The Transcendent Taxicab

Go To The Beginning

2011-04-03T23:29:00.000-07:00

Go to the very first blog entry that I made in the beginning of December 2009, titled “In The Beginning.” From that point to the end of March 2010 it is just straight taxi cab stories. Then on March 31, 2010 I began creating science fiction scenarios with “Alien Cab Driver,” to keep my interest up and couple that with radio programs, both real and fictional. Everything is based on real or inspired events, with the names and locations changed to protect both the innocent and me. So check it out from the very beginning and let me know what you think. My email address is fototune@comcast.net and the link to the “Beginning” is http://thetranscendenttaxicab.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-beginning.html

The End

2010-12-22T00:27:00.000-08:00

This is the end, as I predicted a year ago. Of course I created the circumstances for me to fulfill my own prophecy, just as God does. Does this mean that I am God? I don’t know, but one thing is for sure, and that is that this is the end. Coincidentally, even though I knew nothing about it, a full lunar eclipse would occur, just as the winter solstice took place, on December 21, 2010. So here it is the 100^th blog entry, from when I began it a year ago. My goal was 100 entries from which I would construct my novel. I don’t have time right now, since I’m in the process of finishing up the 2 volume history of contemporary Christian music that I’ve been working on since 2008. So this is my last blog entry.

I finished lunch a half hour ago, and it was dead, so I pulled into the VA hospital parking lot, to wait for a call. I put my seat in the recline position, after pushing it back all the way and put my cap over my eyes, as I relaxed and closed my eyes, as a talk show on the radio droned in the background.

“When the earth’s population reached 1 Trillion, even the common man began to realize that there were too many people. This marked a wave of fear that began to reverberate around the globe, until it found a home with the “World Wide Council For Humanities Survival” (“WWCFHS”) After food shortages collapsed all the governments of the world and anarchy resulted. The “WWCFHS” was founded to fill the vacuum that resulted, and it quickly found a solution to the problem.

First of all, there were too many of us for the planet to support, and at the rate of growth, as it was currently projected, the human race would become extinct because of overpopulation within 100 years, of painful starvation and last ditch wars, until everyone was either dead or back in the stone age.

The “WWCFHS” headed by Dr. Hentworth Drenoble proposed a plan that would cut the earth’s population by 50% within a 20 year period, and stabilize the economy. First, a lottery was created, that used the existing world citizen ID #’s that everyone was issued at birth. If your number was picked, you were contacted, and reported to the nearest airport by your home, within 24 hours to be transported free of charge to a staging area, where lottery winners were consolidated. Then you would be transported to an undersea paradise created by engineers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. However, in reality there was no paradise, but internment camps located in the Hawaiian Islands. The internment camps were stage one of the “solution.”

Stage 2 of the “solution” included cannibalism. The internment camps were in reality food processing plants, where lottery winners were processed. Camps were set up where some semblance of normalcy existed and families and reproduction were encouraged. The reason for this was to keep a store of food available, in case the lottery system failed at some point.

“Number 25 get the Lone Oak for Vic,” the voice on the radio announced.

I grabbed my microphone and told John the dispatcher that I got it, as I started my cab and wrote down the call. Vic was a regular, that liked to get as close to falling down drunk every night as he could, without actually passing out. Tonight was no exception, but experience taught cab drivers that patience could earn the driver a big tip. Since cab drivers don’t get paid hourly, passengers that waste time can be a deficit, and Vic wasted a lot of time, from taking 15 to 20 minutes to finally come out from the bar, to another 10 minutes at his house, where he struggled to find his keys and wallet and finally exit the cab. However, if the driver was patient and helped him to the door, the result could be anywhere from a $20.00 to $50.00 tip, on top of the fare. After I got Vic to his door, he gave me $33.00 to cover the $8.60 fare.

My next passenger was a dancer, from Hard Candy, that was celebrating her birthday with her gambling addict boyfriend. After she came out of the club she complained that she was celebrating her birthday by coming to the same place that she worked at to see the same naked girls that she saw every day at work. After I told her happy birthday, she said that she wanted to go to Taco Bell, and then we would pick up her boyfriend, who was still gambling. We crossed the bridge to West Salem and after she got her order we returned to the club where her boyfriend was waiting out front.

On the drive to their apartment located in West Salem, across the bridge, they argued and then made up. They talked about praying for each other and the woman said that she prayed for the man regularly, while the man said that he prayed for himself, but appreciated her prayers anyway. Finally he expressed gratitude for her prayers and they began to kiss as I pulled into the driveway of their apartment. The guy paid me and gave me a $2.00 tip, as I drove off and turned on the radio.

“What are we going to do when the population exceeds the planet’s ability to support it?” The voice on the radio asked. “Resort to cannibalism, of course. This has been the way ever since the dawn of man. Primitive man used cannibalism as a necessary method of providing food, and it continues today in some aboriginal tribes. In some cases it became part of their religious ritual, and eventually only became symbolic, as in the case of Christian communion, where believers eat the body and blood of Christ. However, in the future, it will become a necessity for the survival of the human race.”

A Convergence of Drivers

2010-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Mike Shaunacy was driving his taxi down 12^th Street around Midnight, when he spotted a woman frantically waving at him on the side of the deserted street. He pulled into the parking lot by a transmission repair shop and the woman hurriedly got in the front seat of the cab with him.

“Get me out of here as fast as you can,” the woman told #21, as a jet black BMW pulled into the lot about 10 feet from the cab, as a large man got out and began to walk towards the taxi. “Take off before he gets to us,” the woman blurted out in a panicked tone of voice, as she handed him a $20.00 bill and told him that it was all his.

“That’s great,” Mike told her as he peeled out of the driveway heading South on the one way street, “but where are we headed?”

The woman gave him an address in the middle of felony flats, so Shaunacy turned left and headed there. The woman asked him if he ever helped helpless females to get away from their assailants before, and he told her that he had only been driving a taxi for a few months and had not. When they arrived at the destination his passenger thanked him as she got out and begged him not to tell anybody where he took her.

Shaunacy headed to the Greyhound station after he cleared, where there were already 2 other cabs in the 1^st 2^nd taxi stands. When he pulled in both drivers were out of their cabs and standing between them with their windows down and the radio microphone resting on the outside of the driver’s door with the volume up to the max. It was drivers #11, Dora Dimes, a hard as nails middle aged woman who #21 decided that he wanted to fuck. She had a nice body, but her face usually wore a scowl that scared off most suitors. For some reason she seemed interesting to #21, so he began to flirt with her.

“Hey beautiful,” #21 said to #11, as he nodded to #33, who was standing beside her. The rain had let up for the time being, so the drivers all decided to stretch their legs as they began to talk about the way that #52 had just quit showing up for work after being a model employee for the past year.

“He always seemed strange to me,” Dora said.

“I only talked to him a few times, but he was kind of different, that’s for sure,” #21 agreed.

“I think that he may have only used his job as a taxi driver as a cover for something else that he was involved in,” #33 said.

“How would you know?” Number 11 said, “you didn’t even start working here until after he was gone.”

“That may be true, but I ran into him a couple of times when I worked for Universal Cab, and besides that everyone at Yellow Cab talks about it so much that I can piece together the story from what they say.

“Okay, I guess that makes sense,” #11 said, “did you hear about #43 getting parked?”

“I thought that I heard something on the radio last night, but it was so busy that I forgot,” #21 said, and asked, “what happened, while he wondered if #33 was hinting at knowing that he was only driving taxi to deal drugs to his customers.”

“I guess that he picked up a flag on Portland Road and then before he could call it in, he got a time call for Walmart North. He told John the dispatcher that he already had a flag, but would go right over to Walmart after he dropped him off. Then John told him that he wasn’t supposed to pick up flags because it was too busy, and when he got to Walmart, he couldn’t find the time call, but there was a DC Cab sitting next to the grocery door, so they or another company may have gotten it. Because of this he was parked and sent home,” Dora explained.

“Number 11, get South Liberty Bar & Grill for Tammy,” John called over the radio.

“Roger,” #11 said, as she got in her cab and drove off.

“Number 33, get ER for Samantha,” the radio announce.”

“Yes, I have it,” Owens answered.

Finally John said, “#21 get Miguel, at the Lucky Fortune.”

“Confirm,” #21 said, as he wrote it down and drove down Church Street and took D Street to Lancaster. When he got there and went inside he found his fare playing video poker and told him that his cab was waiting. His passenger, who looked to be in his mid 40’s told him that he would be out in a minute, and after about 5 minutes, he came out with a young blonde anglo woman, who looked about 25 years old. They both got in the back seat of #21’s van and the man told him an address off Silverton Road. As they headed there the man asked if they could stop at a convenience store.

“Sure, just let me know which one,” #21 told him.

The woman began to speak and she said, “I hope that I don’t ever get thrown in jail for an indefinite number of years, without any clothes, while being abused by my captors.”

“Neither do I,” #21 said, while the older man nervously laughed.

When they arrived at the convenience store they both got out and went inside, while #21 ran the meter. Since they were in the neighborhood of one of the deliveries that Shaunacy needed to make, he called the buyer on his cell phone, while waiting.

“Hi Scott, it’s Mike,” #21 spoke into his phone. “I’ll be at your place in around 15 minutes, with your order. It comes to 5 big ones.”

After he hung the phone up his passengers came out and got back in the cab. The Latino man pulled out his wallet and started talking about what a beautiful country America is. He said that he forgot his wallet inside a convenience store 2 times and in each instance, when he returned the clerk had it and returned it to him, with all the money and his ID intact. He said that in Mexico, he’d be lucky if he got the empty wallet back.

The Drunks of Salem - Part One

2010-11-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

The weather has definitely shifted into the rainy season as the assiduous foliage begins to undergo color changes with glucose building up and replacing chlorophyll production as photosynthesis comes to a halt, with colder weather and diminished sunlight. The rain and wind drove the transformed leaves from the tree branches and into the streets, where the traffic blew the leaves against the curbs, onto the sidewalks and into the air where they lodged themselves on the windshields of thousands of automobiles, trucks and other motorized internal combustion engine vehicles. I was driving a van for the weekend and got a few grocery runs, families with kids, passengers with Bicycles, wheelchairs and walkers, until the bar crowd took over after 2200 hrs..

“Number 25 get El Patron for Bernard,” Dotty the dispatcher called on the radio.

“Got it,” I said, as started heading towards Center.

El Patron was a Mexican Night Club for hip young Latinos. When I arrived, 6 Native American young men got in my taxi who were checking out the Latino scene. Five of them sat in the back seats and Bernard sat up front with me. They all had long hair, that either hung like black flax past their shoulders, was in a ponytail or braided. At first I thought that some of them may have been female, until they began to talk about getting some pussy, unless they were lesbians, which was always possible. Bernard appeared to be the group’s spokesman, as I asked him where they wanted to go.

“Anywhere with pussy,” one of the guys in the back said.

“We want to go to the best hip hop dance club in Salem, even if it the Riverfront,” another passenger interjected.

At this point in time, it would either be Copper John’s or the Riverfront, since the crowd seemed to alternate its allegiance on a weekly basis. We decided to head to the Riverfront and on the way there, Bernard wanted to know if I could turn the radio up. I turned the dial up and One Of Us by Joan Osborne was playing and he began to sing along. When the song ended I told him that he could play any station that he wanted, so he changed the station to the hip hop rap station and turned the volume up so loud that it took all my concentration to drive. Pretty soon everyone started to join in repeating what the rapper was saying on the radio, and Bernard turned the volume down on the radio as all 6 Native Americans began to sing in unison -

“Why did she leave me?

Why did she go?

I needed her badly,

I needed her fo sho.

Hiya, heya, hiya, heya, hiya, heya,

Whoop, whoop, hiya, heya, ho.”

Unintelligible sounds,

Whooping and yelping imitating dogs barking.

