Pucker Up, Buttercup

Well, well, well.

Greetings, good people. I am coming to you after an unanticipated week-long absence. I have missed two updates. My sincerest apologies.

I got my last update up early, a week ago last Thursday. That Thursday night I went and saw The Greencards at the Blue Note.

It was a pretty good show, with a tiny crowd. The Greencards are a four piece: (from right-to-left) a Chicagoan on acoustic guitar, and Aussie chick on electric bass, an Aussie dude playing mandolin/bouzouki, and a Brit on the fiddle. They formed in Austin, Texas, and were pretty good. Very tight and precise, musically, though their aesthetic was a bit too polished and pretty for my particular tastes.

I tried to chat them up a bit, after the show. I wanted to offer them some encouragement and some kudos from a genuine Ozarks hillbilly. They seemed to think that the people here were more in tune to the kinds of music that they had coveted from abroad as the grew up. I hated to burst their bubbles, but told them that people in the Midwest listedned to Toby Keith and Britany Spears.

At first it appeared that Carol Young was only going to fan the flames of my older-woman fetish. But, I had to take points off for the elctro rig. She had on some dark indigo dungarees that bunched up on the tops of some square-toed brown leather cowboy boots.

"Tell me those aren't harness boots you're weraing?"

"What's that, love?"

"You know, with the straps and buckles on the ankle?"

"Yes, yes they are," she said, pulling up a pants leg for the reveal.

"Damn, I've looked all over for a pair but can never find the ones I'm looking for." She proceeded to tell me in too much detail about some catalogue or other I could find them in. That helped kill some more mystique.

I was about five Bass beers deep, so I called for a cab. Virginia told me it would be about 2o minutes. I looked at my watch. It was only 11:30. I had been feeling a cold coming on, and figured I should curtail my drinking. Ah, fuck it, might as well do it up right. I cancelled the cab and trod on over to Eastside.

I played 21 or more songs on the jukebox, and drank some more Bass beer. Steam was there, and I met Sawyer from comomusic. I also met a lady-type.

When I woke up the next morning, I heard a droning tone coming from somewhere. I thought it must have been Peat's alarm clock or something. When I got up I realized it was my computer. One of the scrooby-kittles had knocked over a soda, which had spilled in my keyboard. I was trying to resurrect compy, but, since the keyboard was malfunctioning, it tried to open 22 or more programs at once. Compy crashed pretty hard. The power button is messed up on the CPU case, where my buddy broke it while trying to fix it for me. I thought it might work again when the soda dried out.

But it didn't. I decided to let it go to hell for a couple of days.

So, here's a week ago last Friday:

I got saddled with #10, and went by Streetside, where I purchased a Wanda Jackson CD.

I started off with a CMAAA. I've bitched in the past that these are usually like $3 and $4 calls. This one was actually pretty decent, 8 miles for $16. Not a bad start. Some old woman going home up North from her chiropractor's appointment.

On my way back in on Paris road, I was dispatched to the Family Pawn. I pulled up to a black guy with something big in a box inside a plastic garbage bag. I guess he had road his bike in and got it off of pawn. I loaded his bike--a Wal-Mart cheapo with rusty chain--into the trunk, and headed back North to the Crescent Meadows Trailer Court in Prathersville. It was a pretty good fare, no tip.

Next, I worked my way over to Smithton Middle School for a time call. It was a light-skinned black girl, 12 or 13. I can't help feeling a little creepy rolling up to a middle school with a mohawk, picking up adolescent girls.

I took her home to Columbia Square apartments, where her mother was waiting, sitting on the sidewalk outside their apartment. She paid the fare. The girl had stayed late for rehearsal for a play she was in. It was fun talking with her.

Next, I was dispatched to an address on Coats. I pulled into the driveway a couple of minutes early, and waited, since it was a time call. And old woman dottered out and found her way to the back door of the Lincoln. She said, for future reference, that she preferred to be picked up at the street, rather than her driveway, because she didn't like walking in the gravel. Or some such shit.

