Six Pound Hammer

Whew, Sunday Sunday night. Time keeps movin' on.

Where to begin. It's 2:05 in the am in now, so I guess its officially Monday morning, here in the central time zone. I slept until about 5:30 pm today. I was pretty beat from the night before. I journeyed downtown, where I procured a Shakespeare's pizza and rented a DVD. I also picked up 6 cold ones at the liquor store, Pony Express Gold Beers. I ate pizza, picked, then drank beer.

One of the cats had stolen one of my well-used Dunlop .013 gage fingerpicks, presumably to pawn it. I'll just see which one comes in with some new dubs on their little cat car. I was in a bit of a shit-pickle, but decided to try to forge ahead with some heavier gage Propiks I never got used to. Other than some initial pick scrape, which I countered with some careful shaping, they work pretty well. It seems to have changed the tone a little bit, which is like having a new banjo.

I knew I missed picking but not how much. It felt damn fine to have my fingers fall back into their regimented precision. I'm going to have to do something about the job. I can't pick at night while my room mate sleeps but I can't get out of bed with any time to spare before work. After I tired a bit of the banjo I picked up the old RC51 and worked on my G-C-D chord progressions. Hey, baby steps.

I watched Friends Forever, a documentary about 2 guys who travel the country making music inside their VW van. It wasn't the easiest watch, even after the Gold beers. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Lets time travel back to Friday, shall we?

I had finally began to mellow a bit from my anti-cab tirade inspired by my $108 night a few days before. I figured I had to do better. At least there were people out and about. I ran steady right off of the bat and it didn't appear I was going to slow down at all.

My first call was to go to the Columbia Regional Airport. For those of you not familiar, the Columbia airport is close to 20 miles away from Columbia, situated in a field in the middle of nowhere. There was a stiff, cold wind. I was in trusty #10. I pulled up to a woman waiting outside,in the cold. I popped the trunk and got out to load her suitcase. She was a healthy, attractive 40ish, wearing rather informal jeans and a fleece, under-dressed for the wind. And she was tired of waiting .

She had flown in from Los Angeles, and expected a bustling airport with rows of waiting cabs and ethnic drivers upon her arrival. Instead, she found herself in a drab field in middle Missouri, at an airport "which barely had planes." She had been waiting for nearly an hour since calling. She had called back at least three times, and the dispatcher blamed traffic and constantly assured her I would be there ASAP. The fact was that I had been waiting for 45 minutes for a day driver to bring in a car for me to drive.

After a couple of pulls on the loose exterior door handle she got in, frustrated, and not impressed by #10's late-80s amenities. She fished for a seat belt in the crease of the rear seat with no luck. After some pointless fumbling I told her that she could sit in the front, which had a more user-friendly belt. She thought that most practical, and was further unimpressed at the rear door handle, which is missing its bezel and hanging at an unhealthy angle from a dark recess in the door. The only people who don't have trouble opening it are the mentally disabled people I pick up at the group homes, which have very little modulation or delicacy to their pulling power. After a few attempts she found the magic angle and got out. Of course, I had to open the front door from her from the inside, since the exterior handle serves as ornament only.

After all of this I have about 20 minutes to chat with this woman, who is quite unimpressed with her A*1 cab experience. It turned out she was in town for the NCAA volleyball tournament MU was hosting, as her daughter was a junior for St. Marys college. At least she didn't hate me by the time we got to the Hearnes Center. She was supposed to meet the father of another St. Marys player so she could put her luggage in his rental car. I picked him up and drove them to his car on the lot, gratis.

From there I stayed busy. No fares in particular jump out at me. At about 9:30 I got a call to go to Club Vogue. As I was en route the dispatcher asked me if I would like to get off early. It seems Terry the Hustler was not scheduled for that night, but wanted a cut in on the action. My guess is he talked with the dispatcher, who told him we were extremely busy and having a big night. So, the dispatcher asked me, since I was a rookie, and shouldn't know any better, not telling me about Terry. But, I had already made about $145 (about $50 for me) in 6 hours, and I remembered that the Split Lip Rayfield/Reverend Horton Heat show was going on that night, as well as a party by Culito from Comomusic. It's seemed like a good omen, and I pretty much hate working when I don't have to, so I told the dispatcher I'd bail whenever I was clear with my last fare.