“Hiya, heya, hiya, heya.

Why did she leave me?

Why did she go?”

Bernard turned towards me and asked if I had ever heard Indians sing before. I told him that I had been to a couple of Pow Wow’s, saw “Red Thunder” perform twice and even saw John Trudell and Bad Dog once. Bernard acknowledged my mention of John Trudell, since he was a Native American activist, who even participated in the Alcatraz occupation. My passengers continued to alternate between chanting, whooping and rapping until I began to cry, and tried to concentrate on my driving. It was as if my taxi cab had become a temple, and the “holy” was present, even though it was in a completely different theological system than I was used to. I was experiencing that moment when the sacred and the profane share the same space for a mili-second. When we finally arrived at the Riverfront, there were only about 8 cars in the parking lot, and there were no interior lights visible, but they seemed undeterred and after paying me they each thanked me and went inside.

As wrong as it may seem for a former minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who now drives a taxi cab for his ministry to admit, I make the most money when I drive ungodly drunk people than godly sober ones. Drunks are both generous and consistent, because as alcohol replaces brain fluid milliliter by milliliter they become inebriated and act illogically. This results in larger fares, because of incorrect directions and bigger tips because of a good mood resulting in depressed brain activity. Any thinking person must consider why the government allows a substance which reduces brain function to be legal, but then people have to have some release from the pressures of the insanity of everyday life.

Sometime after Midnight I got a call for an address in South Salem off of Battle Creek. The man that I picked up was half drunk wanted to go to Windjammers, where he was going to pick up a friend.

“My friend is drunk, so please be patient with him,” my passenger said and added, “I’ll tip you well.” On the drive to the bar my fare kept answering his cell phone, talking for 30 seconds, hanging up and repeating the cycle, until we finally arrived at Windjammers. Then he asked me if I could come back for him in 45 minutes, after he gave me a $20.00 bill for the $7.90 fare and told me to keep the change.

“Sure, I’ll be back for you,” I told him.

We hit a dead period, and I only had one call during the interim and when I pulled into Windjammers, my passenger came out, and handed me a wad of bills, as he asked me to come back for him in 20 minutes. I counted 10 singles and a 5 dollar bill in the wad, and told him that I’d be back. I parked a block away a read a Becky Garrison’s book “Jesus Died For This?” While I was waiting. The part that talked about renting crosses to carry through the Via Dolorosa and up to Golgotha, with wheels attached to the bottom to make it easier had me in stitches.

When I returned to Windjammers, my passenger was ready and he had his friend with him, that he warned me would be drunk. On the ride back to his house my passenger’s friend would ask him if he knew who was singing the song on the radio, and each of 3 times he didn’t know the Eagles from Wings or Led Zeppelin. When we pulled into his driveway the fare was $8.00 even and he gave me a $20.00 bill and said to keep the change. As they walked up to the house the record expert fell over backwards on the driveway and hit his head on the back bumper of a car parked in the driveway. I immediately opened my door, but my fare waved me off and said that it would be okay, as the fallen man got up rubbing the back of his head.

Halloween Reflections

2010-11-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

“Why do we worry about altering the environment of the Earth?” The voice on the radio asked, and explained, “what humanity seems to forget is that it is part of the very ecosystem that it worries about changing. Does a bee worry about how it effect’s the environment by pollination or does a termite worry about the destruction that it causes by ingesting cellulose. Of course not, yet the human race seems to think that by altering the ecosystem that it lives in, it is doing something detrimental. Humanity is simply a larger scale of other life forms, who also act instinctively to reproduce and interact with their surroundings, causing growth and change to take place. I believe that humanities purpose is to prepare the planet for the next stage in its evolution, which I have documented in my book, “Earth’s Destiny,” which for a limited time is available for the incredible low price of…”

I turned the radio off as my passenger got in the cab, with her Walmart bag full of Halloween candy as she told me her destination. As we drove she told me that she had cancer and just got her prescriptions filled for Percocet and dilaudid to kill the pain, but they didn’t really do anything. She said that when she drinks beer along with the drugs that it worked better, but her tweaker friends criticize her for it.

After I dropped her off at her place in felony flats I picked up a student at Tokyo International University of America, who was dressed like an Anime character named Goku from Dragonball Z, and drove him to Lancaster Mall. On the drive there we started talking about dreaming, and then we began to talk about dream patterns and interpretation. He said that he had been reading a book about the stages of dreaming and when I asked him to elaborate he did.

“In stage 1 you simply dream, and may not remember anything about it,” he explained. “Stage 2 is when you remember your dream after you wake up. Stage 3 is when you realize that you are dreaming while it’s taking place. Stage 4 is when you are able to control your dream. Stage 5 is realizing that you are in someone else’s dream.”

“That’s interesting,” I told him, “I’ve experienced the first 4, but not the 5^th stage, however I got most of my information from reading a book by Carl Jung, about dream interpretations, through repetitive symbolism. Like when I kept dreaming about Mt. Jefferson becoming an active volcano, when I was in Jefferson Park while backpacking with my family. I found out that the volcano represented God, because of the uncontrollable power that it held which could be released at any time and completely annihilate anything in its proximity. In one dream I was leading my family between molten lava rivers to the erupting volcano, in another I was trying to convince them to leave our house on the side of Mt. Jefferson between eruptions.”

After I dropped him off I picked up an elderly couple, in their 80’s,who I’ve been driving for the past 7 years. The man’s name is George and his wife Mildred recently went blind from a botched cataract surgery. George always brings up the coming depression, and talks about his memories of the Great depression in the 1930’s, that he remembered from his youth, when his father had to steal food, so they could have something to eat.

“It was ‘dog eat dog,’” George said, “a man wouldn’t think twice about killing somebody if he had to, just so he could provide for his family. This time it will be a lot worse, because there are a lot more people. When people get hungry and desperate they turn into animals. That’s when you really see a survival of the fittest. I’m glad that we’ll be dying soon, because the world is going to hell in a hand basket.”

When I dropped them off the mall, George gave me a $10.00 bill for the $7.30 fare and said to keep the change. Then I got a call to pick up someone at one of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers who was going to the hospital for medication to help them with withdrawal. The nurse who signed my trip voucher warned me that the guy was high on methamphetamines but that he should be okay.

A few years back, one of the tweaked out passengers that a female driver picked up, attacked her while she was driving, causing an accident, that resulted in post traumatic stress syndrome for the cabbie. She hasn’t left her house since then and the incident took place in 2002. The tweaker had a jar filled with her own urine and feces that she smeared all over the driver, after she bit and scratched her and pulled out some of her hair. The accident occurred when the tweaker in the back seat pulled the cabbie backwards by her hair.

On the 10 mile trip there, my passenger told me that he just got out of jail 3 days earlier, after spending 45 days in lock up. He said that he was clean and didn’t want to get high, but that his girlfriend talked him into doing it, he said in a voice that sounded like subdued hysteria, making me think of Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider.”

“She’s gorgeous, and after 45 days in that shithole I was so horny that I could fuck a hole in the wall. She wanted me to shoot up with her, and then she said that we could fuck until we came down. I have to leave her and get out of here!” He said with tearful emotion in his voice. “She’s gorgeous and I love her, she has the most perfect body in the world, and when she’s nice to me it’s like heaven, but she wants me to do crank with her. I’ve got to get away. I’m going to Port Angeles, Washington to work on a fishing boat as soon as I get out of rehab. I don’t care if you stay out a month or two and don’t get any sleep, I need to make some cash and I have to get away from here.”

When I got him to the hospital he asked me if I could give him a dollar in change so he could buy a candy bar, because he needed something sweet. I gave him 4 quarters and he asked me for a cigarette, but I told him that I don’t smoke, so he got out of the cab disappointed, but thanked me for the buck. I wished him a happy Halloween as he got out, and he said that he spent July 4^th in rehab too, and was tired of drugs ruining all his holidays. As I drove off I turned the radio on.

“The real joke about the human race is the seriousness with which it gives to itself, as if anything that it produces will exist in the next eon,” the voice said.

“What I think that you are forgetting, or rather omitting is the fact that all the energy created by human activity is spiritual in nature,” a second voice interjected.

“That may or may not be true,” a third voice countered, “but the real issue here is whether or not…”

The ICUD

2010-10-31T23:50:00.000-07:00

Number 69, also known as Jim Owens, of Universal Cab briefly experienced the interdimensional vortex when Trevor #52, of Yellow Cab used the power of teleo on him. However, teleo was nearly powerless with Owen’s beresheeth powers, as proven by the fact that he wasn’t absent from this universe’s reality long enough to be missed. After he came back, he realized that #52 still thought that the NUC could access Earth, and that he would have to learn otherwise, the hard way.

The ICUD was slandered by the NUC, but in actuality it was an acronym for the “Interdimensional Consortium for Universal Dominion.” The NUC claimed that the ICUD accessed planets simply as food to feed interdimensional scavengers, when in reality all accessed planets were in reality simply dormant seeds that were awaiting the moment of impregnation to trigger their genesis.

After Trevor Netzreg met with the other 11 and reported his findings, he received their reports and communicated it all to headquarters. The result was that he and the others were instructed to report back to base, immediately, if not sooner. Jim Owens quit Universal Cab and went to work for Yellow Cab, as driver number 33, the last week of October.

Halloween weekend was peppered with parties celebrating the “Witches Sabbath,” “Satan’s Birthday” or the official day that all good children dress up as characters that depict evil, and are rewarded for it, as everyone wonders why children are disrespectful of their elders. It was also Mike Shaunacy’s first Halloween driving taxi, since he became a Yellow cab driver #21 in August. He got the idea to become a cab driver one night when one of his buyers took a cab to his house to make a purchase. He tested the idea out by calling a cab to take him to the store one night to buy some beer. When he asked the driver about the kinds of people he drove he mentioned every possibility under the sun, including drug dealers, prostitutes, released prison inmates, lawyers, students, sick people, poor people and rich people, in every possible condition including drunk, sober and insane.

Driver #21 didn’t have many legitimate jobs over the years, since he made a good living selling drugs, even while he was still in high school. He was one of the most clever drug dealers, and had never been busted, because he only dealt with a an elite clientele that he built up over a 2 decade period, from the time that he began dealing in the summer of 1989, after he turned on at a Grateful Dead concert in Northern California. By the time that he graduated from high school, he was making $2,000.00 a month, by just supplying his small circle of trusted customers. He got different jobs over the years, just to try something out, and help his cover. He worked at everything from construction to short order cooking, along with route and retail sales.

Mike lived in a modest home, that was completely paid off, in the West Salem hills, that was surrounded by a grove of trees. He invested much of his money in art from the 1960’s, including original Andy Warhol, Peter Max and Denny Dent, along with archival Silver Geletin photographs from the late 19^th century until the present, by everyone from Matthew Brady and Ansel Adams, to Henry Diltz and Robert Mapplethorpe. His motto was “if you got the cash, I got the stash,” from weed and mushrooms to Heroine and Meth, with everything else in between.

The torrential rains began, which didn’t seem to put a damper on the weekend Halloween parties as driver’s drove costumed passengers dressed like everyone from Freddy Krueger to the Queen of Hearts. Around 10:00 PM, I picked up a guy at Walmart East, who was going to the trailer park on South Lancaster in the Sundial mobile home park. His shopping cart was full of household items, like dishes, towels, a coffee maker and other items. On the drive to his abode, he told me that he was just moving into the trailer, after he divorced his wife, who was a paranoid schizophrenic that quit taking her medication. The final straw was one night when he came home after working swing shift, at around 12:30 AM. She was on the computer like she always is, but when he turned on the TV and was sitting on the couch, she came up to him, holding a pair of scissors, and told him that she wanted to stab him in the face.

“I was afraid that I may not wake up one morning, so I got out of there,” he told me.

