Made it through three days of cab school with classmates Shahab, Kahsay, Jake, Shems, Pina, Ladislav, Efrem, two Muhammads, Steve, Donald, and a dozen other guys. Passed the cab test; so did one of the Muhammads who took it the same day! My fingerprints are being checked for felonies, and I’ve got Temporary Public Vehicle Chauffeur’s License No. 4038.
OK, quit stalling . . . Just do it.
Off to Yellow Cab Co. for an hour-long orientation session on leasing rules and regulations, getting a photo ID card, signing papers, watching some videos, doing some hands-on practice with a demonstration meter and a radio. Some companies provide a bulletproof shield, others have a flashing “panic light” for drivers, but Yellow Cabs have a Pactel panic button (in a secret place) for “immediate personal life-threatening emergency,” and I get a demonstration of that, too.
You will be fined up to $500 by the City of Chicago and $100 by Yellow Cab Company for false panics.
-Yellow Cab Company Driver Information Packet
As official Lessee No. 7299, I could lease a cab immediately. Manage to come up with a dozen reasons why tomorrow is good enough; one of them is that a cabdriver (fifth one this year) was murdered a few days before. What if somebody pulls a gun? What if I don’t know where an address is? What if they won’t lease me a cab because I don’t have a bead seat? Tomorrow is soon enough.
Friday dawns cloudy and gray-good for business. Thinking like a cabdriver already. A real one would have hit the Elston Avenue garage by 6 a.m. rather than goof off until 9. Yeah, edgy is definitely the mood.
Cabdrivers’ high visibility and close contact with the public make them an easy target for crime.
-My Kind of Chicago Cabbie Official Training Manual
In the driver’s area at the garage, there’s a pool table, a metal picnic table, some video games, vending machines, and a pine tree deodorizer dispenser (“Freshen the Air as You Drive $1 Fragrance Lasts and Lasts”). No other women anywhere.
A sign warns “No Tipping!” Tip who? For what? Rookie questions, probably best not asked. I feel like a complete doofus.
Get a welcoming chat and some be-careful-out-there instructions from the garage manager, pay my daily lease fee ($51.33, a discounted rate for new drivers) and the first installment ($25) on the $150 bond new drivers are required to pay. They give me the keys and the meter to Cab No. 3795.
Equipment on hand: my bankroll for change, receipts, the daily papers to offer riders (service is my middle name), a Turner’s Street Guide, and the Chicagoland Guide to Every Obscure Landmark In the Western World or some such spiral bound mini-book. So with a false positive attitude, NPR on the radio (I think it’s the law), and important passages from the “My Kind of Chicago Cabbie” official training manual floating somewhere in the mist, I head in the direction of Halsted Street, the Avenue of Many Cab Takers Who Are Late For Work at 9:30 a.m . . .
Oh . . . my . . . gosh.
Somebody is waving at me. She wants a cab! I’m a cab. How do you do stop so the door handle is right at the customer’s hand? Darn! Three feet off. They never taught us that. Assume a yep-been-doin’-this-forever look. ” ‘Morning.” Just the right tone. Casual, experienced, trustworthy, not too pushy . . . “Washington and Wabash” from the back seat.
YES!! I know where that is! And she doesn’t look scary! YES!! Maneuver a driveway turnaround, don’t hit anything, start the meter, piece of cake.
Yes, I am a cabdriver. Or at least my rider thinks so.
Clybourn is fine, she responds to my caring and highly professional question about her preferred route. She accepts an offer to read a morning paper (her choice: Mother Tribune) then becomes the first of several passengers to comment on a female driver. How long driving, she asks. Too unsettling to give her the truth. “A while.” Liar liar pants on fire.
Watch for potholes and other street repairs.
-My Kind of Chicago Cabbie
Slowed down by construction on Lake Street (Damn! Should have remembered that!) but she hands over $7 for a $5.50 fare.
It’s 25 minutes before another fare materializes at Sheridan and Surf, going to the Blackstone Hotel. YES! Don’t see a woman driver often, she says. (Where are you thousand other female cabbies?) The fare’s $8.30; she gives me $10. Find myself humming “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves.”