I swung by the vogue. It was the door guy who had called, and he jumped in in a big hurry. He was going off about being late for work and needing to go home to change to come back. Apparently he had been with some 'whore' whose car had broken down on the highway near Fulton, making him late. He was quite angry about it, and sure it was her fault.

He told me he needed to run home, change, and come right back, and asked if I could do it for him for $10. I assumed that by $10 he meant have me wait for him, rather than run the actual meter. Some people want to negotiate rather than run the meter, whether it is actually a deal or not. Sort of like the people who pay retail for junk on E-bay that they could by across town, because they like to feel like they 'won' something.

I said sure, because it caught me a bit off guard and I was happy to be getting off work early. I realized after we got rolling that he meant $10 for the round trip fare and wait time, which was a losing proposition for me. But, rather than admit my mistake, I went along with it, thinking it couldn't hurt to get in a bit with the door guy from the strip club. Because, as I had been told earlier, I get a $5 kickback from Club Vogue any time I bring them any customers, even if it is just one guy in the cab. He confirmed this. But, business dealings aside, I don't take this guy as being someone whom recognizes, acknowledges, or returns favors, especially from relative strangers.

This is the same guy who shoved the drunk stripper in my cab with $5 from a shitty night before. He spent most of the ride still in a huff about the bitch who had the nerve to have her car break down on him. I tried to ask him once about the music they played there, because strip clubs tend to have the some of the shittiest mixes in the world. But, this was foolish of me, because he also works as a DJ on occasion. I mentioned something about having 'plenty of other distractions' and he was quick to point out his complete indifference to the presence of naked women.

A true player.

He is an 18 year veteran of the strip club circuit. He had me stop by the TP's on Rangeline, near his house, because he was looking for his roommate because he had misplaced his keys. His roommate wasn't there. so he borrowed my cell phone and made a couple of calls looking for him/her. He didn't have any luck. I stopped at his duplex. There was a late 70s Camaro or Trans Am in the driveway, and a fiberglass boat under a cover. I waited in the driveway as he went in. After several minutes he came out, with his much more appropriate sport coat over a ribbed crew neck shirt.

Classy, as always.

We headed back into to town, and he borrowed my cell phone again. The dispatcher was on my ass about getting the cab in. I suspect that Terry was giving him a kick-back for calling me in. The fare was $13.20, and the wait time would have added at least $10 had I ran it. He gave me the $10 and thanked me. I wrote the fare down as $13.20, which meant that the ride only cost me a buck or so. I was just glad to get him out so I could get the fuck off of work. I finished my paperwork and was downtown by 10:30. As I was leaving the shack I had some anonymous gravely-voiced drunk woman call me looking for the Club Vogue guy. I said I dropped him off at work. She kept chatting away and I had to tell her that I was just a cab driver who let him use my phone.

I figured I had probably missed SLR, but parked downwind of the Blue Note and ran by. I had indeed missed them, and the Supersuckers were already into their set. I decided to forgo the cost of the concert, get some food, and go to Eastside instead. My blood sugar is a bit screwy and I was starving. My hands had started to shake a bit. I ran to El Rancho in the cold. I ordered up some shrimp tacos and wolfed them down. I went next door to Eastside. I decided to have one whiskey drink and then switch to beer. I had a full evening ahead of me and wanted to be half-way straight if I went to a strange party and met new people. I finished my bourbon and switched to Bass. I would somehow still get tanked, despite my careful planning.

I tried in vain to find a warm place to stand as people constantly fanned the front door, hauling in band equipment. My feet were frozen from the cab and running around downtown. As I became more inebriated it became less of a problem.

So now I am getting to a point where my writing will likely depict people who recognize their descriptions as I write about them. Columbia is a small town and people can be sensitive. I carry no malice and do my best to represent things objectively with few caveats. Up until now this has been a fairly anonymous exercise, me not figuring on random people who ride in my cab to come across descriptions of themselves, flattering or otherwise. So, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads:

Do I a) flatly refuse to treat subjects that could be recognizable or offensive, 2) alter such descriptions to be anonymous or unoffensive, or 3) just make a bunch of shit up?