My next call was for South Salem, where I picked up 2 couples that were heading to “Copper John’s,” downtown. The guy sitting up front with me was dressed like Dean Martin, martini glass and all. His wife in the back seat was Cher, while the other woman was Janis Joplin and her mate was Jim Morrison. I got a call for the parking lot at People’s church, and when I got there, a man of about 30 got in the cab wearing a pentagram T-shirt, that said, smile if you love Satan, on the back.

“Take me to the nearest strip club,” he told me.

“That would be the “Firehouse,” I told him, and added, “ but it wouldn’t cost you that much more to go to Stars, which is the biggest club in town.”

“Take me to Stars,” he said.

On the drive there he told me that church people looked at him weird when he wore his pentagram T-shirt. I explained why a pentagram T-shirt would be offensive to a born again Christian, when he told me that he was raised in Herbert W. Armstrong’s “World Wide Church of God.” Then in the late 1990’s the church began to change, and Saturday services that were part of the churches main teachings were changed to Sunday, and other important changes occurred, creating disillusionment, until my passenger completely quit going to church.

Stupid Person Tax

2010-10-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

The rain has begun to fall again this year, marking the transition from Summer, to Fall/Winter. When I arrived at the office there was a new bulletin posted on the entrance/exit door that read:

“READ THIS”

“If smoking is more important then your job keep smoking in non-smoking cars. You will be caught! Then you will be suspended or fired.”

Since I don’t smoke, the bulletin didn’t apply to me, so other than recording it in my journal, I pretty much forgot about it. The weekend had its highs and lows, with mostly lows, since Friday night I booked nearly two-forty, with under $30.00 in tips and Saturday I barely booked $200.00 with over $50.00 in tips. The weekend left a lot of time for hanging out with the other drivers at the Amtrack station, Greyhound or one of the other border hangouts.

Around Midnight Saturday, I parked at Greyhound, where two other cab’s were parked. I got out of my cab and opened the back sliding door of the van and got in, to find #44 in the front seat, with #11 sitting beside him.

“I was just telling Dora,” #44 said, “that #52 didn’t show up for work since Monday, and he’ll probably get suspended when he get’s back.”

“He’s weird,” #11 said, “anyone who wears racing gloves in 90 degree weather, like he did last summer is not normal.”

“He said that his skin was very sensitive to sunlight, which is why he wore sunblock on his face but preferred gloves for his hands.” I answered.

“Either way he’ll get a new asshole torn when he does get back without scheduling the time off or getting relief,” #44 said.

Number 11 immediately changed the subject and began talking about all the new video lottery Deli’s that have opened up all over the city, since the economy got bad over the past few years.

“It’s like a tax on for stupid people,” she said. “They put up these tax collection stations all over the city and put signs on top saying ‘Oregon Lottery (stupid people come here to pay your tax.)’ The thing is, it’s in that 1980’s John Carpenter movie, ‘They Live,’ which was about aliens from another planet who controlled the earth, only you didn’t know it, unless you wore special sunglasses that allowed you to see past the veneer. Stupid people are drawn to these places to deposit their pay checks, unemployment stipends and welfare payments in receptacles that deceive them into believing that they are taking a chance on multiplying their meager incomes, when in reality they are simply paying an additional tax for being stupid. In other word signs that say ‘Oregon Lottery” are in actuality saying ‘stupid people pay your additional taxes here.”

I saw my opening and took it. “Last night around 2:00 AM I got a call for the corner of South Commercial and Robbins lane, for an SPD (Salem Police Department) call. Dotty told me that the guy I was looking for had a white back pack that he was wearing. When I arrived my passenger waved at me as I stopped next to him. After he got in the cab I asked him where he was headed and he started to tell me about how his girlfriend asked him to go check the mail and when he went outside to see, she locked him out of the apartment and when he tried to get in she called the police, which is the reason why they sent for a cab.

“Take me to the cheapest motel,” he said.

“My first gut reaction was to ask him how he would pay me and require money up front, since SPD calls are notorious for burning you. What can you do, call the police?” That would be the Motel 6 on Hawthorne,” I said. “The only place here in the South is the Phoenix Inn, which is double the 6. Then they tore down the cheap places like the ‘Oregon Capitol Inn’ and the ‘City Center Motel,’ to build multi-million dollar condominiums that are currently vacant. So we’ll have to go to the East side where the majority of motels are.”

“I don’t care,” he said, “just get me there. Are there any bars nearby?” He asked.

I told him that there were half a dozen bars within walking distance, with Players Lounge right across the street. He kept talking about the way that his girlfriend tricked him, and locked him out of the apartment, but that life was an adventure and if you didn’t have bad things like this happen to you once in a while, you wouldn’t enjoy the experience as much. When we arrived at the motel he had a credit card which I ran, and called in on the radio. After a minute, Dotty called back that it was rejected after she tried twice. So he gave me another credit card, but it was also rejected. Then he suggested that we try an ATM, so we went across the street to Players, and I went in with him.

The ATM was at the back entrance, so I stood at the cigarette machine and waited while he unsuccessfully tried both cards. The two bouncers, who helped me recover money from another fare who ran without paying said hello and asked how I was doing. When I told them what was happening they said good luck and walked off. After a few minutes of what appeared to be unsuccessful attempts to extract money from the ATM, my passenger admitted that he was at a loss about the situation, but that if he could get back to his girlfriend’s apartment, everything would work out and he could pay me. I told him that I wasn’t going to double my loss on a chance that it would work out, since he already lost any credibility that he may have had with me. After I took all his information, including the information off his Maryland Drivers License, I gave him a receipt slip with his bill, and told him that the ride was over, as he disappointedly left the cab.

War

2010-10-22T01:14:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people request a particular driver, who they know or like, as happened in my case the other night with Jeremy, a friend of Norm Walters Jr., whose father, Norm Walters Sr., I worked with at the post office for 12 years, prior to his retirement. Norm Sr. was in the Air Force for 20 years, as a musician, playing trombone in the Air Force Academy marching band at Colorado Springs, Colorado, but I hadn’t talked to him in over a year. His son Donald, who I never met, was killed in Iraq, in 2003, at the very beginning of the war. Don Walters was the supply sergeant over Jessica Lynch, who became the heroine that bolstered Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Don was captured by Saddam’s Fedayeen and summarily executed by a bullet in the back of the head, in the court yard of the hospital that Jessica Lynch was being held in.

Norm Walter’s Sr. was determined to get the story of his son Don into the public light. He had been on Larry King Live, Good Morning America and every other TV news show that attacked the story like piranha devouring a side of beef, for the next year or two. After the war dragged on, and became unpopular and Rick Bragg published his biography of Jessica Lynch, “I Am A Soldier Too,” everyone forgot about Don, except his family. He received a Bronze Star, and through the efforts of Norm it was upgraded to a Silver Star, but Norm wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor.

When I picked up Jeremy, he had been drinking, and was at a friend’s house, but then that was always the case, which was why he called for a cab. On the ride to his house we talked about everything from my blog, to Norm quitting the trombone. He was having problems with his facial muscles, so it was difficult for him to control his playing like he wanted to, so he decided to quit, Jeremy told me. When I got him home he paid with a credit card, as usual and gave me a $5.00 tip. Jeremy asked me if I had talked to Norm lately, and I hadn’t for nearly a year, but I made a mental note to call him in the next week or two.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was something that the American public wanted to forget, but it wasn’t just going to go away. I was always driving soldiers to or from the airport shuttle, train and bus station. Some talked about where they were and what they did, while others are reticent but glad to be home.

There have been a couple of veterans, who have gotten cab licenses and driven for Yellow Cab. Right now the only one doing it is, Nick, a former Marine, who was injured when an IED (improvised explosive devise) detonation destroyed the ambulance that he was driving, killing his passenger, but sparing him. He spent a year in Iraq, and came back with a shrapnel deposit in his body, along with a disability.

Nick is alive, with injuries that allow him to function, but Don Walters is dead. I told Norm to organize all his research, appearances, articles and other information about Don, so we could eventually write a book about him. Who knows when Iraq and Afghanistan will be stabilized enough for our troops to withdraw, but then that will probably never happen in our lifetime.

War is an important part in the evolution of the human species, although the goal of most civilized individuals is to put a permanent end to it. Whether the change is initiated by the NUC or the ICUD, the transition from primitive barbaric war to rational communication is the same. Trevor Netzreg was meeting with the other 11 before informing headquarters of the anti teleo mind that he discovered. Sometimes the NUC had to abandon a planet, because it was destined to be beresheet and belonged to the ICUD.

I got a call to the South Liberty Bar and Grill where he picked up a couple, who were heading to the apartments on Madras, on South Commercial. The male kept calling me sir, so I asked him if he was in the military and he said that he was home on leave for a month before he had to go to Iraq, after being in the states for a year, after serving in Afghanistan. He didn’t want to go, but resigned himself to it, since he still had 3 years of his enlistment left.

“Hell, I could go back another time after this, if the war drags on,” he said.

The way that it looks right now, that is a definite possibility, since there is no end in sight, even with President Obama, promising that we will be pulling troops out. How can you pull troops out, if it will create a vacuum that Al Queda will fill, re-creating the problem that began the war in the first place. To quote a worn out Christian cliché, “there will be no peace, until the prince of peace comes.” The last time that the prince of peace was here, we crucified him. When he arrives this time it will be our turn.

Anti Teleo

2010-10-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Number 52 picked the couple up at the Lucky Fortune at around Midnight, where they were waiting for him outside, without jackets in the cool 58 degree weather. As soon as they got in Trevor’s cab, they started to argue, to the point of screaming and then the female began to pummel the male until he got out of the cab and asked #52 to call him another cab, as he walked towards the building entrance. Trevor reached into the female’s mind to find the link that would complete her, but instead he found something that he had never seen before, which was strange, because an NUC agent has seen everything. The female’s mind had been compartmentalized, without damaging any of the connections necessary for functioning, on a primitive planet like Earth. In other words, Trevor was unable to get to the area where the brain and the mind merged to create consciousness, and teleo was impossible. She was anti-teleo, and this was not the work of the ICUD, but at the same time it favored them. It marked a new phenomenon, that could be called a mutation, on an interdimensional level. Number 52, would have to contact the other 11, after he finished his shift. After # 25 arrived, the female instructed #52 to leave.

“Hi!” I said, as my passenger shut the door and began to buckle his seat belt next to me.

“Just get me the fuck out of here as fast as you can, and don’t ask for my god damned address, just take me home,” my passenger angrily blurted out.

Over the past 7 years that I’ve driven a cab here in Salem, I’ve had this guy for a fare at least 100 times, so unless he moved, I knew exactly where he lived. I gave the car gas as I pulled out of the driveway and onto Lancaster as I headed to South Salem. After we got started the guy began to complain about his girlfriend that went in the other cab and said that she was a whore.

“Would you have a whore for a girlfriend?” My passenger asked me.

Years of experience with emotional drunks told me to ignore him, but since I knew what he was like I knew that he would demand a response, so I told him, “No, but then I’m not you.”

“Okay,” he said, but what if she was a whore, what would you do?

“I’ve been married for the last 39 years,” I told him, “so that’s not an issue for me.”

“What if your wife was a whore?” He asked me.

“She’s not,” I said, “because a whore accepts money for sex, and my wife never has,” I told him.

“What do you want to bet that your wife would do me and my friends if the price was right?” My passenger asked.

What my passenger was talking about was the story of Hosea and his wife Gomer, in the Old Testament. God commanded Hosea to marry a whore, and her unfaithfulness represented God’s marriage and relationship with ancient Israel. However, on the here and now level, this is the point that a cab driver has to decide whether to get mad and throw the guy out of the cab, or engage him and see how far he can take it. I chose the latter. “Exactly what are you talking about and for how much?” I asked

At that point, my passenger became apologetic and said that he was sorry and didn’t mean to offend me, which was unusual, because he has never apologized before, for anything. Then as we pulled up to the light he asked me if I wanted to make out, and when I asked what he just said he said he was just kidding, because he was drunk.

