next week.

This job would relax me considerably financially. You try paying rent when you pull in $38 a night, working 4 days a week. If this is what Christmas break will be like, fuck it. A month of that its about 4 weeks too long. Never mind health insurance and bills. There's a reason few people retire as cab drivers in the Midwest. It's because its a thankless near-obsolete industry that caters to people who couldn't pass a drug test or perform any demonstrable skills over the long term. Interesting yes, sustaining, no.

This is not to say this will be the last Taxi post. If I have demonstrated one consistent quality in my adult life it is the impossibility of sustaining decent employment. At the every best, the sprinkler installer job wouldn't start until after the new year. You can rest assured that as long as my 4 typing fingers are working and I can find an Internet connection I will bitch about my petty bullshit problems to you, my adoring yet indifferent anonymous public. All 5 of you.

But its not just all bad news. A friend of mine died this week. Well, we weren't close, but it is nonetheless tragic. Not close enough for me to dry up in mourning, but close enough to give mortality a thought. The guy was 39. Car wreck. He had gone through a bitter divorce in the past couple of years and had two daughters, in the neighborhood of 8 or 10. He was the nicest guy. The funeral is tomorrow, but I'm not going. Again, we weren't that close, and I wouldn't want to offend any family. I'm not huge on funerals. My grandmother died in October. I was, of course, there for that one. That should keep me for a few years, hopefully.

I don't know any more details of his death. I'm convinced he drove drunk as much as anyone ever has, but I imagine he had it down to an art by now. It could have been completely random and not an ounce of his own fault. But, I'm sure he'd never put on a seatbelt in his life, either.

So that happened. And, the beer the cats knocked over soaked up in the scattered A*1 Express business cards with all of my notes from previous nights. They are a matted, warped, blurred menagerie now, like an uninspired, dreary watercolor painting of teenage gloom. But from them I shall extract the type of fine writing that has come to occupy your time at work, after checking your e-mail 5 times and all of your E-bay auctions. And the weather. Or whatever the fuck you guys do at work these days. Jobs. Sheesh.

And, so now, those 4 little words you yearn to hear:

So, yeah, the cab:

I already went off last week (somewhat atypically) about the drunk stripper and general bad times in the Lincoln. In my bitter frustration I forgot to treat one of my favorite fares to date.

Some time last week, lets say Tuesday, I had a call to the Elks Lodge. I had never been there and expected an elderly, genteel veteran of some foreign war. I was told by my dispatcher I would probably have to go in. I pulled up to the Elks lodge, in a nondescript building, and went in.

I rang the buzzer in the well lit foyer. Apparently the Elks are pretty serious about who gets in, as much so, as, say, the Tokyo Spa. The door clicked and I opened it, looking into the eye of a camera overhead. I walked in to a smallish room with tables and stack chairs, and a well lit bar in the corner with about 6 bar stools, securely anchored to the floor. I man approached me and asked me if I was with a cab. I said yes. He was the bartender. He handed me a $20 and said to the man on the last stool, "Michael, your cab's here."

I asked the bartender if I was to give the change to the passenger, if necessary. He said yes, his attention still focused in Michael. I looked over. Michale was staring blankly at the floor. The bar tender repeated himself and Michael looked up, again, blankly, at nothing in particular. The bartender looked back at me and said, in reference to the $20, "you better keep the change."

Michael was well dressed, with a men's oxford shirt collar poking out of the top of his natty sweater. He was corporate causal, and looked neither old or grizzled enough to be the veteran of any war. He was in his early 40s, fit and healthy. He looked up again, and rousted from his perch, saying nothing. I introduced myself and told him I had his cab waiting.

Michael wasn't much for conversation as we left the Elk's Lodge. I asked him how it was going. He said, "I'm a little buzzed, but I'm not drunk."

He got in the car, in the front seat, and started fumbling for the seat belt latch. Fumbling as in it was a strange car and dark, not so much as in he was too drunk to insert tab A into slot B. I turned the light on to make it easier for him. He asked if I was wearing mine. I said yes, and that "I can't even back up in a parking lot without putting mine on, it's just a habit." He said, "Good man."

We headed off. I asked him where we were going. I didn't recognize the street name, so I asked for a general vicinity. He said south on 63. I was thinking Ashland. He said no, not nearly that far. "KOMU 8?"

"No. I'll tell you."