She opened the door and inspected the seat for a seat belt. I told her there was only the one in the center, but that she could sit up front if she preferred. Which she did. She noticed the mandolin bag. "Oh, do you play banjo?"

The rule of thumb is this: if it has strings and is not a guitar, 70 percent of people will call it a banjo. About 10% will still call it a guitar. Perhaps 15% will ask if it is a violin, and maybe 5% will correctly guess that it is a mandolin. But, when someone askes if I play banjo, I say "actually, I do, though this is a mandolin."

She said that her son had played guitar and banjo, though he never took naturally to the banjo. I speculated that it is easier to transition from the banjo to the guitar, than vice versa.

She was headed to Jesse Hall. I asked if she was seeing a show. She said she was, "42nd Street." The fare was $5.o5 and she tipped $1.

Then I had a call in the hood. West Sexton. I picked up two people there, and took them to the Best Value Inn.

From there, I grabbed my regular from North Anne, and took him downtown.

Then I had a call on North 6th. It would be a round-trip. I pulled up and a black guy got in. We went over to Lakewood Apartments to pick up his lady. "You're not going to keep that thing running when I go in, are you."

"Gotta run wait time. It's a $1 a minute. 5 minutes is $5." He grumbled a bit and went in. $4.50 or so in wait time clicked off. I saw him come back out, follwing a petite black girl wearing a micro-mini that barely covered Christmas.

They got in and he immediatley acted shocked at the meter. I told him it had been four and a half minutes. The chick said something about there was no way, that he hadn't been in there two minutes, but then the dude said, no, it did take a while, though he was nonetheless unhappy about it.

I turned the Lincoln around and started to pull out of the parking lot. "Uh, we need to get there. We live here, we ain't sight-seein'." This was the chick.

On the drive back over the guy was bitching about spending money to pick her up. "What are you fittin' to do with that little-ass skirt on?" She mouthed something or other. "I'll make you think, little-ass skirt. I'll put my cigarette out on your leg, wearin' that little-ass skirt."

I got them back to their casa and the chick jumped out. The fare was $16.80. He gave me a $20, I gave him 3 $1s. He waited. "You want me to dig that $.20 out?"

"Hell yeah, I do. I can't be short with you, so you can't be short with me."

I dug in my cargo pocket and found a dime and 8 pennies. "I got $.18."

"You ain't got change? You out here driving a cab an you ain't got the right change?"

"Don't got it."

"You gonna come back and bring me my $.02?"

"I'll come back and bring you your $.02."

"Man, I'm just fuckin' with you. I don't care about no damn $.02."

Then I grabbed two people from Southpark and shuttled them over to South William. The guy had me cutting through parking lots at the dorms and stuff on East Campus to get him there the cheapest. He smelled strongly of coffee.

From there, I picked up a guy who's quickly becoming a regular. He's the one who works for a florist downtown. He has a handlebar moustache and dense tattoos on his forearms. He said he was going to meet his girlfriend at Hoot-N-Anny's. He said that he had been dating her for six months and had got no play. Apparently she had got knocked up before and was paranoid about getting pregnant. He said that he was going to giver her one more chance to give it up, or he was moving on. I wished him luck.

After that, I was dispatched to Patricia's IGA to pick up Marilyn. Marilyn is a pretty cool old lady who lives in Boone Landing, less than the $3 minimum away from the IGA. She doesn't want to pay the wait time while she's shopping, but we'll usually wait a couple of minutes for her if she just has to grab something quick and we're slow. The driver who had dropped her off was off on another call, so I was dispatched to pick her back up.

She tipped me $2 on the $3 fare. She said she hadn't tipped me as much as she had intended the last time because she didn't have much cash on her then. I hadn't cared enough to remember.