This was the same guy who told me that he punched out gay men who purchased him drinks at the 300 Club, back when it was the gay bar. It was the same guy that spent a year in jail because he was forced to protect himself from his drunkenly insane girlfriend, who broke into his house and began to beat him with a blender. It was the same guy who threatened to kick my ass because I was asking him to pay me when I got him to his house when he was ridiculously drunk countless times.

When we finally arrived at his house, he paid me and gave me a $5.00 tip, as he stumbled out of the cab. My next passenger was Frank, the ex minister who now had a gambling addiction, that he appeased after his family went to bed. This time he was at the Stonefront Tavern, and when he got in the cab, he told me that he lost a lot of money and only had $8.00 to pay for his ride home.

“Take the short way,” he said.

I took the shortest way that I knew, but the fare still came to $8.90. Frank gave me 3 singles and a five, like he promised and said that if there was a problem to tell the boss to call him, because he was doing radio advertising for the cab company. I wanted to tell him that he was shorting me and not the boss, who got his cut one way or the other, but decided to suck it in again and told him thank you as he got out of the cab.

Around 2:00 AM, when I was heading West on Mission and was behind an Affordable Towing truck at the light at 25^th we both got caught at the light. When the light changed the tow truck took a minute to get going and as I entered the intersection the light turned yellow, when my cab stalled. While I was pumping the gas and putting it in neutral, I saw two flashes and realized that I was flashed by the automatic cameras running a red light.

The Bars of Salem

2010-10-15T01:15:00.000-07:00

As a cab driver, I’ve become an expert on the bar scene in Salem, because of dropping off and picking up people at each one for the past seven years. When I get a call to a bar, I can tell you what my passenger will be like in temperament, ethnic group, the amount of the fare, size of the tip and the destination area, in most cases. Every bar has video poker lottery machines and some even have Keno, as well as serve food, of some kind or another. The following is a list of all the bars that exist in the Salem area at this time.

19^th Hole: A hangout for people around 30-40 years old.

Stonefront Tavern: a neighborhood bar that serves food.

Applebee’s South and East: A Restaurant with a bar.

Chinn’s: A Chinese restaurant with a lounge.

Sharkey’s: Pool tables with a bar.

Los Arcos Lounge: A Mexican restaurant with a bar.

Guadalajara Grill Lounge: A Mexican restaurant with a bar.

Presley’s Playhouse: A strip club that serves good food.

Half Penny (Sapphire, Crush, Oasis) A bar that has changed hands many times over the past 5 years, and is currently a nice bar for anybody.

Windjammers: A local neighborhood bar, with Karaoke some nights, for everybody.

Hong Kong House: A Chinese restaurant with a bar.

Bigfoot: A sandwich place with a bar.

Liberty Spirit: A bar for the 20-35 crowd that has good Karaoke and some pool tables.

South Liberty Bar and Grill: This bar offers everything for the 20-50 crowd, including dancing, Karaoke and even a band on occasion.

The Underdog: Neigborhood sports bar, for the 20-40 crowd.

Thompson’s Brew Pub: Food with good made on site beer.

The Triangle: Neighborhood bar, for the 20-40 year old crowd, with some pool tables and bands on the weekends, on occasion.

The Can Can Lounge (Beamer’s): Hangout for the 20-40 year old crowd with some pool tables.

Southside Speakeasy: The gay bar, with DJ dancing on the weekends.

Jakes: Neighborhood bar with pool tables.

Jammers: Neighborhood bar with pool tables.

Top Dog: Neighborhood sports bar, with pool tables.

Magoos: sports bar with a couple of pool tables, downtown for the 20-50 year old crowd.

Cokie’s Landing: Neighborhood bar, for the 20-60 year old crowd.

Pete’s Place: Downtown bar, that serves food and is a neutral place to hang out.

Allesandro’s: A restaurant with a bar.

Copper John’s: The local gangbanger wanna be hangout and dance club.

DaVinci’s: A classy restaurant with a bar.

Johnathan’s Oyster Bar: A classy restaurant with a bar.

Bentley’s: A classy bar, with a restaurant.

The Brick: Food and booze for the 20-50 year old crowd.

Brownstown Lounge: A variety of different functions, with a bar and food and revolving entertainment.

Venti’s: A bar and restaurant with entertainment.

The Flipside: A dance club for anybody from 21-50, but over the past 2 years it was also an underage dance club, and a gay dance club.

The Six (Moonbaker’s): This was the hot spot gangbanger, 20-30 year old hangout to be cool until too much violence got it closed down, and everyone moved over to Copper John’s.

Westside Station: Local bar, that features Karaoke during the week and bands on the weekend, along with a full bar, food and pool tables.

The Alibi: Neighborhood hangout for the 20-40 year old crowd.

Fifty West: Newly renovated, it features food, booze and pool tables for all ages.

Annette’s Westgate: A restaurant with a bar.

The Ram: One of the most neutral places to go to, for any age. Serves good food and made on site micro brew beer.

Roxxy (Lefty’s): Was a blues club, then a local hot spot, both of which served pizza and beer and offered some of the best entertainment in Salem, until they both went out of business.

Boones Treasury: Serves food and sometimes has musicians playing.

Hard Candy: The sleaziest strip club in town.

Front Street Inn: A local neighborhood bar for anyone.

Nobles: A local neighborhood bar, for the 30-70 year old crowd.

Johnnies: A local neighborhood bar for the 20-40 year old crowd.

Duffy’s Hanger: A neighborhood bar that has music on the weekends from local and regional acts, and is a bike hangout.

Salem Eagles: A membership club with a full bar, that features a variety of entertainment.

Salem Elks: A membership club with a full bar, that has different planned functions.

Applebee’s East: A restaurant with a full bar.

Firebird Lanes: A bowling alley with a bar.

Freeloader: A neighborhood bar.

Silver Dollar: A neighborhood bar with pool tables.

Pink Elephant: A full bar with pool tables.

The Zen Den: A small strip bar.

Chang’s: Lounge in a restaurant.

Georgio’s: Nice bar for 25-40 year old crowd.

El Patron: Latino club and bar.

Miguel’s Sports Bar: Latino sports bar.

El Palacio: Latino dance club with bands.

Lucky Fortune: Gangbanger wanna be hangout, and Chinese restaurant with a bar.

Players: Betting bar for horse and dog races, along with Karaoke and a couple pool tables.

Stars: The biggest strip bar in town.

Canton Gardens: Local bar connected to a Chinese restaurant.
La Brisa: Latino Night Club.
Blue Willow: Local bar connected to a Chinese restuarant.

Rocco’s: Local bar, for 20-70 year old, with some pool tables.

Rack & Cue: Pool tables with a bar.

Pine Street Pub: Neighborhood bar.

Scoreboard: Neighborhood bar that some bikers hang out at.

Riverfront: Salem’s newest hot dance club, for the 20-30 year old crowd.

Chiam: Chinese restaurant combined with a bar.

Joe’s Eatery: Good food, booze and entertainment.

Town & Country Lanes: Bowling with a bar.

Royal Pub: Lounge connected to a Chinese restaurant.

D. J.’s: Neighborhood bar for 20-50 year old crowd, with pool tables.

Ringo’s: Neighborhood bar, with pool tables.

On The Rocks: Hot spot for the 20-30 year old crowd.

Keizer Eagles: A membership club with a full bar, that features a variety of entertainment.

Keizer Elks: A membership club with a full bar, that has different planned functions

Good Times: Neighborhood bar.

Mario’s: Local neighborhood bar for the 20-40 year old crowd.

Porter’s Pub: Neighborhood bar.

Firehouse: Strip club on the Northern edge of Salem.

Hitchin’ Post: Local bar for the 20-40 year old crowd.

Schroeders Guest House: Restaurant with a lounge.

Point After: Local neighborhood bar, for the 30-70 year old crowd.

Big Shots: The place that I recommended to get in a fight, get a drug deal, hire a hit man or find a prostitute, before it was closed down.

Northgate Lanes: Bowling Alley with a bar.

Von’s Tavern: Karaoke in Spanish, as well as English.

The Guest House: A neighborhood restaurant and bar.

Lone Oak: The local neighborhood bar for the 30-100 year old crowd.

Silver Spur: The closest thing to a country and western bar, for the 20-40 year old crowd.

Holland’s: Trailer court resident and low income hot spot, to sing karaoke and hang out.

Cheetah’s: Although it doesn’t serve alcohol, it has a juice bar and is a strip club for 18 year olds and up.

Silver Inn: Trailer court resident and low income hot spot, to sing karaoke and hang out.

Hollywood Tavern: Neighborhood bar for the 30-60 year old crowd.

Shooters: Neighborhood bar for the 30-60 year old crowd.

Over a dozen Deli/Pubs have opened over the past couple of years, that all have video poker and other lottery games, like Dee Dee’s, Freddies, Kellie’s, Luigi’s, Monaghans, Sammies, U.S. Market and Deli and over a dozen other’s following the lead of Cooper’s Deli.

Destiny

2010-10-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

So at some point in the mid 1990’s I came to the conclusion that I believed in destiny. That’s one of those theological questions that you study in Bible college and Seminary when you get to the chapter in the theology book that searches for a middle ground between predestination and volition. The Bible supported them both, so I got to thinking, maybe neither are right or wrong, but apply in certain ways in certain situations. When and where it’s hard to say, but when the time comes you don’t think anymore about choosing, than you do about breathing. What is destiny? It is something that was destined to happen, such as an event, a discovery or the fame of a person, all of which is worthless, unless there is some sort of purpose to this existence that we call life. Then again if there is no purpose to what we achieve, then this is all a waste of time, but that is because of being conscious of this moment.

I believe that I have a destiny, and I will not die, until I fulfill it. However, what that is, I don’t know. And what purpose it will achieve in the grand context of everything, I don’t know. It could be as insignificant as turning off the TV, or as important as writing a book, but I will never know, at least in this dimension of reality, unless we return and the entity that was me, has a memory.

When I drive a taxi cab shift, it has a destiny, which I have learned to submit myself to, as much of the time as I don’t. It is hard to kick against the pricks, but sometimes a shift stretches your faith. In order to survive as a taxi cab driver, you have to have faith and believe that it will all average out, even if you only get $5.00 grocery runs with dime tips for the first three hours. Sometimes it can turn around with one run. Then other times, it’s just a matter of the type of runs that you begin getting, as you graduate from $5.00 runs with dime tips to $20.00 runs with $5.00 tips.

You also have to have faith and believe that if it is your destiny to drive a taxi, then you will be able to have a clean driving and felony crime record. The former is more of a problem than the latter, and has ended many a taxi drivers’ career. The rule at Yellow Cab is, if you get 7 points worth of moving violations, or accidents that are your fault, then their insurance carrier won’t cover you anymore, so you cannot drive a cab. The average ticket, like running a red light, or speeding 10-15 miles over the limit is worth 2 points each, so you could get 4, before you’re history, and taxi driving is no longer your destiny.

Then there is the destiny involved in the fares that you drive, as you become all things to all people. The parade of people that pass through the doors of a cab drivers taxi will run the gamut, just like last weekend. Sometimes things coincide, through synchronicity or chance and create a snapshot in time. Like the 40 year old Latino guy that I picked up at the apartments behind “Jack N The Box” on Hyacinth off Portland Road. While we drove down Hawthorne to an apartment on Sunnyview, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” was playing, as I thought of Cheech Marin’s comedy, “Born In East L.A..

When we arrived at the apartments, I found out that we were just picking up some people and heading back to the apartment on Hyacinth. The additional passengers were a Latino couple, who were in their 30’s, and the woman was obviously in charge, even though I couldn’t understand what she was saying, since it was in Spanish, peppered with occasional English profanity.