Some people seem to get off on giving directions. They like to guide you rather than tell you where you are going. This handcuffs you a bit as a cabbie, but, fuck, I like a surprise, and their money's all green. As we drove he asked me if I was an MU student. I said no. Then I quasi-explained that I had gone to law school at MU but had finished short and was out of class. He said, "Really? Me too, I'm 3 credits short of a law degree. I just said fuck it."

He was fucking with me. He didn't believe me. I assured him I was telling the truth and he assured me I was full of shit. I let it go. We drove in silence. It wasn't every day people told me I was a liar to my face. Even if someone thought I was they gave me the benefit of the doubt or let me go on living my myth. That was fine. I didn't need to talk to this guy.

As we were heading up a dark stretch of Old 63 in silence, he said, out of the blue, "do you ever just sit and think about what a fuck you are?"

If you'll notice, this is the first time I've used italics in the history of my blog.

I burst out laughing. All right. Here's a guy whom I was content to continue on with in awkward silence, who just called me out for no reason. I'm not sure that anyone who ever knew me ever accused me of being a fuck, and this guy certainly did not know me or my burdens. It was such a ludicrous proposition that I could only laugh. I felt he had leveled the playing field, though, giving me firm moral ground on which to plant my "you're a douche nozzle" flag.

This particular section of Old 63 is steep, curvy, and quite dark. While trying to maintain a steady path with the Lincoln I swiveled my head for a second to check out this guy's expression, to gage his seriousness. As I turned my head to my right I a patch of light caught his face. It was swiveling to his right a second ahead of me, apparently after attempting to gage my reaction in a similar manner. I did this a couple of times, like when you run into someone in the super market isle and you do a mirror-image Baloo-the-Bear dance, trying to step aside of one another in mutual courtesy.

I spoke in polite tones through gritted teeth, wondering what exactly the magic words would be for me to pull to the side and trounce this guy. I told them that, on the balance, I thought I was a pretty good person and that I didn't dwell on my shortcomings, and I certainly didn't burn much time wondering why I was such a fuck. I told him that there were certain questions in polite social discourse that were meant as much to solicit a reciprocal response as they were to gain information. I told him that this was one question for which I would not ask the reciprocal.

After another silent spell he asked if I had "ever been in the Navy or done anything worth a fuck in my life." I told him that I hadn't been in the Navy, that I had spent all of my adult years in college, up until the previous three. I think it impressed him that my liar's timetable stayed synced, and I think he began to believe that I had in fact attended law school. He said he had been in the Navy, but offered little more. After a few more minutes we were cruising down the well lit Grindstone Parkway. I was his new best friend. Apparently I had passed some test. Though my attitude towards him hovered warily he was informing me that I would come to his house and that we would drink a beer together, some time.

He had lightened considerably and seemed giddy with the prospects of our new friendship. He now spoke rapidly and with fervor. He said that we would wake up his wife and that I could meet her. Her name was Colleen. I asked if that was an Irish name and he lit up. He exclaimed that she was in fact an Irish Catholic schoolgirl through-and-through, in the manner in which a dirty old man may explain his perverse good luck.

He was rambling a bit now. "Maybe my wife and I will have a blue crab party and you could come and bring a girl you like. Do you have a girlfriend? She's younger? A student? Wouldn't that be cool, to come to my house for a blue crab party?

"That would be awesome."

As we neared his house he asked me if I had anything against Jews in my cab. I said no. "You aren't Jewish, are you?" he asked.

"No, I'm Irish, as far as I can tell. We crackers from the Ozarks don't really claim any strong ethnic ties. We don't distinguish between various shades of Caucasian, as long as we're not black or brown."

We were only a few houses away at this point. He exuberantly exclaimed "well, you've got the biggest fucking Jew in your cab right now. I'm the biggest fucking Jew you'll ever meet."

When we pulled in his driveway the meter was at $22.80. He had insisted on navigating and had taken us several dollars out of the way. I reminded him that the bar tender had given me $20 and that the remainder owed me was $2.80. He had mentioned before that he would have to wake his wife up to get cash, which seemed a fun, mischievous prospect to him, as she would surely be pissed. He had also alluded to his sincere desire to tip me well. Sensing that there could be some financial providence at work, I told him that he could make it up to me the next time he used the cab and that I would cover the $2.80. It was very important to him, though, that I should get what was coming to me. He told me to wait and he ran inside his house.