Then I grabbed a guy at the Fairfield and shuttled him to Cody's. He said he was going there to meet up with some chick he had met earlier at Everett's. He was some half-assed salesman. Not really personable or interesting, but the type who reads those books on how to win friends and influence people and then tries to employ the practices described therein.

He asked me if I was a student and and I mentioned law school. I said something about getting "burned out" and he went on a little tirade.

"It just frogs me to death to hear someone in their 20s talk about getting burned out. You don't get burned out. If you don't want to do something, that's different. But you don't get burned out."

Fuck you, Dr. Phil. I didn't ask your fucking opinion. And maybe you should try something like law school and/or the corporate legal world before you dispense advise on job stress, douchebag.

He tipped $4 on a $6 fare and asked for my card.

Then I grabbed some kids from Parkade and took them to Eastside. A couple of them had gone to school with Cully. I had them laughing with my shtick about how shitty #10 was.

After that, I took some dude on Sylvan round-trip to the Citgo for beer.

Next, I was dispatched out off of Scott Boulevard for some people going to Truman's. I couldn't understand half of what dispatch had been saying all night. I was a little tired and somewhat short-tempered. I didn't recognize the street name and had to look it up in my book. Dispatch broke in 2 or 3 times to ask if I was close or not. That wears me out. I'll get there as soon as I can, and I can't give you an ETA if I don't know where I'm going.

He was saying something about having another call out there, going the same way. But, he said I was picking up 4 at the first address, so I didn't think I'd have room for two groups. In addition to Derek not making any fucking sense, the mic on #10s radio sucks and it was a pain in the ass to get through to him. Then he was slow with replies.

I found the first group and headed to Trumans. There were only 2 of them, but dispatch hadn't given me the second address, so I figured I would just run them first and come back. It was a brother and sister, in their mid-40s. The chick had flown in from Alabama. Their Aunt Fannie had died, but they weren't too upset over it. I guess Aunt Fannie had been something of a pain in the ass. I dropped them off and set up a time call for them to go home. Dispatch asked me if they had requested me, but I told them not to save the call for me, since it was out of the way and they didn't tip much.

Then dispatch asked me if I had the second fare picked up yet. How the fuck could I pick them up when no one had given me the address? I got the address and headed back. Again, dispatch was on me 2 or 3 times before I could get there. Apparently the guy kept calling back and was threatening to call another cab company. So?

I pulled up and found a drunk dude wearing painter's clothes standing in a driveway. Some white-trash bitch was watching from the porch, her arms crossed in disapproval.

Apparently, this was the wife of his friend, and she had kicked him out of the house after they got in an argument. The guy was on the phone because he was in a big hurry to get out of there. He was over it by the time he got in the cab, though.

He was pretty fucked up. He asked me if I smoked weed. "All the time." I don't, but it's easier to just say that than make them feel awkward or like I'm going to narc them out or something. He fired up something or other in the car, but it didn't smell like any weed I ever smelled. It smelled like ass.

He couldn't really decide where he was going, or in what order. Potential destinations included: the liquor store, his pot dealer's, and his house. He stammered through each possibility before deciding to 1) stop for beer, 2) get dropped off at his dealer's, and 3) to walk the rest of the way home from there. He paid the fare, which was around $18, and tipped a couple of dollars.

After that, I was dispatched to the Super 8 over on Clark Lane. It was two guys who had been driving through Columbia on their way to Mardi Gras at Soulard. They decided to stop and party for the night in Columbia, though I figure they had started some time before, along the drive on I-70. Apparently, their friend couldn't wait to get into a room at the hotel before releiving hiomself, and was pissing in the parking lot when some cops rolled by. He had taken off running and they had lost contact with him. All they knew was that he had made it to a bar somewhere, but they couldn't understand him on the phone when they called him.

They thought he had been picked up at the Quick Trip accross the street. They wanted to go downtown. Along the way, their buddy called. He was at Silouette. They asked me what the place was like, and, upon telling them, they decided to leave his ass there and find something to do downtown. I gave them a quick rundown and dropped them off at Eastside. I think I got about $7 tip out of them.