“Parar fucking la tienda!” The woman kept repeating.

I found out that she wanted to go to the “Plaid Pantry, before they get to the apartments, so my original passenger asked me to drop them off there. I picked up my next fare at LaMovida, and we headed to apartments on Center, on the East side of Lancaster, and on the way there, his cell phone kept ringing, and he answered it a couple of times and had a heated argument in Spanish with someone who I concluded was female, from the occasional English profanity and Spanish words that I was familiar with. After he hung up the receiver he apologized to me.

As the night was wearing me out with angry fares who were either drunk or on drugs, I picked up 3 people at Hong Kong House and drove them way out Sunnyside, in the middle of nowhere. Right from the start, the 300 lb. plus guy sitting up front with me started to complain about having to wait so long to get picked up and said that he should get a discount. Over the years I’ve just ignored people, or if they were insistent about a discount I would tell them to call the boss, the next day, and give them a Yellow Cab blank receipt with the phone number. This guy shut up once we got going, but then they wanted to stop at “El Taco Grande,” the Mexican drug Cartel’s money laundering operation here in the Northwest. I pulled in, and hit the time button on the meter as soon as they got out. After about 10 minutes they came out, and the big guy with the mouth was down at the convenience store buying beer, so I drove down there.

After I picked my straggling passenger up, we headed to the address he gave me, as he began to rant and rage about how much he hated Yellow Cab. I didn’t feel like stirring up a hornet’s nest by asking him why he was riding in one, but before I could have reacted he told me that “Around The Town Taxi” was the best company in town and I should work for them. I told him that it was just a job to me, and he said that I should take pride in my job. At that point I knew that he would either try to shaft me on the fare or at the least be a problem.

It was the busiest part of the night, with bar rush and this guy was wasting my time. After we did a credit card, it came back rejected. Because of it being so busy, the radio took longer than normal to get through on, and it took longer than normal to run that first credit card, while my passenger ranted about how much he hated Yellow Cab, and this was the reason why. I didn’t like having to deal with hostile drunks who were angered by the inordinate amount of time it took to run their credit cards. I hate credit cards, at least in the present system we use, because we don't have credit card machines, but just use sliders to get the imprint and then have to call it in over the radio, and let the dispatcher run it in the office.

Then he came up with an American Express card, and I remembered him from a few years ago when he was bitching about not getting a discount for having a AAA card. The American Express card worked and I got paid, but he forgot to sign the receipt, and when I asked him to he refused and threw it at me and told me that he hates Yellow Cab and to get the hell out of his driveway. The guy is a passenger from hell, that I will never drive again, if I recognize him, but even if I don’t he will make himself known, because it is his destiny.

Televised Executions

2010-10-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

“Televised executions is what we need,” #52’s passenger said, as he gulped a breath of air and continued, “because if these goddamned bastards start seeing what will happen to them, maybe they’ll think twice before burning a flag. I served 3 tours in Viet Nam and survived a suicide bomber in Lebanon, for that motherfucking rag, and the hell if I’m going to watch some peace creep motherfucker burn a flag, because it’s a free country.”

Trevor found it interesting the way that these primitive’s saw logic in violence. So he decided to do the only humane thing that he could, and performed teleo on his passenger.

“We need to understand that we are all part of the whole,” #52’s passenger said. “What the least does, effects the greatest and vice versa, so we need to learn to live together as neighbors. All humans are my brothers and sisters, and soon there will no longer be gender distinctions, as we are all joined as one. Six Billion cells that make up the whole and take its place as an Archeon of the universe.”

When #52 arrived at his fare’s destination he left an imprint on his psyche, so that he would be connected to the greater whole and made known to the other eleven. His next call was for one of the state offices downtown, where he asked at the front desk about finding his fare. The woman behind the desk told Trevor that his passenger was in the adjacent waiting room, but indicated with her eyes that he should be concerned.

When he entered the adjoining area, #52 found an emaciated woman who had sores covering her face and hands, who looked to be in her early 30’s. She was wearing a pair of pink pajamas with small embroidered flowers covering them. As she rose from her seat, she began to pick up an assortment of bags surrounding the area. Trevor went outside and opened the passenger door of the cab for the woman to get in. When she had her back to him #52 saw that she had brown stains on the seat of her pants, but ignored it and asked what her destination was.

“It’s a motel by Market Street called Travelodge,” she said.

“There are two motels with that name, and neither is by Market street, and I must know where we are going, before I can start driving there,” he told her.

“I’ve got a receipt from it somewhere,” she said, and began to look through the bags that she was carrying. As she sorted through empty paper cups, wadded up wrappers and a variety of other trash items, she unfolded receipts, until after about 10 minutes she finally found the one she was looking for. “It’s the Super 8,” she said.

After #52 called it in he began driving, and wondering why she was carrying around bags of trash, but then remembered that these unevolved bipeds acted as much out of irrational impulses as it did out of intelligent logic. As they drove, Trevor tried to converse with his passenger, but she was too involved with sorting through her bags of trash to concentrate enough to communicate. So he went inside of her mind and saw that some of her dendrites were causing synapse misfires, after being poisoned with the substance called methamphetamine. She had absolutely no teleo potential. When they arrived at the motel his passenger paid the $10.30 fare with a $20.00 bill, so he just called it $10.00 even and gave her a Hamilton back. Then #52 got out of the cab and opened up the door for his passenger, as she got out, and took another couple of minutes to gather her bags of trash from the front seat.

Number 52 was heading back downtown, when he spotted a Universal taxi parked in the Arco station on Lansing, so he pulled in next to it. The driver was just sitting there, when Trevor rolled down his window and asked him if he was having a good day? Driver #69 turned towards driver #52 and teleo converged with bereshith, as the time space continuum vortex was momentarily disrupted as an energy surge crossed dimensions, as #69 underwent teleo, and went back from which he came.

“Driver #52, go get the Hut shuttle,” Dotty called.

“I confirm,” #52 answered, as he headed to the Red Lion, where the shuttle dropped off at. When he arrived the bus had not arrived yet, so he sat there in the waiting area, with his flashers on, until it did. His passenger was a woman who was heading to South Salem, with one large suitcase. On the drive there the woman began to talk about how when she first moved to Salem, it was from San Francisco with her parents, back in the early 1970’s.

“Things have changed quite a bit since then,” she said. “Back then if they knew you were from California, they would insult you and tell you to go back where you came from. Oregon was the most closed state in the union and they hated outsiders. Black people were not allowed to be in Oregon after dark, under pain of death, until the civil rights act of the 1960’s. After the bottom fell out of all their homegrown industries, like logging and fishing, after all the environmental laws were passed in the 1970’s. Then the economy fell into a recession under the Carter administration, along with the Arab oil embargo and soaring prices along from inflation. So now the state has doubled in population with all these displaced Californians. But at least we have a secret weapon to make it harder for people to like it in the rain forest, because of all the rain. The constant drizzle and overcast skies for 9 months drives some people crazy, but I learned to love it more than the sunshine.”

Trevor found her interesting, and searched her mind until he found what he was looking for. As they pulled into the driveway the meter read $14.90 and she gave him a $20.00 and told him to keep the change. After #52 unloaded her suitcase and carried it up to her porch they made eye contact, and she understood.

Another First Weekend of the Month

2010-10-05T06:08:00.000-07:00

October 1, marked the first Friday of the month, but it wasn’t really a great night. Most people went short distances, but tipped well. I ended up booking $240.00, but had nearly $70.00 in tips, so for me it was a good night. Even though I had a lot of bar runs, there were no problems. Saturday was slow, and the only way that I had a decent night, was by driving Rachel Stone to the dance for the mentally challenged, and then sitting in the East when she was scheduled to be picked up, in order to get a double run for over $30.00.

During the interim, I drove a philosophy professor, who was lecturing at the Willamette University Philosophy conference, over the weekend. He was an associate professor at Notre Dame University, where he was working on his Phd., but he didn’t give me a dime tip, when he paid with a credit card, after he shook my hand. He had a Masters of Divinity, besides working on his Phd, so we had a great conversation on the drive over about our similar paths.

The weather was beautiful on both days, and it was a pleasure to be driving around the city, but that was part of the problem. Why take a taxi, when you can enjoy the sunshine by walking, riding your bike or skateboarding, and the skateboarders keep getting older. Around 8:00 PM I got a call for the hospital psychiatric unit, where I picked up a man who appeared to be in his 50’s with wild hair and a scraggly beard, dressed in a bright Hawaiian shirt, open at the chest with gold chains and white pants. He was wearing sunglasses, even though it was dusk, and handed me a signed hospital voucher with his destination on it.

My passenger, whose name was Ed Rinkley, began talking immediately, as I tried to record the destination and call it in on the radio. Once we got underway, I began to listen to his words, that flowed out of his mouth in torrential floods alternating between a monotonous monotone, and occasional emotional inflections, that were oblivious to whether or not I was listening.

“Sometimes a hero or savior appears in history at exactly the right time to save the world from its downward spiral into oblivion,” my passenger explained and then continued. “However, as is often the case, the hero is unrecognized by the world that he is saving. Look at what happened to Buddha, Dionysus, Horus, Jesus Christ, Krishna, Mohammed, Mithra and Osiris, and now it’s happening to me. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He emotionally articulated his story, or at least what he believed to be his story.

“Listen buddy,” he said as he turned towards me,” I gotta take a piss really bad, but I can just go in my pants if you don’t want to stop.” I immediately pulled into a an Arco gas station that we were passing and let my passenger get out. The last time a passenger urinated in my cab, it took me over an hour to clean it up and the hospital would freak out if I charged them the $40.00 cleaning fee.

When Mr. Rinkley got back in the cab he began talking again, about how the government was funding experiments on homeless people, who were being captured and put in special internment camps, where Nazi doctors, who were descendents of Hitler’s henchmen in the death camps. The Nazi’s really won WWII he said, the whole defeat thing was really a ruse, since the European war was really won by the time that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The Nazi’s had perfected cloning and were cloning soldier who were fearless, and soon they completely swarmed over Europe, Russia and Africa and killed everyone and then took their place before the US and its allies ever arrived. So the Nazi’s actually sacrificed millions of its own to create this ruse, and now we are controlled by them without knowing it.

After I dropped him off I picked up a woman who was freaking out because of how fast the meter was clicking. Every time that it clicked a dime, she would explain, “my God that thing moves so fast that I’m going to have to pay a fortune by the time that we get there. Can’t you slow it down? I’m a poor woman who has to support her 5 children after her worthless husband ran out on her.”

When we arrived at her apartment, there were three little kids running up to the car, and she told them to get up to the apartment before she whipped them, as they ran away. The meter was at $12.30, but I told her to just give me $10.00. She only had $6.72 so I called it in as a partial no money.

I picked up a guy at the emergency room around Midnight who told me that he was part of covert activities in Viet Nam with the Special Forces, as a Green Beret. He said that he was a Master Sergeant, but when I asked him how long he was in the military for, he said 2 years. There is no way that someone could attain the rank of E-8 in Special forces in that short a time period, but I never contradict, correct or criticize a passenger, even if I know that they are a blatant liar, or express an opinion that is counter to my personal beliefs or even offend me.

During bar rush at 2:00 AM, I picked up a couple of guys at Copper John’s downtown, who were going to Bush park, somewhere they said, and would direct me. I asked them if they were runners since it fit the case scenario, even though they didn’t totally fit the profile.

“I’m a doctor and he’s a lawyer,” one of them told me, and then continued, “besides, we’re too drunk to run anywhere.” When I dropped them off, they gave me a $5.00 tip.

My last run of the night was out to Spirit Mountain, for a $70.00 flat rate. The guy was there, and I took a chance that he had the money, and he did. So I ended up booking $239.50 for the night, but only totaled $27.00 in tips.