I don't want to write about anyone who wouldn't want to be read about. I also don't want to alter the fabric of this canvas by thrusting myself into it. But, that's a fairly ridiculous statement since these are all my observations. I guess the difference is that as a cab driver I am more of a neutral observer, whereas I may play more of a role in things If I write myself into the scene. Well, I guess I'll just trudge along with my honest portrayals, abiding (in part) by the old adage regarding not saying anything if I can't say anything nice. But, in doing so, I will also likely be forced to reveal more of myself, which can be somewhat frightening. The most difficult part of being honest to everyone about everything is being honest to yourself and deconstructing the psychological self-defense mechanisms you've put in place through years of struggle and adaptation. Or so I would imagine.

Yeah, so, anyway, I was at Eastside. It was cold and I was getting drunk. I watched the Fall Children play. I had always wondered who shopped at Hot Topic in the mall. I met Ian, the bass player, who is as nice as he is energetic. I enjoyed watching him spaz out onstage in his socks, retaining his eyeglasses with some Croakies and working up a good sweat. He was full of youthful exuberance, which couldn't be clouded by the darkest of lyrics or drop-D guitar playing. I thought a cold Bass beer might sedate him a bit, but it didn't. He worked as hard off stage, trying to generate a buzz for Without a Whisper, the headliners.

I enjoyed watching Shun play. I have a bit of a paunch (thanks, cold ones) and rest my banjo on the northern hemisphere of it, which makes a nice perch for it. It tilts the fret board towards me, making it easier for an amateur like me to cheat as I watch my hands. But, that's picking. The lead singer of Shun sports a bit of a tool shed in his own right, which I may fairly say eclipses my own. But, you can't have your metal axe resting that close to you when you have to wail on the strings with your bad ass rockin' arm movements. So, I noticed, he was forced to let his strap out much more, which put his 6 string on the southern side of his equator, with the fret board pointing towards the floor. This gave me an even greater respect for his playing ability.

Any further insight I might have had eroded as I continued drinking. I find that alcohol helps blur the lines nicely, lending a more fluid watercolor aspect to the arts. Its as if, in the right proportions, it provides some sort of molecular link that allows you to absorb a little more of the music than your tympanic membrane might on its own, and helps speed it into your bloodstream. But, like any good vice, successful alcoholism requires balance. The more you drink, the more things blur into muted lights and motions, the greater the delay from the speakers to your ears to your brain, and things are no longer in sync. Plus, my unsatisfied creative urges cause me to want to put myself further into things, to become more a part of the product. Thus I just become a drunken ass screaming unintelligible things in the crowd, like "Don't Eat Your Paddington."

But, thankfully, that didn't happen Friday, though I did drink enough to get on the downhill side of the perfect musical appreciation balance. Next thing I knew Big Pants was yelling "bar's closed." That's when I remembered he knew karate and I had to exute.

I took off on foot. I started running. I run when I'm drunk for a couple of reasons. It's good to remind me how out of shape I am. And, on Friday, the big reason was that it was fucking freezing, and I only had a sweatshirt on. I was tearing ass down 10Th street when I saw Psycho Ken from A*1in #8, stopped in traffic, a couple of cars back from the stop sign. #8 is a retired police Interceptor that smokes like a chimney out of one side of the exhaust. He had a fare with him, two guys in the back seat. I was struck with a vision of the opening scene of Trainspotting, where Renton is running through the streets with his voice-over coming to a crescendo. I always liked the part where the car pulled out of an alley and he ran into it, throwing his hands on the hood, and laughing maniacally at the driver, all-the-while being pursued by the bobbies. I didn't think Ken would be familiar with the scene, but that wasn't going to stop me from enjoying a re-enactment of it.

I ran pretty steadfastly into the Crown Vic, and did my Renton impersonation. I was already a half a block away when Ken managed to get his window down and yell at me. He asked where my car was. It occurred to me that he may have thought I was still driving the cab, so I yelled back that I was off work and headed to a party. He asked where, and I told him. He happened to be going right past it, and told me to jump in. The two guys in the back seat were drunk and didn't quite know what to make of it.