Then the dude called back from Cody's. He didn't have much to say on the return trip, pretty deflated. I asked him if he ran into the chick from Everett's. He said he did, but with no further comment. He tipped me another $4.

Dispatch sent me from there out to the Lake of the Woods exit. It was a woman of near40 heading all of the way across town, off of Scott Boulevard. It was a hefty $28.80 fare or so.

Then I grabbed two guys from outside of the Penguin. Their buddy is the guy who has the hot dog cart set up on Broadway. They had been drunk and trying to help sell hot dogs, which had annoyed their buddy. They bitched about him most of the way home.

Sometime after 2am I had a call to pick up at Dominos on South 9th street. The Dominos employee unlocked the front door and a drunk college student came to the car. He said he wanted to go to the Reserve and that he wanted to go through a drive-through along the way. He asked what it would cost to get to the Reserve and I estimated $10-11. I also warned him that the wait time at the drive-through would be $1 a minute, and that it could easily take 15 minutes at that time of night. I hadn't pulled out of the parking lot yet, and the Dominos employee came out towards the cab. "Everything alright?" The kid said he wasn't worried about the money and I drove him to Hardees.

Luckily, for him, there wasn't much of a line at Hardees. Just one car and Cully in front of us. We made it through in good time, only costing $6 in wait time. He bought about $12 in food.

I turned and headed for the Reserve. We were climbing the hill up Old 63, about a 1/2 mile away, the meter showing about $13.80, when the dude said "I think you're trying to scam me." Let's review the facts: I said $10-11 cab fare to the Reserve, and there was $6 in wait time (about 1/3 what I had estimated). When I got him to the apartment, the fare was $16.80. Which makes my estimate pretty fucking accurate. I re-explained it to him, and he was still adamant that I was ripping him off. No tip.

My last call for the night was out of Grindstone Canyon Apartments. It was a young married guy, who had just lost all of his money playing poker. He had borrowed cab fare to go home, and he expected his wife to be very pissed at him, because it was so late and he was drunk. Even after telling me about losing all of his money, he managed a $4 tip on a $12 fare.

Here I am a bit confused. I think I am missing my little card-of-notes from Saturday. So, I am going to fast-forward, I think, to Monday.

Monday: I was in #9, a very clean and fully-functioning '94 Crown Vic Interceptor. My first call was a short one, from downtown to Cliff Drive. $1 tip, on a $4 or $5 fare.

Then I was dispatched to pick up a regular from dialysis. She has all of her limbs, though she is typically very weak after dialysis and I escort her into her apartment and unlock her door for her.

After that, I jetted over to Paquin. It was a heavy-set SoCal looking guy, going to class at Columbia College. He was winded from the jaunt to the car, and wheezed for most of the trip. "It's been a long time since I've seen a real mohawk. I think the last time was in 1984."

He said he had played bass in some garage bands in Southern California. He paid the $4.55 fare with 2 $1 bills, a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, a Sacajawea gold dollar coin, 6 quarters, and one nickel.

Then I had an out-of-town call, from the University Med Center to Bowling Green, Missouri. I wasn't really sure where Bowling Green was at. When I finally found the fare, after 10 minutes or so of idle mandolin picking, she didn't know how to get there, either. She had only lived in Missouri for a year-and-a-half and had came to Columbia via ambulance. I asked dispatch how to get there. "Go to the Kingdom City exit, take 54 to 19, then watch for Bowling Green signs."

We headed that way. At the Kingdom City exit I asked if she minded if I stopped to get a soda. She said 'no,' and asked if I could get her a Mountain Dew. She said she didn't have any money on her, but that she would repay me when we got to her house. No problem.

It had just got good and dark. She fell asleep and slept most of the way.