The Geneticist

2010-09-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

“Our guest tonight is a geneticist, whose work with Dr. Richard Dawkins on the future evolution of the “Selfish Gene” has caused quite a stir in the scientific world at large. Doctor Iiieeeoooeee you have an interesting perspective on the future evolution of the human race, why don’t you explain it to our radio audience.” The radio announce explained.

“Thank you,” Dr. Iiieeeoooeee said, as he began explaining his theory. “You see, the human race is still in the early stages of development in its evolution. An indicator of this is the continuance of violence and stupidity, as humans continue to be motivated by their emotions rather than optimum health and well being of the whole. We are all connected together, and whatever happens to the least of us, happens to the greatest. Carl Marx had the right idea, but Communism is a futile attempt by humanity itself to correct its inconsistent proliferation of talent among its members.”

Humanity is in stage 2 of its evolution and eventually we will enter stage 3. When that happens, utopia will be realized, as war and crime become a thing of the past. You’ve probably heard the controversy about how much of our brain that we use. Some say we only use 10 percent, while others say 90 percent. The truth of the matter is, the brain has the potential for exponential growth, within the size that it exists at right now. That is because only a fraction of the possible connections are now in place, that allow it to operate at maximum efficiency. When all the connections within the brain are made, it will transform the human species, until it becomes…”

“Number 52,” the cab radio announced, as he turned the radio volume down to hear, “go get Angelo Delano, from the Elks.”

“I confirm,” Trevor answered, as he drove to his destination and turned the radio back up.

“So when we consider the short time that the human race has been sentient, it is a relatively small amount of blood to pay for the process with. Blood is always the required payment when it comes to evolution. Cowards manipulate the stupid hero’s to fling their bodies on into the blood thirsty maw of evolution, until that day, when all the connections are made and the resurrection of the dead occurs and the living and the dead are united together.”

“And now a word from our sponsor,” the radio show host announced, as a woman with a pleasant voice began to talk about taking a shamanic journey into Central America with some of the most metaphysically minded guru’s of the 21^st century. The first 12 callers would be included in an ancient psilocybin mushroom ceremony, while they stayed at their spiritual refuge in the jungles of Guatemala…

Driver #52 had to help the elderly gentleman named Angelo Delano from the dance area of the club, to the cab, and collapse his walker and put it into the back seat. Angelo lived in the retirement home on Lancaster, so Trevor proceeded there. As they drove Angelo began to talk and tell his story. It’s funny how people begin telling you about their life, as if it’s important to have proof that they existed by impressing others with their presence.

Angelo was born in 1922 and grew up in a wealthy Italian family in New York City. Even after the depression, his family prospered, until his family visited Sicily in the late 1930’s when he was 16. Mussolini was in power and because of his family ties to the Mafia, which opposed II Duce. He and his siblings were poisoned, but he and his older sister miraculously survived, while his younger brother died.

When WWII began, Angelo enlisted in the US Army and after the Invasion of Africa and then Italy he was part of the allied forces, because of his bi-lingual skills as an Italian/English translator. What he saw drove him to drink and by his own confession he was drunk during the entirety of his European service in WWII. After he was discharged he quit drinking alcohol and has not had a drink to this day. When he’s at the Elks he drinks coffee and dances by using his walker.

After the war he married a girl that his parents did not approve of, so he moved as far away from them as he could, and ended up in Oregon, where he has lived since 1946. He worked for the waterway department and knows every lake, river and every major body of water in the state of Oregon. His wife passed away almost 10 years ago, and since then he has had a few girlfriends, but they have all died as well, so at this time Angelo is alone and waiting to die.

After #52 dropped Angelo off, the next call he got was for Jim at Players Lounge. Jim was a strange guy. He took a taxi to and from the bar 3 times every day, at $15.00 a trip. At first you would think that he was a drug dealer going home to fill orders and returning with them, but after you talked to Jim you realized that if he was a drug dealer, he had the best cover in the world, because he hardly ever said a word. Once in a while Jim would talk about some subject, in a passionate manner, but usually he was reticent.

For some reason today, Jim was ranting about why the “Octoberfest” was in September, so Trevor proceeded to explain the history to him. “you see, in 1810, prince Leopold got married and they had a big celebration and that was the first “Octoberfest.” After that they had it every year. One of the reasons why it happened at that time was because, before refrigeration was discovered, beer could only be made when the weather was cold. So the last month that it was made was in March. Then in October they could begin making it again, so all the existing beer was drunk up. The last batch made in March was at a higher alcohol content, so it would last longer. “Octoberfest” was the year end blowout before the new stock hit the shelves.

A Happy Greeting

2010-09-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

Something that I learned along the way was the importance of greeting my passengers with a smile and a, “Hi, how are you?” Doing this at the earliest possible moment establishes that you are a nice guy and are happy to see them, which sets the tone for the rest of the trip, even if there are a few bumps, due to temporary brain malfunctions, related to alcohol over-saturation.

The weekend began with “The Night of the Moron Drunks, on Friday, even though the full moon was waning. The epitome of stupidity for a passenger to stoop to in my mind, is when they want to talk to the dispatcher on my radio. Maybe they just want to act like they are a taxi driver, or maybe they want to imitate a truck driver or maybe they want to tell the dispatcher what a wonderful person their taxi driver is, but whatever the reason, it represents a level of what I call Juvenile drunken intelligence.

Around Midnight or so I picked up a couple at the Can Can, who were obnoxiously drunk, and the female sat up front with me. After I called in the pickup and address, she wanted to talk to the dispatcher, who she said she knew. After I tried to deter her, I finally gave up and just turned the radio off, as she grabbed the microphone and babbled incoherently into the microphone, while I drove them to their address.

Saturday began with a major accident on I-5 that ended up in a traffic jam on both Hawthorne and Lancaster, as the traffic diverted and tried to move on. One of my passengers that I picked up a few hours later was a witness, only 3 cars away from the scene. It seems that a car somehow jumped from one side of the freeway to the other and hit an SUV head on, killing the driver, who was thrown from the vehicle, and injuring the other juvenile passengers. The rest of the night was pretty much uneventful.

Around 2:00 AM I got a call to get Sean at Vons Tavern. On the way there, I realized that it was the guy who usually had a Yellow Cab voucher from the bar, and wanted to go out of the way to stop at the Mexican food meat wagon, and not have to pay anything extra. Sure enough it was one and the same. Let me explain Sean to you, at least from my perspective, which you must take with many grains of salt.

He was in his early 30’s, and was a low life moocher that tried to always con his way out of paying for anything, and would scream to high heaven if he had to use any of his money. Then he would never give you a tip, unless it was the change from the dollar. When the bartender pointed me to him, I told him that I would be waiting outside. After about 2 or 3 minutes, he came out with a woman, that I’d never seen before, who got into the back seat with him.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Muchos Gracias, and step on it,” he said.

The woman in the back seat with him asked, “Is this cab driver a friend of yours?”

“No,” he answered.

“Then why are you talking to him like that?” She asked, as he stumbled all over himself, failing to find the words to answer.

I thought to myself, I like this woman, maybe she can knock some sense into this bonehead. When we pulled into Muchos, there was a cop with a car and a tow truck, indicating a DUI.

“It’s a good thing that we are taking a cab,” Sean said, as I pulled up to the order microphone, with my time meter on. Then they began ordering Oregon Burritos and Quesadillas while the meter clicked. We were second in line, but by the time that we got our order and drove back out onto Capitol the meter was already at nearly $8.00.

“I see you ran a hot meter on me,” Sean said as we started heading to his address.

“What do you tell your boss, when they tell you to punch out and work off the clock?” I asked him.

“I’d tell them to go fuck themselves,” the female anwered.

“Cab driver’s don’t get paid an hourly wage, and the only time that they are making money is when the meter is clicking,” I explained. “This is the busiest time of the night, and calls are backed up, so if you want me to wait for you, you are going to pay.”

“I work on commission too,” the woman answered, “so I understand what you are talking about.”

“What do you do?” I asked her.

“I’m a makeup artist,” she answered. “I sell makeup at one of the most prestigious beauty salons in town, and at the same time, I will apply it to the customers if they want. It’s all very expensive, so the only reason why you would buy it is if you knew that it would do what you wanted. The cheap items run $70.00 to $100.00, and with my services the price could double.”

When we pulled up to Sean’s house, there were 2 SUV’s parked in the driveway, and one of them was all banged up. The woman asked what they were, and he said that he was selling the damaged one, and she asked why anyone would want to buy something like that? The fare came to $12.60, and Sean gave me a $20.00 bill, so I handed him $7.00 change, which he took and pocketed, as I wrote down the fare and, a .40 tip. Then as they got out of the cab, the woman turned to me and said here is your tip, as she handed me a $5.00 bill, to Sean’s protests, as she told him to shut up

What If Life Is A Test?

2010-09-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

“What if life is a test? Not for heaven or hell, but to say to weed out the losers and non performers out of the pack, so to say,” #25’s passenger said. “It could be like the parable of the talents where all the other stewards multiply their talents, but this moron buries his and is thrown into hell because of his slothfully lazy stupidity, but then we get back to the subject of heaven and hell again. Okay, here’s another way of looking at it…

His voice trailed off as he changed direction and began talking about some other subject. When my passenger was drunk he always liked to talk about religion, and tonight I picked him up pretty well wound, at Hong Kong House. He went to church, but liked to get hammered on occasion. I let him talk and never answered or engaged him, unless he demanded a response from me. Then usually before I could finish my first sentence he would scoff and refute his former position, as if he were ripping my idea to shred’s. Tonight he just talked, and I just listened, until I dropped him off at his house. At least he gave me a $3.00 tip this time, and didn’t threaten to kick my ass because I was a right wing fascist.

When I pulled into the second taxi stall at Greyhound, it was after 1:00 AM, and Dora Dimes, #11 was sitting in the first one. I avoid her as much as possible, since she is a real downer, and keeps hitting on me, even though she knows that I’m happily married. However, it looked like she was asleep, so I sat there and read my copy of Ed Sanders book, “Tales of Beatnik Glory.”

Dimes was sound asleep, but she wasn’t having a pleasant dream. She was having a nightmare about a meteor shower of football stadium sized meteors landing all over the Earth. The radio announced that the meteors seem to slow down as they approached the Earth’s surface, and touch down without any impact, which was very unusual. This indicates that it is some kind of a controlled vehicle, rather than a rock that had been hurtling through space, and just happened to hit the Earth. Also, there were thousands of them covering the entire planet, and as the locations of the landings were computed, it was discovered that they were all perfectly spaced in distance, between each other. Then just as scientists and politicians were becoming excited about the possibility of making contact with alien life, the meteors started to break open, releasing a clear gelatinous substance, that began spreading in a concentrically growing circle from the meteor itself. The clear gelatinous liquid of every meteor covered about one inch in depth and spread out in nearly a 10 Kilometer circumference. It took nearly 24 hours for the circumference to be completely covered, and then to everyone’s horror, they realized that it dissolved everything it touched, including trees, buildings, people, animals, telephone poles, and all organic and manmade matter.

As the first circumference of organic and created matter was dissolved, the slime grew, and broke into anywhere from two to four individual segments that began to spread in new directions. This went on until the entire earth was completely eradicated of all organic life and anything created by it. Through telepathic conversations with the slime, some of the human technologists were able to communicate with their executioners prior to their demise. They were told that the meteors were tools of the servants of the most high God, who had deemed humanity to not be worthy of existence by reading the records of its own history. Therefore, judgment had been passed, and interdimensional scavengers were summoned by the most high God to remove the Earth from its place. First the slime meteors digest all organic life and its creations, and covers the entire surface with a half meter crust that hardens, and makes the planet a delicacy that the Zene can consume.