Ken stopped at the end of Culito's street, and I resumed a trot. I hadn't planned on attending the party, since I was supposed to be at work until 4 that morning, and never bothered remembering the address. I knew the street was a dead end, so I didn't think it would be too difficult. Right away I saw a huge downed tree and remembered a thread Culito had started about the city removing a large Elm in his yard. I made my way inside, sought out the host, and made my introduction.

As I stood in Cully's kitchen, talking to him and his girlfriend, I realized how drunk I had become. I was trying to choose my words carefully, to be polite, unoffending, and perhaps charming, but I only seemed to recognize the words I was saying as they were already leaving my mouth. I was having a minor out-of-body experience, hovering slightly above myself in Culito's tiny kitchen, when I realized that people were laughing at what I was saying before my brain could decide if it was funny or not. That's when I realized that everyone else had had a drink or two and I relaxed. It was a damn party, after all.

I tried to be myself without getting out of hand. I don't remember breaking anything, hitting on anyone's wife, or being asked to leave, so I'm cautiously optimistic that it was a success. Hell, I had a good time. Even if I had a bit too much to drink.

I left at 4:30 or so and ran back downtown, singing something or other very loudly.

I woke up about 10:30 Saturday morning. I couldn't go back to sleep and was consumed with the notion of helping Cully out by removing the Elm carcass from his yard. I grabbed a six pound maul from my back porch and fired up my Blazer. My brain hadn't recovered from the alcohol, and I imagine my liver was trying desperately to sump the bilge out of my system. None of this could dampen my enthusiasm.

I have always enjoyed splitting firewood. Specifically, smashing 16" sections of sawn logs into perfectly geometric bits which could be stacked and arranged into neat rows. I take tremendous satisfaction in landing a hammer blow in the precise spot I aim for in the grain, and hearing the sharp split and crackle as the wood surrenders and divides under my hammer. It is a brilliant cacophony of sound, smell, and motion. The smell of sawdust, the smell of earth, the smell of green wood, the smell of mixed and spent gasoline from a 2 cycle engine. The repetitive motion of rearing a hammer to the extent of your reach, aloft high behind your head, bringing it down in a rapid fluid movement, sliding your top hand along the handle to meet your fixed lower hand, and driving the tapered head to and through its intended target.

My earliest memories revolve around wood heat. I spent the first 10 years of my life in a small 2 bedroom house my father rented from the company he worked for for $75 a month. It was a little green house 3 miles out on East 32. When my dad took the job and moved to Lebanon I was 6 weeks old. One of the conditions he had was that the small house be brought into the modern age with an indoor toilet. The company obliged, and built a bathroom on what used to be the back porch.

When I was little and I had to get out of bed to use the bathroom at night I would scamper through the kitchen and open what used to be the back door to the house. It was a large wooden exterior door with a hollow metal knob. It was painted white. There was a sharp contrast between the cold linoleum of the kitchen and frigid concrete floor that I would step down onto to run into the bathroom. We kept the door shut to keep heat inside the main portion of the house, only letting enough escape into the back portion to keep the water pipes from freezing in the coldest weather.

In the mornings my mother would wake me for school. I would dash from my bed into the living room of the house, where I would retreat into a warm corner behind the wood stove. It was a cast iron pot-bellied stove, the kind Benjamin Franklin had patented. It had a large removable top that could be swung open to load large, irregular chunks of would that did not fit through the small door on the front. As ashes built up inside they would be shoveled into a large tin pan kept in front of the stove for that purpose. The only forms of modulation were in the stove pipe damper and small grates that could be opened under the front door. When kindling up a fire we would sometimes leave the door ajar so more air could be drawn up the stove pipe to make the lazy fire 'catch up.'

The stove stood askew in one corner, its iron feet curling to the aged hardwood floor. There were gouges from dropped sticks of firewood and black pits and scars from errant coals. I would press myself into a recess in the wall, the plaster positively hot against my back and shoulders, trying to shake the cold from my bare skin and the sleep from my head. My Mom and Dad would wake up instinctively at intervals throughout the night and stoke the fire and add wood from the neat stack on the front porch. My dad would smoke a Sir Walter Raleigh in his Naugahyde chair with duct tape bandages on the worn arms where I ate my cereal. My mom would stoke the fire and build it into a small rage before waking up us kids.