19 and 54 are the same highway in places. I missed a turn onto 'Old 54' and took 19 all of the way to 61, some 16 miles north of Bowling Green. That was about 20 minutes and 20 miles out of the way. No big deal, really, but I only got paid for the 86 or so miles it should have been, which only amounted to a $81.80 fare.

She woke up and I got her to her house. I had assumed she lived alone, which was why the social services was paying to transport her home. When I pulled up to her trailer, there were 3 cars in the driveway. She had to pay me the $3 co-pay and the $1 for the soda, and told me to come in. She was wearing the socks the hospital gives you, with the rubber-tread stuff screened on the bottom. She had them on upside down, with the tread portion on the tops of her feet. She steadied herself along the hood of the car to her porch, treading carefully on the gravel.

The trailer was all lit up. She opened the door and I followed her in. I heard voices from a back room down the hallway. It sounded like 3 or so people, at least one dude and a couple of chicks. They were doing some dirty-Southern-white-trash-talking about something or other. No one seemed to notice that we had entered. The woman went down the hallway to get her money, leaving me standing unattended in the living room.

I studied the decor. Mounted on the wall was a wooden CD rack. It was rectanglaer, with two vertical rows for holding cds, which were to rest perched on the wooden dowels that broke it into 8 individual storage cubes. Instead of CDs, it held beer coozies. Not really a collection for a collections sake--most of them appeared to be well-used. I counted about 20 of them.

There were also several fishing poles on a rack about head-high in the hall way. After a minute or two, some cracker of about 20 walked into the living room from the hallway. I'm not sure he had realized anyone had came in, but he didn't look too overly surprized to find a strange guy with a mohawk standing in his living room.

"I just drove your...I just brought a woman from the hospital in Columbia..."

"Oh, my mom?"

"Yeah. I was just waiting for her to come back. She had some money for me."

The mom shuffled back into the room. "Have you seen my purse? I had $10 in it."

"How much is it?"

"Four dollars."

The dude opened his wallet and counted out $4. I told the woman to get to feeling better and left.

I took my time getting back. Determined not to waste the 20 miles back-tracking the way I came, I took a different road out of Bowling Green. I somehow got fucked up and ended up driving all of the way to New Florence. I knew I should have looked at a map before I left.

It ended up being about a 4-hour round trip, in all. When I got back, I needed to fuel up. I stopped at my regular gas station--the big Phillips 66 on Rangeline--and topped off the Vic. I was looking at my clipboard, still parked at the gas pump, when I felt someone bump into the car.

I looked up, and a green Saturn 2 door hatchback had backed into the front corner of the Crown Vic. He pulled forward, about 5 feet, and stopped. He turned and looked at me. I already had my pen in hand, and wrote down his licence plate number, as I could tell he was going to rabbit.

He was pulling away when I stepped out of the car. The impact had been ever-so-slight, and there was barely a scuff on the front bumper cover. The chick who worked at the gas station was outside talking to someone and watched him back into me. She walked over and expressed her disbelief that the guy had backed right in to me. The guy looked at me as he pulled slowly around the lot, turned onto Rangeline, and drove away.

He was Mexican, and, I figured, an illegal. There was no harm done to the Vic, but I didn't want anything coming back on me. I radioed dispatch, and he said he had to call it in as a hit-and-run. So, I had to wait for CPD to come and give a statement. After all of that, combined with the Bowling Green fiasco, I had made only $80 in nearly five hours, which only amounts to $28 for me.

When I finally got that cleared up, I was dispatched to the MU Alumni Center. It was the same old lady I had taken to see 42nd Street. She was pleased to find that #9 had working seat belts in the rear. On the way home I debated her on Missouri seat belt laws for commercial vehicles.

From there, dispatch sent me over to a house on Garth. A woman and 4 kids got in the car. I estimated the oldest to be at least 15 or 16. I said it would be "$1 extra for the second adult passenger."

"What second adult passenger?"

"Anyone over 13 is an adult passenger."

"She's only 12."

"Only 12? I guess she's growing like a weed, then, ain't she?"