“Get the Hong Kong House Bar for Tonto,” Lisa announced over the radio. After there was no response for 10 seconds, she repeated

“Number 11, did you get the call?” The dispatcher repeated.

Dora snapped to attention in her seat and grabbed the microphone, “could you repeat that please,” she said.

Since Dora got a call, and I was second down, that meant that I could get one right after her, so I got out my pen and picked up the clip board with my trip sheet pad. Sure enough I got a call, and it was for the Shell station in West Salem, on Wallace Road near the bridge. When I got there a woman waved at me, as she was locking up her car. She was a tall Latino, in skin tight pant, high heels and a tight fitting top that revealed some cleavage. She was going to East Salem, and talked non-stop all the way.

She said that she was 32 years old, but looked like she was 25, and didn’t care if I thought so or not. She owned her own house and rented a room to a 20 year old guy that she had the hots for, and asked me if that was wrong. Before I got a chance to answer, she told me that my opinion didn’t matter anyway, because she would fuck him as a personal challenge, and she never lost challenges. Then she started to hit on me and ask me if I was married, and if I fooled around. She talked so much that I just let her go on to the next subject rather than responding.

She told me that her 20 year old border would sometimes bring young women to his room and then he would have noisy sex with them. She said that he told her that he wanted her to hear everything, even the bed springs squeaking. When we arrived at her house, it was nearly 2:00 AM, but her 20 year old border was sitting outside on the front porch with an attractive young woman. The fare came to $18.80 and she gave me a $20.00 bill and told me to keep the change.

Dream On

2010-09-19T23:26:00.001-07:00

Number 52 was back, after a scheduled 2 week absence, when he became the leader of the council of 12 that was dispatched by the NUC. They met on Mars, or should I say, in Mars. Martian civilization moved underground nearly half a million years ago, after it realized that its atmosphere was quickly deteriorating. After Cehydran, the first underground city was constructed, others quickly followed, until the entire population either excavated or perished. The meeting was scheduled for the 245th of Tarqeq, by NUC time, and became a time of concern. The opposition had dispatched a front runner to Earth and a decision had to be made.

Earth had been suspicious of Mars for years, after it found out about the methane emissions. The underground civilization that the inhabitants of Mars created, produced waste that had to be discarded, in the form of gas. Although atom disintegrators were used, there was always a certain amount of residue methane that remained, and it was easier to release it into space than taking the time and energy to go through the atomizing process 2 or 3 more times, to annihilate every molecule.

The Martian’s aren’t human, but of another species of sentient life. The NUC is able to bridge the gap between species because of teleo. The Martian’s are neither teleo or beresheet, but sympathize with both. They realize that if Earth evolves into an overmind, then its orbit will be available, and that they may be able to move their world back to the surface, but they never let such things effect their opinions.

Now that Trevor was back, he began to search the minds of his passengers for traces of the ICUD’s presence. He quickly found out that Oooaaioo eeeoooui was working as driver #69, with Universal Cab and was using the name Jim Owens. It was too late for the ICUD to pre-empt the NUC, but they could initiate a miscarriage, by damaging enough minds with beresheet to initiate the abortion process.

Trevor learned a new truth at the meeting, that the other 11 confirmed. The prophet, called the son of God, who was named Jesus, was the only earth human who ever achieved teleo. It was believed that He was imbued with the essence of the overmind, as a prophecy of what was to come. He is the ultimate example, that is nearly impossible for pre-teleo humans to become. The ridiculous notion of stopping war, hate, killing and other normal activity for life on earth, can only become a reality when teleo has occurred.

“Number 52 get Copper John’s for professor Marshall,” the dispatcher announced over the radio, breaking Trevor’s concentration on the meeting.

“I confirm,” he answered, and then buckled his seat belt, as he turned on the dome light and wrote down the call on his trip sheet. After he started his van, and headed to Court Street, where he connected with Commercial, and double parked in front of the bar, with his flashers on while he went into the establishment and saw professor Marshall, in his usual place at the end of the bar, drinking a glass of wine, while he was conversing with a beautiful young woman who was in her late twenties. He is an 83 year old retired college professor, who has been going to the bar that a former bank became, since over 60 years ago. Today it was the local gang banger wanna be rap dance club in the city of Salem, but that didn’t detour Professor Marshall, even after one of the head bouncers quit because of all the fights that he had to be involved in.

One of the bouncers helped to get Professor Marshall out, and once he was on the street, he managed to walk to the cab with #52’s assistance. Once they were underway to his home, he talked about how people today didn’t care that they were losing their humanity by neglecting the arts.

“It should never be so in a sophisticated civilization,” Professor Marshall emotionally exclaimed, and continued, “I remember when I was in graduate school, how we would play 78 rpm records of classical music and anyone in my small group of friends could immediately identify it. How many can do that today? Probably none! Oh sure they can tell you if it is Led Zeppelin or Metallica, but what happened to Chopin and Shubert?”

When they arrived at his house, professor Marshall paid for his $7.30 cab ride with 2 $5.00 bills and Trevor helped him to the door. As usual #52 waited until Professor Marshall got into his house to leave. After about 5 minutes Trevor got back out of his cab as asked if there was a problem to which Professor Marshall embarrassedly pointed to his inside out pocket containing his house key. Trevor cut open the pocket with his finger and removed the key container and sealed the pocket back up, before the professor realized what was happening.

“This is like one of those mindless sitcoms that pollute the minds of our population,” the professor said.

“They have to get their ideas from somewhere,” #52 said. After he called his clearance in Trevor called down on Amtrack, where he found #25 sleeping in his cab. He walked over to the cab and felt his mind with his own, but didn’t perform teleo. He saw the dream that Bob was having.

As I drove down the 8 lane main street of the unfamiliar city, I began to fight the growing feeling of fear swelling in the pit of my stomach. My passenger had convinced me to drive him to downtown Beaverton for free. He told me that he had a message that would transform the world and needed to rendezvous with fellow revolutionaries who would be spearheading the effort with him. When he spoke of revolution, what he was referring to was the upcoming war between Christianity, along with its Hindu, Buddhist and Sunni allies against fanatic Shiite Islamic Jihadist’s. On the hour drive my passenger talked non-stop about the coming war and how it had been percolating, since WWI ended.

“Remember!” he told me, “before WWI, the world was divided between the Christian and Islamic nations, along with all the heathen cultures. Communism was but a parenthetical delay, to allow the Islamic Jihadist’s to stock their arsenals with weapons, ammunition and propaganda, while the Christian West battled with its own heresies. Now the 2 sides are preparing to array themselves against each other, as the next great battle between cultures is fought. There can only be one, and that one will be the victor, on every level.”

Self Fulfilling Synchronicity

2010-09-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you can influence synchronicity, but that isn’t necessarily a positive thing, as in the case of how Monday night became connected to my thoughts from the past couple of days. First I pick up a guy on the East side of town who’s going to Denny’s on Market. On the drive there the conversation leads to me having retired from the post office and he asks me if I worked at the one in Salem.

“That’s the one I retired from,” I told him.

“Did you know Bill Layman?” He asked.

Not only did I know Bill Layman, but I just bought a used car from a guy named Bill Layman, who I didn’t ask if he was related to the one at the post office. Then after that he told me a joke.

A destitute man went to a church and asked for help. The pastor listened to his story and then said that he could help him financially, but that he could also help him spiritually. Then the minister asked if the man had ever been baptized, to which the man replied that he had not.

“I normally baptize in the river behind the church,” the pastor said, “would you like to be baptized now?”

The man nervously said okay, and they proceeded to step into the river, where the pastor ducked the man in the water and baptized him. When he raised the man up he asked him, “did you see Jesus?”

“No,” the man answered.

Then the pastor put the man under water a second time and when he raised him out of the water he asked him again, “did you see Jesus?”

For a second time the man answered, “no!”

So the minister put the man under water for a third time, holding him under a little longer. This time when he raised the man back up and asked, “did you see Jesus?”

The man answered, “no!” Are you sure that this was the last place that you saw him?”

I found out that my passenger had been a minister of music in a number of churches, including Nazarene, Assembly of God and Foursquare, but did not currently attend church. I shared a brief summary of my story with him and dropped him off a little after 9:00 PM.

Around Midnight, I got a call to pick up Roger at the emergency room. When Roger got in the cab, he was wearing a hospital nightshirt, and reeked like a homeless person who hasn’t taken a shower for a couple of weeks. When I asked his destination, he told me that he was sleeping between some buildings near Fred Meyers on Market and Lancaster, so I told Dotty, the dispatcher that I would get her the address when we arrived. As I drove Roger, he told me that he just got divorced and didn’t have any place to live, which wasn’t that bad, except for when he got drunk. He said that he had a credit card and might as well use it. At that point we were about half way there, and I knew that I would not get paid.

Rather than running the credit card over the radio, I drove him to the Chase ATM at Fred Meyers and told him to get cash. After a couple of tries, the ATM printed out a slip that said that he had a zero balance in his account. So I told him that the ride was over, and told Dottie that I had a no money for $11.50, as I remembered that my last blog entry was about this subject.

The night had been slow, when at 2:30 AM, I got a call for Denny’s on Market, to pick up the former minister of music that I dropped off earlier. On the way to his house he told me another joke.

A man buys a horse from a minister, and asks if there is anything that he needs to know about the animal. The pastor tells the man, that the horse follows two commands. “When you say ‘praise the Lord,’ the horse will immediately run full speed. When you say ‘amen,’ the steed will immediately stop. After the man purchases the horse he begin riding it all over the open range. Every time that he said, ‘praise the Lord,’ the horse began running, and when he said ‘amen,’ it came to a stop. The man was happy with the horse’s performance and one day when the horse was galloping at full throttle the man realized that they were approaching a precipice that plunged thousands of feet into a canyon.”

“’Whoa!’ The man said, but the horse kept galloping at full speed. ‘Stop!’ The man screamed, but the horse kept charging ahead. After he exhausted every command he could think of he prayed and asked God to forgive him all his sins and ended the prayer with ‘amen!’ When the horse immediately stopped at the lip of a precipice, to the man’s relief, he emotionally exclaimed, ‘praise the Lord!’”

All in all it was a slow night with a couple of good prescription runs, but tips were in the toilet, setting a record low with only $7.00 for the night. I booked $177.00, but #3 barely broke $100.00, so by comparison I did okay.

That’s All You Get

2010-09-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

Almost every cab driver will get burned at some time or other, even if they only drive a short time. Theft of service crimes happen all hours of the day and night, in all 4 seasons from Spring, through Summer, Fall and Winter. They come in a variety of different types. The first are runners, which were covered in an earlier blog entry. Then there are people who end up having no money to pay the fare, but say that they want to. Maybe the boyfriend, father or friend that was going to pay, isn’t home, or they don’t have the money either. Then there are those who go into their house or apartment to get the money and never come out, and there is a pit bull in the yard leading to the door. Then again maybe they just refuse to pay and act like you are a criminal for expecting them to.

All three of these examples are an everyday reality for a cab driver, but this time we’ll be covering examples of #3. As driver #25 I’ve had a few episodes where my passenger would disappear into their abode, without ever returning. The first time that I remember it happening to me, it was when I picked up a woman at the apartments on Sunnyview that are occupied by mainly Latinos. She wasn’t Latino, or was very Americanized with light skin, but I picked her up at around 3:00 AM, after a Latino gentleman escorted her out to the cab. After the attractive forty year old woman told me her address, I drove her there, and she gave me $5.00 and went into her condo to get the other $2.50. Unfortunately, I was new and didn’t get the unit number and didn’t pay attention to where she went. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I realized that I had been had.