He popped back out in short order and ran up to the driver's window. The window was broken, so I opened the door. He handed me $6 and asked if that was okay. It was on the chincy side, but I'm not in the habit of grubbing for tips. I assured him it was fine and thanked him graciously. He said good night and turned to run back inside. I was sorting the cash when he pulled up short, and turned and ran back to the cab. He had apparently alighted on some fabulous new idea and was almost struck in the face with the Lincoln's door as I opened it to see what he wanted.

"You are Jewish, right?" he asked, with an earnest desire to be set straight with the truth.

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm Irish."

"Oh. Okay." And, perhaps a little disappointed in having his belief upturned, he disappeared into his home.

I drove off, believing that despite his gentile, Midwestern appearance he was most likely Jewish, duein part to the shrewd, smallish tip.

I had begun writing that last night, before going to bed and passing out. I had woke up at 3:30 or so and watched PCU on television. Man, 1994 seems like a long time ago. And that movie sucked. The only noteworthy observation I took from it was a reminder of how low-cut women's pants have got. Only 10 years ago they wore them to their navel. Today they barely cover where there pubes should be. Now that's progress.

I crashed again at about 5:30 and slept until 3:30 today.

My phone rang several times. My old neighbor and friend Brandon was calling about me doing some welding for him for his senior Engineering capstone project. I had been putting it off in general, due to my upturned schedule. I remembered today was the first of the month and I scrambled to get up to go pay my rent. I called him back and he said he was sending his partners on the project over to my house. I told him to give me until 6. I dropped off the rent check and picked up some Arby's.

As I was eating my roast beef sandwich, I saw that Breaker, Breaker was playing on one of the high-numbered cable action movie channels. It is a thoroughly crappy, cliche Chuck Norris movie that helped usher in and capitalize on the popular culture fascination with trucker lingo and 'culture' in the late 70s and early 80s. You know, like Convoy and B.J. and the Bear. That totally kicked my ass when I was a tot, and I remember the affinity I had for an old 8-track of trucking songs my Mom had. I also like the new-age revivalesque truckin' tunes that Split Lip Rayfield and Scott H. Biram belt out. It is particularly noteworthy in Biram's case that he was very nearly killed in head-on collision with a tractor/trailer. He had multiple surgeries, lost some innards, had complications and infections, and played his first few shows back in a wheelchair with an IV hanging off of his mic stand.

So, I was totally down for the flick. I watched about a half an hour, but had to quit so I could go out to the cold garage to get my shit together. I hadn't used my welder in ages, and needed to move some stuff around so I could have a little room to work. My Scout's clogging up the garage, and I have enough crap out there for 3 garages. I ran my little propane heater to knock the edge off of the chill.

Brandon and his buddies filed in over the next hour, bringing beer. They were 4 senior engineering students with very little pragmatic fabrication skills or experience. This was one of the first things they've ever tried to build. It was a prototype telescoping collapsible ladder to be used for climbing into deer stands for hunting. I had 12 pieces of steel in 6 varying widths that had to be welded together to form 3 rectangular sections that would slide freely inside each other, yet be tight enough to be rigid. They had had the steel pre-sheared into strips, but none of their measurements or the shearing had been too exact. The tolerances for the construction weren't overly tight, but the cuts were kind of all over the place.

I spent 3 hours fighting the cold, assembling and welding the pieces while they all offered advice, tried to help, and debated one another on the merits of the design. They were good old boys, and were drinking the beer and having considerable fun. One in particular was an overgrown kid, and was constantly picking up stuff and banging on shit behind me. I wasn't drinking, because it was difficult enough to focus with all of the shenanigans going on as it was. It was entertaining, though, and they were appreciative. Brandon regaled them with fuzzy, nostalgic memories of all of my shenanigans from the 3 years we spent as neighbors. It had been a while since I relived some of my greatest hits.

In appreciation of my efforts, they wanted to take me to Big 12 to do some drinking. This was perfect, since I had been so irked at my inability to afford to go out drinking on the night before.

Well, Big 12 sucks. I knew that going in. It's still better than nothing, though. It was karaoke night. That bar has a terrible flow, or a lack therof. And a fairly generic crowd. I drank cheap lite beer in a pitcher, something I hadn't done in years and which I had not missed. We left at about 12. I hadn't eaten and was fairly drunk. We stopped my McDonald's and got some food. I scarfed down some rancid McNuggets and tried to blog for a bit. I got pretty tired before 2 and passed out in my bed. I stepped full-on on one of my kitties when I got up from my computer, and this time she really shrieked. I had to follow her all over the downstairs living room before I could pick her up to apologize. For some consolation I left my bedroom door open for them.

