Category: Cab Driving Story

Treacherous Stressful Driving

2/13/2021

So this was a day of hard driving. I had been up in the northwest corner of New Mexico, fishing the San Juan River, and was headed back to Austin and it was—icy.

Had about 100 miles of this heading down Hwy 550. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic—that school bus in front of me for a long time, a few other cars. At one crossroads there were two big dogs cavorting around having fun. The road got better south of Cuba and I drove along fine.

But then I made a mistake. I was heading south on I-25, and decided that I wanted to drive by the Trinity Site, more or less, so I headed east on 380 through the desert—and, yeah, the Trinity site was off there somewhere in the vastness, so that was cool. And I headed on east. But then the road past Carrizozo climbed up into the mountains. And there was fucking snow up in the mountains! And the sun went down and it was nighttime. Yikes!

So I drove on over the mountains in a snowstorm in the dark. I had a cassette of Prince’s Purple Rain playing, and I listened to it over and over, a steady nice rhythm as the wipers thudded across the windshield. I remember anticipating how stupid I would feel back at the bar explaining how I ended up in a goddamn ditch or worse—and that anticipation of shame kept me alert. Shame kept me alive!

And I did make it down out of the mountains to Roswell, where I got a motel and crashed hard.

The Austin ice storm of 1997. Another stressful day of driving.

I was driving the cab in those days, and I had a day shift beginning at 400am. So I made my way carefully downtown, and got my first ride at the (then) Marriott, taking a guy to the airport. On the way back from the airport I saw a Cadillac all up askew in the middle of someone’s yard, and a guy standing beside the car. He flagged me down.

“I ran off the road!” he said. “Can you give me a ride?”

“Sure,” I said.

The guy went back to the Caddy and pulled out a shotgun, a woman’s purse, and a 12-pack of Budweiser.

I guess I was looking at him somewhat skeptically.

“It’s my mother’s purse,” the guy explained.

I guess that made sense. We drove somewhere or other.

The guy asked me, “How come you’re not running off the road like everybody else?”

“Because I’m driving 15 miles an hour,” I said.

I was the only cab in central Austin for most of the day. You’d think I would’ve made a lot of money, right? But I didn’t, really. Because I could only drive 15 fucking miles an hour, and every trip took forever.

Oh well.

We are under a winter storm warning this weekend. Ice! Snow! Cold! I have an appointment to get my covid vaccine Tuesday, and, if I have to, I will endure more treacherous driving to not die. The rest of y’all need to stay home.

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Election Day(s), 2000

11/6/2020

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Biden has taken the lead in our current election—a good thing!—and is likely to win. But here’s a memory of an election that went—the wrong way.

The stolen 2000 election. I’m still traumatized by that fucking thing.

I was driving a cab in those days. I went and voted (my man Gore!) and then hit the streets, hoping to make good money. And I did! It was very busy. Lots of activity.

At one point in the evening I was dropping off a journalist (from New York Magazine, I think) at the Governor’s Mansion. I was dropping him off on the Guadalupe side, and he was paying, when around the corner came a battalion of drunk frat boys chanting “Bush! Bush! Bush!” One of them had uprooted an unfortunate bit of shrubbery and was waving it around. And there were many other trips, and the night went on, and it got cold and rainy, and my cab was acting hinky—stalling and lurching.

Around 10pm I was going by the Governor’s Mansion again, and a DPS trooper flagged me down. I pulled over. One of the drunk frat boys—well, a drunk frat boy—was with him. “This guy’s had too much to drink,” the trooper said. “Can you take him home?”

That’s always an unpleasant thing to hear. But, yeah, I took the kid. At Guadalupe and MLK he bailed on me. A fare jumper! I pulled out my maglight and took off after him—I was going to smash the little fucker—but he dodged into a convenience store and cowered by the cashier and I didn’t want to smash him in front of witnesses and so he got away and he probably voted for Trump this year, the piece of shit.

I drove on. Made more trips. I listened to returns coming in on the radio, and it was grim. Gore conceded. I was bummed.

Then my cab broke down, on MLK by the university. I had passengers in the car—I called for another cab to take them, and then I called for a tow truck for my cab, and then I called for a cab for myself and I left my cab blocking a lane in the rain.

By the time I got back to my apartment more returns were coming in. I got in my personal car, went to the grocery store, and by the time I came back, Gore had unconceded and was ahead.

Judy Woodruff was on CNN being speechless. (This is about the time I stopped watching CNN—their coverage was lame. Over on MSNBC, Mike Brzezinski was scribbling numbers on a whiteboard and Lester Holt was calm and collected).

Anyway—the election went on for weeks. I was driving days part of the time, nights part of the time. I was watching tv at home, listening to the radio in the cab.

I drove some Japanese journalists around for a couple of nights. They said they were going to mention me in their story, and they sent me a link—but it was in Japanese, so I couldn’t read it.

