 © Anna Ostapiw
|
The Taxi Life Click to read Click to |
etg cover page | to purchase
© Anna Ostapiw
|
The Taxi Life Click to read Click to |
The Taxi
Life
When you hear the words "Taxi Driver," what vision comes to mind? Perhaps
the image of a disturbed Robert de Niro asking a mirror, "Are you talking to
me?" Or more likely you see a strange-sounding immigrant with an aggressive driving
style and an attitude to match. While both of these types exist among the for-hire
chauffeurs, they are in no way the sum total of their ranks.
Cabbies represent the entire spectrum of human experience. In my twenty years of driving taxis on the streets of Miami, I’ve known an ex-junkie working on her master’s degree and an ex-CEO who was usually working on a bottle. Lots of lovers and losers, boozers and users, all mixed in with college students and family men between jobs or just down on their luck.
Loners by nature and alone by rule, the cabby exists in a nether world closed and veiled to the uninitiated. You see cabbies nightly cruising the great white way: near the trendiest cafe or the hottest new club, outside the track or after the big game, waiting by the hour for arriving trains, boats, and planes. Summoned at all hours, the cabby responds to the unknown voice on the line. What will the next call bring? One moment you’re in the company of tourists, calmly driving them to a fine restaurant. The next, with a nervous and sweating junkie in search of his supplier. An hour later, the unwilling party to a volatile and dangerous domestic dispute. After midnight, drunks are the norm; they come in both sexes and in all kinds of moods.
We cabbies get to do all the things your mother told you never to do. Not only do we talk to strangers, we let them sit in the seat behind us as we drive them to places your mother would never allow you to go. All the while the cabby hopes that at the end of the trip money will change hands, and it will be in his favor. The street is no place for a faint heart or a slow wit. To steal a slogan from the Navy, "It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure."
It’s this very element of danger and uncertainty that some of the old-timers say is part of the allure of the streets. I often think that the word "chronic" rather than "career" better describes the full-time cab driver. The novice, if he survives the dangers and temptations of the street, will not only develop a sixth sense—so-called street smarts—but will experience a marked personality change and never see the world quite the same again.
Cab drivers speak a language of their own—this job is no place to bring your sensitivities. They refer to each other as "Camel-Jockeys" or "Towelheads," "Ruskies" and "Rednecks." Nothing personal, you understand. There are "Wacky Packies" and "Hyper Heebs." A Latino driver is just another "Ricky Retardo."
The jargon of cabbies is brutal, nothing is sacred. A gay bar is a "Fruit Stand" and a funeral home the "Body Shop." Most drivers can swear fluently in three languages. Street names abound. Cabbies answer to such titles as "Pepe La Pew," or "El Boniato" (sweet potato), and "The Happy Haitian." You have been "scooped" when another driver has stolen your fare. "Rabbit" is the guy who ran out without paying. "Double Doored" is what you are getting when your fare says, "I have to go up and get the money, I’ll be right back." Cabbies have a slang term for everything, none of which you will hear in a Sunday school class.
In the drama that is human life, cabbies, while always present, are never essential to what is happening. They’re like props on a stage, faceless and nameless, a shadow-like presence. This same anonymity can have an unusual effect on people, particularly on those suffering some type of emotional stress.
In one twenty-minute encounter, cabbies may hear the most intimate revelations, things most people would not tell their priest, lawyer, spouse, or therapist. Sometimes these words of confession spew out like lava from an erupting volcano—all strung together in a confused babbling. At other times the words of such fares come slowly in a painful monotone. These people don’t want you to reply, nor are they interested in your opinion. It’s as if they feel compelled to speak only their innermost secrets in the presence of another human being. When they have finished, they will avert their eyes as they press cash into your hand. Then, as if they had never been there at all, they are gone.
Sitting alone now, mouth open as he stares out his windshield, the cabby can only wonder, "What did I just hear and why?" True, he’s not really involved, yet he’s never untouched. The streets will leave their mark on the cabby. We call it the "New York Attitude." I think of it as a "Conditioned Condition," a temperament not uncommon to police officers and, in a more subtle way, essential to the full-time cab driver.
The cynical eyeball, the cabby’s ability to quickly sense danger, is the only trait he has in common with the police. Their actual relationship is one of antipathy. The police view the cabby as a much too free spirit—a kind of freelance, freewheeling satyr of the late night, a vagabond predator who roams the street ever ready to take advantage, a necessary evil, and one to be watched. Now, while this may sometimes be true, it is the exception rather than the rule. It’s the cabby’s high visibility in the streets, the domain of the police, that is cause for friction. The cabby can legally loiter. Licensed to drive a for-hire vehicle and expected to be available at all hours of the night, a cab cruising slowly through your neighborhood at three in the morning is not cause for suspicion. Occasionally, law enforcement agencies have taken advantage of the taxis’ immunity from suspicion and painted their own surveillance vehicles in taxi colors.
The police, in their role as buffer between citizens and criminals, see the cabby as one who moves freely between the two. To the police, the cabby is not quite righteous, not quite evil. Police are unable to protect the cabby because of the nature of these movements and think of him as a "probationary citizen" who deserves protection, but only after scrutiny. Meanwhile, the cabby toils in a solitary world where he may at any time become the victim of a citizen, a criminal, or the police themselves.
While the TV series "Taxi" was an accurate portrayal of the cabby life, Miami adds its own special flavor with its Casablanca-like atmosphere. Haitian boat people, Cuban refugees, moneyed South Americans—Miami is a crossroads filled with strange and mysterious people in an epic migration, the good and evil alike, all in search of their own place in the sun. The windshield of my taxi has provided me with a front row seat from which to witness this adventure. The close of this century is filled with movement and change. It makes me think of my immigrant grandparents at the beginning of this century, of the pioneer spirit, of a blending thread that weaves through all of us and makes us American.
I have come to know and count as friends a rainbow of faces—other taxi drivers as well as fares from exotic locations. I have been in their homes, tasted their foods, and, as we shared our stories of the streets, experienced their cultures in ways that cannot be gleaned from any textbook. I have learned about people in a way made possible by living The Taxi Life.
Profile
Miami is Ron Ritts’ territory. He’s a fifty-four-year-old native, a widower with three sons. He spent twenty-two years here as a union journeyman ironworker. When work slowed, he tended bar, worked as a cook—anything to the feed the family. The tourist boom led him to taxi driving.
Stories? Ron says there are hundreds of them, another one begins with each new fare. He is currently at work on a novel set in Miami featuring an Irish-Cuban detective, just like a guy who once rode in his back seat.
—Barbara Weston
Bio
Tips For Writers |
Cover | Skills | Essays | Travel | History | Fiction | Poetry | Reviews | Ordering | Books Online