I would lay for hours-on-end in the living room floor with my feet near the stove, as I drew pictures and assembled construction paper creations. I have been forever cursed with cold feet, and only took off my shoes to go to bed. On one particular occasion, when I was about 8, I got some nubuck leather hiking boots from K-Mart. They have a distinct smell when the rubber toe cap melts on a hot coal in an ash pan.

Firewood has always represented to me the hearth and home light. In addition to burning it for warmth, we cut it for income. My father worked at a saw mill that made the white oak staves that made whiskey barrels. We were never without at least two pickups. My dad spent virtually every weekend, holiday, and vacation in the woods. Plagued with arthritis, he claimed it was all that kept him going, that the constant work kept him from stiffening up so that he couldn't go. The truth went deeper, that hard work was all that he had ever known, and was all that he would ever do.

My mom has a picture of me from when I was about three. It is square with rounded corners. In it I am wearing a yellow and brown striped shirt and a pair of undies. I have a toy chainsaw. It had a pull cord than ran a friction motor that turned its 'chain' around a metal bar. The chain was like the kind dog tags hang on or that operate your ceiling fans. I would pull the cord and let the chain bump across the surface of logs my father had yet to work up. I remember the first time I dropped a real hammer into a log my father had cut mostly in two and felt it split. I couldn't have been much more than five or six.

As I got older I would accompany him to the woods on weekends. He left early, when it was still dark outside. He would go to the coffee shop, then to the woods to cut a jag. He would usually bring back one truckload, dump it off, and head back for a second load. This was usually about 10, and I would be just awake enough to join him. I have never been able to get up worth a shit. My father got so he would cut it just small enough to get on the truck, and bring it home and toss it off in piles. There at the house I would chop wood at hours which suited my better, well into the evenings.

Trips to the woods were hard work. Especially in the humid Missouri heat of July and August. The difficulty of the work was compounded by the lack of footing in the thick layer of watershed and on rough side hills. You'd kick your way through the leaves to try to set your feet enough to swing a hammer. Sometimes just getting a stick of wood to stand up long enough to split it was a chore in itself. Sawdust stuck to your sweat and no breeze seemed strong enough to fight though the canopy to cool you. You'd have to wear long pants to keep the brush from chewing you up and were constantly fighting off ticks and chiggers. Ticks never had a taste for the old man. But they never seemed to get enough of me.

It's with this background that I looked at my rusty hammer on the back porch of my duplex. I have a fire place, but haven't cut any wood in some time. I also have a chainsaw. As near as I can tell it is about 35 years old. It is an old all-metal blue Homelite with a manual bar oiler. It belonged to my grandfather when he died in 1995. The last time I used it I was on my tippy-toes, balanced on two bars of the roll cage of my old Bronco, my arms extended so far over my head that gas leaked out of the top of the tank and into my eyes. I was several beers deep at the time, trimming trees in my front yard.

I replaced the hammer handle a few years ago when I brought it up from my dad's place. As much money as cutting firewood made my dad he never stopped eschewing the prices of the most basic and necessary tools, such as hammer handles. I remember him going on and on about having to spend $7 for a new hammer handle at Bill's Farm and Home. This one in particular had grayed and cracked from sitting exposed on my back porch. The hammer itself was covered in surface rust. I pictured what it would look like in a few hours' time in my mind, the rust worn off of the striking edge and along the sides of the head, from feverishly smashing through a 50 year old Elm I was about to lay to waste in Cully's yard.

The city had already downed the tree, and sawed it up into 'fireplace lengths.' All I had to do was go split up the blocks and load the resulting sticks into my Blazer. I motored over to Culito's house. I was going to slip in unannounced and surprise him with the benefits of my labor, expecting him to pop out to see me shredding the burdensome tree carcass adorning his front yard.