Minutes later, Fare No. 3 at Michigan and Lake, a couple going to Chestnut and State. YES! Another Hit! Cabbie instinct: Business associates with underlying but simmering chemistry thing. They’re sharing Marshmallow Crispy Treats and there’s some serious finger-licking going on back there. He gives me $4.25 on a $3.80 fare. Hey, big spender. . . . Been out an hour and a half. Take so far: $21.25.
Up inner Lake Shore Drive, looking for flashing yellow taxi call lights on apartment buildings . . . There’s one! Nope, sewer truck. Over to LaSalle, driving south when two teenage boys flag me down. The one holding a cigarette opens the door and asks if he can smoke. Nope. He utters a four-letter word and tosses it away. They make me nervous. They’re going to 333 Wacker. YES! Wait . . . That’s the green curvy building, I hope?
A Chicago public vehicle chauffeur knows . . . when Wacker Drive runs north, south, east, or west.
-My Kind of Chicago Cabbie
The smell of last night’s beer fills the back seat as the two teen weenies complain about parents and friends in a variety of vulgarities, obscenities and body fluid-related epithets. They’re probably going to dad’s office to get money. I get $5 on a $4.60 fare. Gotta find me some more of those generous female passengers.
The sun has come out. People are walking. Things have slowed down-for me. Seems like every other vehicle on the road is a cab with a passenger. Ashamed and naked, in a public vehicle chauffeur sort of way, I wonder if one is still a chauffeur if one is alone in one’s public vehicle?
Philosophically exhausted, I pull over and count my morning’s take. Doesn’t take long-$26.25 in two hours, at which rate it’ll take four hours just to pay for my lease. And that was a discounted rate. Heavy dose of First Day On the Job Blues. Maybe a writing career . . . time for lunch break.
Revitalized and refreshed, despite spending $4.70 of the morning’s take on lunch (but unaware of the four fares practically back to back that await), No. 3795 and her driver hit the road again.
I’m just what the woman at Sheridan and Aldine is looking for-rather, my cab is. Her destination: the popular Chestnut and State (hey, where’s the party?). She gives me $10 on a $5.60 fare and asks for $3 back. Decent.
Barely clear the meter when a guy wants to go to Northwestern Station; he’s going to visit mom in Highland Park (people tell cabdrivers interesting stuff), but he doesn’t seem in a big hurry. Good thing. Madison is closed at Wacker (Damn again!). He’s nice and volunteers to walk across the bridge and gives me $5 on a $3.80 fare.
The door barely closes when another guy wants to go back in the other direction to 30 E. Wacker; know it! We bond during my skilled but snarky left turn in front of a Greyhound bus. He casually clutches his chest as he asks the how-long-have-you-been-driving question. Copping to my secret mission, I realize I didn’t start the meter.
He suggests we go for a drink (must have been the bus thing) and I pass; get a $2 tip for a $4 meter charge anyway. The woman two blocks away is going to Erie and Wells. Even though she claims to appreciate the air conditioning, she proves to be a tipping disgrace to her gender, forking over $4 on a $3.80 fare.
Yellow Cab has the best maintained fleet in Chicago.
-Yellow Cab Driver Information Packet
I’m feeling odd, pitched forward and to the right. Feels like it did when my old Hornet used to . . . darn. No. 3795 has a flat tire. Where’s that friendly let’s-get-a-drink guy when you need him?
It’s “no parking” on Orleans; a lot attendant says sorry, but he has to charge $7.50 for the first hour. The dispatcher says they’ll send a truck. A real driver would change her own damn tire and get back on the road. My choice: somebody else does it.
Before the truck arrives 65 minutes later, there is plenty of time to contemplate my accomplishments in the field of public chauffeuring:
I have made $48.25, I have spent (counting my school fee, the various license fees I had to pay, the one-day special-lower-rate lease payment, the $25 payment on my $150 bond, my lunch, the papers, and the parking lot fee), $170.38.
I have worked four hours and I’m $122.13 in the hole. This, I decide, will be a good time to end my cabdriving career. After the tow truck arrives and a nice man changes my tire, I return the cab and pay $4.78 to have the gas tank topped off. That puts me $126.91 in the hole.
On the up side, I didn’t get hurt or even threatened, somebody else will cover my losses, and I don’t really have to do this for a living. For Chicago’s 12,000 licensed public vehicle chauffeurs, real life should be so good.