I dropped off two of the kids at a house, where one of them went in and retrieved some cash. I took the woman and the other kid to the Med Center ER. Along the way, she told me that my transmission was slipping.

My next call was at the Lake of the Woods. When I got to the exit, I asked where i was going. Derek said the gas station at the exit. I sat there for a minute and didn't get anyone. He called the person, and told me that he was headed my way on a bicycle, and for me to drive and meet him.

I drove down St. Charles Road, turned onto Lake of the Woods Road, and, there, by Limoges, I saw a guy riding a bicycle carrying a backpack. He was a cracker, and was wearing shorts. He shoved the bike in the trunk and climbed in.

He had been drinking at TPs, and pissed off his wife. She had told him that if he wasn't home in 15 minutes that she was locking him out. So, he wanted to go to Hoot-N-Anny's. I drove him there, he paid by credit card, and tipped $2.

After that, I went to Booches. I got a young couple (presumably married) headed to Chapel Hill. As we headed down Locust to Providence, the guy asked the chick where she had parked. She said "in front of Tiger Columns, like you said." As we passed, he saw the car and said she had to move it.

They were both drunk. It was an older BMW 525. I offered to move it for them, since we had just passed an MUPD making someone do the perp walk about a half-a-block back. "That would be a pretty bad way to get a DWI."

They were pretty gracious. The guy was talking about the film festival that past weekend, and, I think, Taxi Driver. They tipped $4.

From there, I had a call from Providence Walkway, in the projects. It was a young black couple, headed to Gatehouse Apartments. Along the way, the girl commented on my hair. "What made you cut your hair like that?"

"Boredom, I guess."

"Does your girlfiend like it?"

"Actually, yes, she does." This was a bit of an exageration, at least on the 'girlfriend' part.

About 1am I had a call out of Otto's Corner Bar. That's a fairly upscaled place, so I thought there may be a good tip in it for me. I saw some people get up and start putting coats on when I pulled in front of the door. I waited a few minutes, and was beginning to get a bit impatient, when a wasted chick dressed in punk garb came out, clutching a drink.

She got in the cab, and apologized for the other guys taking so long. She had shocking fried black hair and was wearing a miniskirt with socks and tennis shoes. She said she was from New Orleans, and was bereaving Mardi Gras here in the Midwest. After a couple of minutes, she got impatient, and staggered back inside. It was a further unreasonable 3 or 4 minutes before they came back out. I recognized one of the guys, though, as a semi-regular. I described him once as wearing Edward Scissorhands 80s punk garb. He's got a bit of a Sid Vicious methadone stupor going on.

Some of you probably know him. He's got an arachnid nickname and freelances as a tattoo artist, I believe. There was a third guy, named Austin, from Mississippi.

They were all wasted, and were making a stop on East campus before going to their final destination. I pulled up at the house on Bass and Scissorhands and the chick got out. He was trying to see her safely inside, as she was fucking wasted.

But, it was kind of like the blind leading the blind, as he wasn't much better off. He pleaded with me not to run wait time, since it would only be a second. Of course they were a mess, and it took a couple of minutes to even get in the door.

From there, the door opened and closed a number of times, before Scissorhands stepped out. Then the chick tried to follow. Then a dog ran out. Then scissorhands chased the dog, caught it, and carried it awkwardly back up on the porch. He must have shut it in the door or something, as I heard it let out a yelp.

Next thing I knew, Scissorhands was staggering off of the porch in search of the dog. I hadn't seen it come down the stairs, and thought it might have been hiding under the benches on the porch. Scissorhand seemed pretty distraught, though, and started hollering for the dog. Then the chick came staggering back out.

"What's your dog's name?" Scissorhands was asking the chick.

"I don't have a dog."