Well, this tree was bigger than my initial estimate, drunk at 4 am in the dark. In fact, the first block off of the stump was probably a good 42-46" in diameter. It lay on its side, abutting the stump where it had been pushed off. In addition to my first full realization of the chore at hand, I also realized how tired and out of shape I was as I tried to flip the first block over so I could begin splitting it. It took every ounce of energy I had, after attempting it from every conceivable angle. I wasn't sure I would be able to flip it at all, and had put myself into a much less machismo position than I had anticipated. I didn't want Cully to come out and see me pulling on an inanimate block of wood like a weakling.

But I did get it turned over, and looked upon it with my hammer in hand.

Elm is a soft wood, compared to, say, most oaks. It is not especially good for burning. In all of my years I can only remember cutting a handful of elm trees, and that was just to clear then off of someone's property for aesthetic purposes. Further, this particular elm was old and dead. Dead wood is soft and pulpy. It is not as easy to split as an oak, which will burst apart along the grain if you hit it right. This elm was particularly challenging due to its enormous girth. You have to strike deftly and with precision, aligning a series of strikes straight across the surface of the block. This is made even more difficult when working around knots, which this elm was not lacking. The grain twists and distorts around knots and makes it even more difficult to split.

Landing a hammer blow where you intend to is not extremely easy. It takes some practice to master. I was a bit out of practice, but was doing pretty good as I attacked this first block. I worked my way across the block with decent precision. If you land on either side of your line the crack will want to follow the new line, and, in crossing the grain, it will make it much more difficult to split. Once you start falling outside of the line the difficulty increases, and, if you do it too much, you may have to abandon that line and try another.

I was finding my stroke pretty good, landing blows across the block. But, this was a particularly large and soft piece. It dampened the blow of the hammer into a dull thud as the force dissipated into the spongy elm. The sharp crackling of splitting wood was not in attendance. This would be the bitch of the bunch, though, and if I could only break though this piece it would all be down hill. My body was rapidly giving up. I felt like I was going to fall apart. I kept glancing at the house, hoping not to be caught until I could break this first piece.

The block would try to swallow the blade of my hammer as it stuck in the pulpy wood. I would have to saw up and down on the handle to extract it to make another blow. I tried to do this as gingerly as possible, since I could feel that the handle was a bit weak from weathering where it met the hammer. Typically you let the weight of the hammer do the work, once you've got it in motion, and there isn't a lot of leverage on the handle. But, in this case, I had to exert force on the handle. And it broke.

So here I am, in a near-stranger's yard, unannounced and uninvited, presumably while revelers still sleep inside from the night before, with a rusty hammer head wedged in a piece of elm and a broken handle in my hand. Luckily, I was able to work the hammer out of the block. I put it and the broken handle back in my Blazer, and went to Ernie's for some pancakes.

It was at Ernie's where I really felt like I was going to lose it. The boozing, the lack of sleep, and the exertion combined with my somewhat suspect blood sugar, all caught up with me. I had taken a seat at the counter and already ordered. I did my best to sit on the bar stool and not pass out. It seemed like an eternity before my food came. Another side effect of splitting wood after a long hiatus is that the muscles in your hands fatigue from gripping and swinging the hammer handle. It was all I could do to hold a fork and cut up my pancakes. I ate most of them (with strawberries) and drove home.

I tried to sleep, but had some difficulty. I guess I finally passed out for a couple of hours. Then I had to go to work. For 12 hours.

Things were not well. My head was fucked. At about 5 I stopped at Jimmy John's, thinking a Turkey Tom in my stomach would help. I stood near the soda fountain, waiting my turn as a 6' blond snapped the lid on her cup. She looked at me, a little unnaturally. Then she said "it's pretty cold out there, isn't it?"

That's when I looked down to see my hand shaking uncontrollably. "Yeah, it's pretty cold out there."

I was feeling pretty shitty and it started to rain and sleet. It took all of my mental energy to see and drive the car. My conversational skills were lacking. Luckily, my brain got right and then I was just ragged out and tired. Fortunately, I only had 6 fares in the first 6 hours. The boredom was pretty bad. Then things picked up. I ended up running $240 on the meter, with some decent tips. When I went back in to the dispatch office at 3:45 and did my paperwork I was too tired to get up to leave. I sat and talked with Psycho Ken and some of the day drivers, and got home shortly before 5 am.