One afternoon I was explaining the electoral college to a woman who was confused about the process, and she said—“You sure know a lot, for a cab driver.”

Yeah, fuck you, too.

I was in line out at the airport when Gore made his second concession speech. I was just—fucking sad. And angry.

So much was lost.

Bite me, "History."

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I Visit a Texas Grave

7/16/2017

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Below is a photo I took of the grave of J. J. “Jake” Pickle (1913-2005), who from 1963-1995 represented Texas’s 10th Congressional District—back when that was Austin’s district, before solidly liberal Austin was gerrymandered into five different conservative districts. Pickle was a fraternity brother of John Connally at the University of Texas, and it was Connally who got him a job working in Lyndon Johnson’s congressional office. In the 50s he was a partner in Johnson’s radio station.

During my Austin cab driving days, I had Pickle as a passenger.

It was in 1998, I think. I picked him up at a condo in Tarrytown. He was standing at the rounded tip of a cul-de-sac, and I swung the cab around so that the rear passenger door would be right in front of him. But he lurched backwards, almost fell down. When he got in the car he said, “You frightened me—I thought you were going to run me down!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Where do we go?”

“I need to go to Governor Shivers’s house,” Pickle said.

Uh, what? It sounded like the poor little old man actually wanted to go visit Shivers, who had been governor back in the 50s and died in the 80s. But then I realized—oh, the Shivers Mansion. The University of Texas owned it and used it for meetings and receptions and whatever. So, okay.

It wasn’t very far away. I got there without difficulty. The fare was $4.75.

Pickle handed me a five dollar bill.

“Now,” Pickle said. “I want you to keep a little something of that for yourself!”

And I did.

A very little something.

Pickle is buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. (And, no—I don’t understand the watermelon).

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Out of Context Excerpt 7

2/6/2016

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New Edition of Long Time Ago Good coming Spring 2016!

This week: out of context with Long Time Ago Good....

...an old fat man in a gray jumpsuit came out of the store. He leaned on his cane, looking at me in the cab, then walked over to the Cadillac parked next to me and opened the door. He looked at me again. No one else was in the parking lot—it was as if the streets had emptied and everyone had gone home. No cars, no people, no nothing except the fat old man who was staring at me. I stared back at him. Finally he walked around his car—slowly, slowly—and came over to the cab. I rolled down the window.

“You know, you’re parked in a handicap parking space,” he said. He had a big bald head and round glasses.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“And you don’t have handicap plates, or a sticker.”

“No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”

He planted his cane carefully and leaned over, smiling. He had a huge round head. “Well, you know, I’m kind of an activist for handicap parking rights—my friends call me the Ralph Nader of handicap parking rights.” He chuckled and looked at me—proud, I guess, of being the Ralph Nader of handicap parking rights—but I didn’t say anything. After a moment, he said, “So, I guess I’ll have to ask you to move.”

“I’m just waiting for a customer,” I said. I looked away at the store. “It’ll only be a minute or so.”

“Well, then, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police. I’m going to have you arrested.” He slowly started to turn away, pivoting on his cane.

“Wha-aaat?” I couldn’t believe it. I drive some maniac albino around for an hour, and then I get threatened by an old bald man.

“You’re parked in a handicap zone! And you don’t have authorization!” The old man took a step back toward me. He wasn’t chuckling now—his face was turning red with anger, or madness, and spit flew out of his mouth when he said the word authorization. “I worked for years for handicap rights in this city and I’m not going to have my rights taken away by some damn—cab driver!”

“Hey, pal,” I said, and stopped. When did I start calling people ‘pal?’ Miller. Jesus, you drive riff-raff around all day, you become riff-raff—and it doesn’t take very long, either. I said, “I’m just waiting for my customer, okay?”

“I don’t give a damn about your customer. I’m not going to have my rights taken away by some sleazy cab driver!”

I remembered another driver once telling me that cabs could park in handicap spaces if they were waiting for a customer. So I said, “Ah, fuck you, call the cops.”

“What did you say?”

“Call the cops.”

The old man’s bald head was turning redder and redder. “No,” he said, “before that.”

“Fuck you, I said, call the fucking cops.” The old man staggered backwards with a shocked look on his face. I hit the window button and the glass rose quickly, and I looked hopefully toward the door, willing Miller to appear. That’s how bad my day had turned—I was praying for some goddamn weirdo to get in my cab! As for the old man, let him call the cops. The worst that would happen would be that the cops would write me a ticket that I would stick in the glove box and forget about.

But then there was a bang on the rear of the car—and another. I looked around and the old man was beating on my left rear fender with his damn cane. Bang! Bang!

I pulled my big, black flashlight from beneath the seat and got out of the car.

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Ordinary Horrors

Treacherous Stressful Driving

Election Day(s), 2000

I Visit a Texas Grave

Out of Context Excerpt 7

Lowell Mick White

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