I was in a half-hallucinatory half-dream state, thinking I was in the Lincoln and hauling around fares. I wake up like that a lot of nights, and have to try hard to remember whether or not I am at work or on call. I usually realize 1)that it is the morning and I am off shift, then 2)that I am not even in the Lincoln, and, finally, 3)that I am in bed not really even in a car. Tonight I was convinced that I was waiting on someone in the dark and that my bedroom window was the right side of the Lincoln. Then I tried to reconcile the size and shape of the window in relation to the car, and the two beer coozies in the window reminded me that I was in my room. They are the crappy foam ones and not my favored collapsible neoprene ones. Then, what I thought was a front seat passenger turned out to be cat #1 curled up on my bed.

After a few minutes I more or less came to. The concoction of bourbon, stale flat drought beer, McDonald's, and a couple of hours sleep really messed up my system. I got up and resumed working on this. I wish Columbia's water didn't taste like sulfur and bleach.

I didn't have too many interesting fares Monday or Tuesday, at least none that make me want to go into detail tonight. Monday turned into a relatively good night financially. I did $217 on the meter. There was some luck to it, though. For one thing, I got one call that turned into a $40 fare. It's a bit of a crazy woman who is a regular. She had been out of town and needed to run some errands. I drove her to 4 different places and ran wait time. That was $40 for about 50 minutes. She tipped me $8, which is better than I had expected.

I also had a call to pick up at the airport. That was $25. The fare was an Indian from Orlando, a program manager for a software company. He was in town to do some training at a local hospital. We were running a bit late and he called 3 times before I got there. He didn't know anything about Columbia and thought he had just landed in a field in the middle of nowhere. One reason I was late was because I was enjoying some shrimp tacos at El Rancho. I hadn't eaten in over 24 hours (a real feat for me) and wasn't going to stuff them under the seat of an old taxi for anyone. That only set me back 4 or 5 minutes, though, and it wasn't like the guy was going anywhere.

The wind was bitter cold Monday night. The guy was very glad to get into the cab and be headed somewhere. He said he just wanted to "get a drink, find a woman, and go to bed." He asked about Columbia's nightlife, but it was clear he was interested in an efficient transaction and not the uncertainty of a night out on the town. The conversation quickly turned to the sauna. The guy was ready to go straight there. I thought it would be a bit odd to show up at a brothel with your luggage. I steered him to the hotel, with a stop by the ATM. This also worked out so that I could run a second fare of $15 to the sauna, and $15 back. And, the ladies there tipped me $20. But, sadly no soda or Dum-Dums.

So, yeah, Monday was a good night, money-wise. I definitely couldn't say the same for Tuesday, as I believe I ranted earlier.

One of the only bright spots was when I picked up a charming Australian girl at the Heidelberg. She was hefty enough, and I spent most of the cab ride trying to decide how many vanity pounds a sexy Australian accent could make up for. In the abstract I'd say it's a guaranteed 20. In this girl's case I was willing to go 35. But, even 35lbs down, she would still outlast me a long time adrift on a raft in the ocean. If I didn't eat her first. Would there be BBQ sauce on this boat?

But she did have an irresistibly charming accent and demeanor. She had flown in from Orlando and been in the Midwest only a few days. The winter cold caught her unprepared, and she had purchased some gloves and scarves, which she had promised her sister, who is a student here. I was driving her back to her hotel and she was flying out the next morning. Her sister had forgot to get the winter items from her and called her in the cab. She was tired and didn't want to turn around. The meter was at $5.30. I told her I was slow and that I could return the gloves and such to the Heidelberg, where her sister was still at. I took them back and her sister was very gracious. She gave me $10. I felt bad taking it, but she said not to, and it would eclipse all of the other tips I made that evening, combined. The sisters were named Abbey and Emma Jane.

I think that's the best note I can leave you on. We'll see if anyone's out to celebrate tomorrow and Saturday, since I think it is stop day at the University. The money aside, I'd just like to have some amicable drunks to keep me entertained, for a change. It's kind of dry on the show front. The Meat Purveyors are playing a week from Sunday in Lawrence, I think. I don't really have any bank roll, but there is an outside chance I could make it. Next Tuesday is my 29Th birthday, and Thursday I have to go to court to get a ticket for that accident I had in number 10. I think I am only $70 away from owning my own dented Lincoln taxi cab door. Wish me luck.