Some mention of the fares:

At one point I had to go over into the hood, off of Worley. It was freezing cold and a guy was standing on the edge of the street. Most people are waiting inside their houses, so this put me a bit on guard. It was a black guy, about my age. He said he had got off of work at a restaurant on Worley and started walking home, but decided to call the cab from his mom's house because it was too cold and he was sick. I relaxed. He wanted to stop at the Fast Lane convenience store to get some cold medicine. I was convinced by this point he was legit.

I was zoning a bit in the car, right in front of the door. This particular gas station has a large automatic sliding door, like at an older grocery store, so you can see right in. A black guy in a Buick with no exhaust rolled up and parked next to me. I looked, because the car was so loud and the driver had some rap music bumping over that. He was wearing a Carhart coat with the hood up and had his grill crunked out. He looked at me like he was annoyed that I was checking him out. He walked in and I started to zone out again.

There was a rapid movement and I perked up. My fare was near the counter and he had just shoved away the guy in the Carhart and jumped back. I saw him reach behind himself and put his hand to his hip pocket. I straightened up in the car seat and went to grab the shift lever. His hand missed his pocket, because it was about mid-thigh--you know, those ridiculously baggy pants with the packets way off of the ass. He pulled his hand back up and put it back up in front of him. I hadn't been paying attention, so I wasn't sure what had gone down. For a half second I thought my fare may be robbing the place. I could see the clerk, and she looked pissed off, but not overly scared. My fare turned around and headed back towards me through the door. The Carhart guy hesitated for a second and then started out as well. My fare was as the car as the other guy was hitting the door.

I didn't think my fare was going to do anything to me, and I was sure he hadn't robbed anyone. I waited for a second as he got in the car and I gunned it in reverse before we had a bigger problem. I hear him mumbling something in disgust about "coming clowning me when I'm sick--shiiit" as I got the fuck out of there. He seemed to calm down well enough, and I tried to get my brain to work fast enough for some distracting small talk. I was also trying to feel him out some more, because he never gave me an actual address, he had just said "at the end of Garth." As we got closer he wanted me to stop at the roundabout, and not at a house. I was on guard, but I had dropped other people off there before. The road is closed but its twice as far by the detour, and therefore twice as expensive. He had the money ready and wished me a good night. I told him to be careful and take care of his cold.

I had one call to the Arch and Column Pub. It is renowned as a gay/lesbian bar. I picked up a wasted man of near 50 who thought I was pretty cool. He said he had been drinking all day, and liked me right off of the bat. He wanted to go to the Thirsty Turtle, which is only a few blocks away. I told him it would be about $3 or $4. He also wanted a ride home for after the Turtle, and I told him it would be about $12-$15 for where he needed to go. He gave me $25 (so he wouldn't spend it all on booze) and said he'd call me when he was ready to go home.

I picked him up an hour or so later and headed north. He told me of some of the various industries he had been in and of celebrities he had met, including Elvis, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor. One good friend of his had been the producer of Heaven's Angels, and had introduced him to Michael Landon. He told me a number of times that I was a good dude and that you didn't meet honest people everyday. He said he had been drunk for the past two days and hadn't eaten anything. We stopped at Randy's market at Prathersville Road. He said he was going to buy some eggs and things, but forgot about 3 times in 2 minutes. I reminded him again.

I was worried he wouldn't make it in and out without falling down. I watched through the window as he gestured with his hands to punctuate some story he was telling the clerk, who smiled and nodded broadly. He reemerged in short order with a plastic bag containing 3 dozen eggs. I asked if he bought all they had and he said he imagined that he did. I got him home and he tipped me about $10, and told me I should get ahold of him if I wanted to do anything entrepreneurial.

Sometime after bars had closed I had a call on William Street. It runs through east campus, where many after-bar parties are held. The dispatcher said the guy was waiting at William and University. I thought I was a few blocks away when I spied two girls standing at the edge of the street. One was trying to talk on a cell phone and hold the other up. She gestured and I stopped. It was too cold to leave them. She was on the phone with another cab company at that moment. The girl was only going to campus, so I was going to run her and then come back for the other guy. The first girl loaded the second, really drunk girl in the car and thanked me. The fare was eastern European, as far as I could tell, with a thick accent and very drunk. Probably 18 or 19.