Scissorhands started hollering "come here, Jawbone" or "Jumbo" or some varient. The chick didn't seem to know what was going on. I guess the dog belonged to someone else at the house. Even though I was taking a beating on wait time, I couldn't help but laugh, and got out to try to help find the dog. But, it's awkward to call for a strange dog in a strange neighborhood when you don't even know it's proper name.

They finally gave up on the dog, and I got Scissorhands and Austin back in the cab. Scissorhands was stuck on the poor dog's fate, in that stumbling obsessive drunkard's way, where you keep repeating something over and over, unable to get past the thought. I got them home, and the fare was something like $16.80. The Austin cat gave me a $20. "Just give me $3 back."

Scissorhands dug in all of his pockets, and managed to produce five dissheveled and crumpled $1 bills. A good tip. As he got out of the cab I heard a pocketful of change cascading into the back seat and floorboards. "You can keep that, too."

After that charade, I was dispatched over on Highview, in the hood. It was LiLi, the woman I picked up the one time who had thrown all of her old man's clothes away, and had asked me about cold sore remedies. She was with her daughter and grandchildren (2), and they were headed to another house on Leeway.

My last call was to pick up at CPD. I rolled up to see 3 guys, one talking angrily on a cell phone, one running into the street to flag me, and the third taking a hearty beer piss, all over the side of the wall, about eight feet from the door of the Columbia Police Department.

They all piled in. They guy in front, the one who had been on the phone, had been popped for DWI. He was in a bad mood. "You guys all three going to the same place?"

"Yes."

"Where's that?"

"Rolling Rock. You know where that is?"

"Yes I do," and I proceded to roll out. Within a couple of blocks, one of the guys asked how much the fare would be to Jefferson Commons. "Wait, are you going to Rolling Rock, or Jefferson Commons?"

"Yes."

"Well, which is it?" Now, apparently, we were going to Rolling Rock and then Jefferson Commons.

"Turn left here." That would be North on 10th Street from Broadway, completely in the opposite direction of either Rolling Rock or Jefferson Commons.

"Where are we going?" Now the third guy was wanting to go to North 9th Street. I was on Park and 9th when he said to stop. The meter was at $3.55. We'd made a big circle. He put in $5. Then the second guy, who was heading to Jefferson Commons, bailed, too. He said he was going to walk home (~4 miles), since all of his money was at his house. He had already got out and I didn't want to try to explain to him that I would wait at his house for him to get his money.

So now I was down to the original guy, the one who had been arrested. I started to head to Rolling Rock and he said he wanted to go by the Petro Mart at College and Paris, to make sure his car was still there. "Do you just want to drive by, or are you going to stop and buy something?" He had been trying to bum cigarettes up until that point, and had broken and discarded the two they had given him. He said he just wanted to drive by.

When I drove by, he decided he wanted to stop. He went in for cigarettes, but they wouldn't sell him any because he didn't have his ID. He had had to surrender his driver's license when he got the DWI.

So, we drove back across downtown, to Walgreens, where I went in and bought him a pack of cigs. Then we finally headed to Rolling Rock. His buddy had given $5 up front. When we were turning onto Rock Quarry, about a mile and a half from Rolling Rock, the fare was at about $13. He handed me two bills, in the dark. "Here's $20."

One was a $10 and the other was a $20. "That's thirty, you gave me a $20 by mistake." I handed both bills back to him, and he gave me back the $20.

I got him home, and the fare was about $14.05. He thanked me, collected his shit, and got out of the door. The $10 was laying in the seat where he had missed his pocket. I pointed it out to him. "You're determined to give me that $10 yet, aren't you?" He didn't but I still pulled an $11 tip on the deal.

Well, that's two days worth of cab content. I'm afraid that that is the best I can do for you good people tonight. I apologize agian for the week-long hiatus. I got my compy fixed (new keyboard), but also got sick again. I worked Friday night but called in sick yesterday (Saturday). I'm over the hump, cold-wise, though. And, yes, there's a lady-type in the works, so you can look forward to all future blogs being about teddy bears and rainbows.

Ciao,
Garner