I had barely made it fifty feet when I came up onto University. There was the fare I was dispatched for, jumping in front of my cab. I told the girl I had to pick him up too and she freaked out a bit. I was trying to apologize to her while the guy was trying to open the front door, which is broken. At this point a car behind me started honking for me to move. I didn't give a rat's phallus about the car. I opened the front door from the inside, and the guy I asked if I was there for him. I said yes.

"But there's a girl in here."

"Yes, we're gonna drop her off at Jones Hall then I'll run you home."

The guy behind me honked again. The guy standing at my door started yelling for him to go around, and some small argument ensued. Meanwhile, the drunk girl in the back seat was trying to say something. Then, 3 frat boys in ties magically appeared, taking everyone by surprise. I thought they were from the other car, and were out to start a fight. But, it turns out they knew the other guy and had just walked out of a nearby party. They were trying to get in, and were only going a couple of blocks. European girl was really freaking out. I told her her ride would be free, as 3 frat boys piled on top of her in the back seat.

They were exuberantly drunk, and loud. One was bleeding from some minor mishap. I hoped he wouldn't get blood on the girl. The first guy wouldn't stop apologizing for the drunk guys, swearing he didn't know they were coming. I dropped them off a couple of blocks away, and got $10 out of them ($3 minimum fare, plus $2 for 2 extra passengers, plus $5 tip). I dropped the girl off for free. She had relaxed and was appreciative, and walked squarely into the car before weaving to the front door of her dorm. Then I started the meter on the last guy. He was pretty cool. He works as a delivery driver for a pizza place, so we had some similar vocational responsibilities. He was also law school bound.

At one point I was dispatched to pick up some people who had broken down on the highway. It was 4 young black guys from St. Louis in a Mercury Cougar. Granted, it was freezing cold, but the four of them combined were apparently unable to change a flat tire on their own. Rather, they were taking the cab to the Super 8 ($14.30 fare, $60 a room x 2?) and were going to have the car towed in ($60) to get the tire changed ($50?). Seemed pretty useless to me.

My last fare was on Zinnia. Don't know where it's at? Try to find it sometime. Not easy. My dispatcher messed me up to begin with. After dropping of the Cougar crew (whom I picked up on 63) he said "jump back on the highway and go to Stadium." So, not thinking, I jumped back on 63 and motored down to the Stadium exit. Then he gave me the street name, and I started to look it up in my book.

My book just gives street locations in reference to other, more well-know streets, like "6 blocks east of Hinkson on the north side of Paris." Well, Zinnia is 3 streets from a street 6 streets from 5 streets from a street you never heard of in the middle of fucking nowhere. And, it was on the complete opposite side of town, off of Stadium exit off of 70 by the mall. So, I had to correct for my initial mistake and race all the way across town. Once there, I tried to follow the book with little success. My dispatcher tried to tell me a better way which was nonetheless confusing. After making about 8 out of the 9 turns right I got turned around and drove another 5 minutes out of the way on an insanely curvy, hilly, dark, slick road with no light or shoulders.

About an hour after getting the call I found the elusive, mythical Zinnia, and even the right house number. There were no lights on and no one came out. I figured if they ever did they'd be pissed. But I'd just wasted an hour and didn't want to come up empty handed. It was after 2:30. Finally, an 18 or 19 year old kid named Ricky came out. He couldn't have been in a better mood. He was drunk and didn't even know his friends had called a cab. Another guy and a girl came out. Ricky rode in front and they rode in the back.

Ricky was very excited to talk to a cab driver. His friends started making out in the back seat. Ricky thought it was funny, and told me that the two in the back were really good platonic friends, were wasted, and were going to feel very awkward the next day.

Ricky asked how much I made as a cab driver. I said on a good night I was lucky to make $8 an hour. He thought that was good money. The fare was about $16, and the girl tipped me about $2. Though he had earlier remarked that he was going to make the girl pay, Ricky was so moved as to crack open his own coffers and give me an additional $2, which he could have easily spent on beer or weed. Now that, folks, was a pure act of generosity.