Then there was the drunk from the Silver Dollar, right after A-Cab went under. He was going to a trailer park in Keizer and said that he always took ACab and that Fred, who was #27 was his driver. I told him that ACab went out of business and that some of their drivers were now with Yellow Cab. He said that he’d buy the driver cigarettes, and pay $10.00, and asked me if I smoked. When I told him that I didn’t he told me to pull into the Smoker Friendly outlet we were coming up to. Then he got out, while I turned the time meter on and watched him walk up to the wall about 10 feet from the door. He had his back turned to me and his hands in front with his head down. After a minute, he proceeded into the store and when he came out the meter was over $5.00, so it would probably run around $25.00 to get him to his place. He handed me a pack of Marboro Red 100’s and I handed them back to him, saying that I’d just throw them away.

“Okay, I forgot,” he said, “you like Camels, I can exchange them.”

By this time I was starting to get concerned about his behavior and asked him if he still wanted me to drive him.

“Yes!” He told me

“Okay,” I said, “but it’s going to cost you more than $10.00. It will be whatever the meter says,” then I asked him if there was a way that he preferred to go, and he said, “take Hawthorne to Chemawa.”

As we got into the dark and semi deserted part of the trip, and my passenger began to tell me, “All your going to get is $10.00,” I pulled over and was going to tell him to get out, but then I remembered the last time I tried to get rid of a drunk passenger on a deserted road, after giving me problems, so I just asked him, “do you want me to drive you?” He motioned with his hand to go on, and said, “go!” So I began driving again, and after a few minutes, the meter was over $15.00 and he began to more emphatically tell me that he was only going to pay me $10.00. His vociferous exclamations evoked a mixture of emotions from me as I proceeded to his trailer park. When we were on River road, he told me that I better not call the cops on him because he’s friends with all the Keizer police.

When I pulled up to his address, he got out and threw a $10.00 bill at me and said, “get the fuck out of here.” When I didn’t immediately move, so I could verify the address, he began to jump up and down and scream for me to get moving. When I told the dispatcher what happened, he said to call 911 and have the police collect the money. When the police finally arrived they told me that the guy was a nuisance and that they were at his house nearly every week for something. They wanted to know if I wanted them to arrest him or just get the money. I told them that I just wanted the money, and they left to get it. About 20 minutes later they returned with the remainder of my fare, and it all happened in less than an hour.

Cycles, Seasons and Patterns

2010-09-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

Back in pre-ancient times, before creation occurred, in 4004 BC, according to Bishop Ussher, the world was made up of primarily agrarian civilizations. This was after the age of the hunter/gatherer, and the mother goddess was still the primary deity. Then humanity began to build cities with walls and war became a refined art as civilizations became more politically sophisticated and expanded their territories. At that time religion was still in its primitive stages and none of the modern religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were born yet. These primitive religions, which worshipped the mother goddess, followed the yearly seasons, so the year began with the Winter Solstice, moved to the Spring Equinox, then to the Summer Solstice and ended with the Fall Equinox. This went on year after year, decade after decade, century after century, until millenniums passed by. Humanity understood that life moved in cycles and rhythms, in a circular direction like a Mandala, so it’s earliest religions were based on them.

As modern religions burst upon the scene, based upon the entheogenic visions of the primitive ones from which they evolved, they embraced the truths found in their predecessors. Many of Jesus’s parables talk about recognizing the way that nature teaches us about cycles and seasons, and He relates it to the spiritual dimension. So here and now in the year 2010, we are approaching the end of summer and the time for seasonal change with the fall harvest festivals associated with the equinox, like the Octoberfest or Halloween.

There are cycles, seasons and patterns found in the taxi cab business too, just like all human endeavors, and they merge with the ones that already exist in nature. After driving for a 7 year period, one see’s the patterns that are peppered in the fabric of reality, as they are interwoven into everyday life. Business is always better in the bad weather of the winter months, than during the summer, because people don’t like being cold and wet. There are always more fares and bigger tips at the beginning of the month, whatever month, than at the end, because of welfare, retirement and social security payouts occurring at that time. There are also patterns in passengers, incidents that occur and synchronicity frequency.

The difference between a seasoned cab driver and a novice, is their ability to reach into the recesses of their memory for similar experiences to base decisions on, like an incident that occurred Saturday night, when I got a call to Copper John’s, in downtown Salem, at around 2:30 AM, at the peak of bar rush. I was supposed to pick up Bruce, and when I pulled up to the bar, there was a crowd of at least 20 people standing there, with some of them waving at me. When I stopped and unlocked my doors 4 guys and one woman, who all appeared to be around 30, opened them and got in. A rule to make sure that you get the right person, is to ask them their name rather than telling them who you are there for, in case they lie, but I didn’t care, so I asked if it was for Bruce and they said yes, in a tone of voice that seemed insincere. After everyone was in, I turned around to the back seat of the 4 passenger sedan that I was driving and saw 3 guy and the woman, plus the guy who was sitting up front with me.

“I can only drive 4 people,” I announced.

“There are only 4 of us, look,” the guy sitting up front with me said, as he pointed and counted, “1,2,3,4.”

Then I pointed at him and said, “5.”

“We’re freezing,” the woman said, “we’ve been waiting outside for the last 45 minutes for a cab.”

The temperature was probably in the low 60’s, and I told her, “you should have called for a van.”

This initiated complaints that they weren’t told that they would need a van. So I told them that the law and the company demanded that I only drive as many people as I had seat belts for, and I only had 4. In the worst case scenario I could lose my job and license, along with a ticket and a fine, I told them. They told me that they only lived a few blocks away, but when I asked them their address it was in North Keizer, which would run about $15.00, and was 5 miles away. So I asked them to let me call a van for them.

“I’ll give you a $40.00 tip if you take us,” the guy sitting next to me said.

I thought about it a few seconds and said, “okay, put the money in my hand and we’ll be on our way.” I really didn’t want to go, because the last time that I overloaded my cab to help out my passengers, they called up and complained about something that didn’t even happen, and the boss confronted me about their lie. There are those who promise you a big tip and then when you get them there, after risking your job they renege on the tip. So I took a chance that he was bluffing and would come up with some excuse to not give me any up-front money.

Sure enough he told me that he was going to pay by debit card, so I said that he could stop at the ATM across the street, to which he balked and then demanded that I drive them to their house since I already incriminated myself by agreeing to break the law in front of witnesses. It wasn’t the first time that a passenger tried to blackmail me into doing what they wanted, but that was the last straw with this group.

“Okay, that does it,” I said, “I’m not taking you, so get out.” Then I called the dispatcher and told them that my passengers needed a van, since there were 5 of them. Dotty told me to see if anyone else needed a ride before I left.

As my blackmailing passengers exited, the guy next to me, who appeared to be the group mouth, said, “I’m going to call Yellow cab and complain about you, what is your name?”

“You don’t want my name,” I told him, “it’s #25. That’s a 2 and a 5.” I heard him talking into his cell phone after he dialed, as a couple of guys peeked in and asked if I was now available. I told them that I was, and I drove them down to the fairgrounds, but it was over for the night, so the streets were deserted. My current fares were so drunk that they were barely conscious, and the guy sitting next to me seemed to be trying to be confrontational with me, but he mumbled and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. When I got them to their place, they paid me and gave me a $2.00 tip.

I decided to get gas before I picked up another fare and drove to an Arco to fuel up, since I’d be off in an hour. When I was exiting the car to pay for my gas, I saw a $20.00 laying on my armrest. I picked it up and put it with my wad of big bills. I wouldn’t know until I added up my book for the night whether it belonged to a passenger or I dropped it. Honesty isn’t always the best policy when you don’t have all the facts. Like the time that I gave a woman a $5.00 bill that I thought she dropped, only to find out at the end of the night that I was $5.00 short on my cash, after adding up my book. I always keep a running total on tip, and add that to my trip sheet record.

When I went into the Arco to pay, the Mexican attendant who was filling my tank came in for a few seconds to lay a $20.00 bill on the counter in front of me, while the cashier clerk was in back. Then he walked out as I looked at the $20.00 within reach and thought larcenous thoughts, while remembering that cameras caught every action, so that what was done in darkness would be brought out into the light.

My last passenger of the night was one of my old co-workers from the post office, that I picked up at Duffy’s hanger, a favorite haunt of the post office crowd, since it’s the closest bar, to the main office, on 25th and Mission. At first we didn’t recognize each other, and I even suspected that he could be a problem, but suddenly we were talking and he asked me if I was retired? One thing led to another, and I suddenly turned to my fare and said, “Patrick Fortune.”

He looked at me and I had to tell him, “it’s Bob Gersztyn,” and he remembered who I was, unlike Jim Moran, who I drove numerous times after working with him for years and he doesn’t remember me. It’s real blow to your ego, when someone that you knew for years, and had a good relationship with, doesn’t remember your even when you explain everything to them. However, the reason why was terminated was because of a drinking issue. One time Jame’s McGrory called me to drive him and we had a great conversation about gone by postal days, as we drove from Jammer’s to the Pink Elephant. So Patrick grilled me about being a taxi driver and asked me if I could just drive around, to which I responded, “that’s my job.”

He had me drive downtown and I pulled up to the Beanery where I have a rock & roll exhibit on display, through September. We sat in front and he looked through the window as the meter ran and he said that he would be retiring soon and wanted to see about getting a job as a taxi driver, because it seemed like fun.

The Adversary

2010-09-02T13:41:00.001-07:00

Oooaaioo eeeoooui arrived on earth nearly 6 months after Trevor Netzreg. He was the forward scout for the “Interdimensional Consortium for Universal Domination,” better known as ICUD, the “NUC” Near Universe Coalition’s arch enemy. They were anti teleo and obsessed with creation, regardless of the utilitarianism of what was created, because it was nothing but food to them. If the ICUD controlled a planet by the time that the NUC arrived, it was annihilated. Oooaaioo eeeoooui took the earth name of Jim Owens and began to drive a taxi cab for Universal cab, one of Yellow Cab’s many competitors, as #69.

Number 69 had been driving for nearly 2 weeks before he was able to ascertain that the NUC agent know as Trevor Netzreg was working for Yellow Cab, as #52. It was when he got a call to pick up a passenger at “LaDonna's” the sleaziest strip club in town, that he got the information. It had been a slow Monday night, the last week of August, so it was slow, and most cab drivers were desperate for a good run, to turn their night around. So when #69 entered the club, he tried to act the part of a desperate cab driver anxious for a high dollar trip.

After #69 told the female bartender that he was looking for Ray, she went into an adjoining room, and after she came out she said that Ray wanted #69 to go inside. When he entered, he found his fare on the floor with a completely naked woman straddling him, as she moved from his face to his crotch.

“Did you call for a taxi?” Number 69 asked.

“Yes,” Ray answered. “Have a seat, and enjoy the show.”

“Then I’ll need to start the meter,” #69 said.

“Yeah, go ahead and start the meter,” Ray said.

After he returned, #69 sat in a chair in front of the stage that the naked stripper was rubbing her posterior in the face of his passenger. He found it interesting that these heterosexual beings should place so much importance on the act of procreation that they should erect so many temples dedicated to it. After Ray was done slobbering all over the woman’s derriere he turned to #69 and asked him to wait until he was done with his drink.

“You don’t mind if I pay you tomorrow, do you?” Number 69’s passenger asked.

“We normally get paid at the time that the service is concluded,” #69 said.

“Oh, it will be okay, ” Ray told eeeoooui, my regular driver Trevor, #52 always lets me slide.

Eeeoooui told Ray that he would have to call the dispatcher to confirm his veracity, at which point Ray said that he was just kidding and had the money. He said that #52 worked for Yellow Cab, but he was off this week, because of some kind of a convention he was attending, and he let the bar tender call for a cab. Number 69 saw inside Ray’s mind and knew that it had been touched by teleo, and that #52 was a NUC agent. After a few more women disrobed and Ray gave them varying amounts of money, which they greedily snatched up. Ray told #69 that he had been in the Marines from 1977 until 2010, and he was now collecting a pension.

“Can you still cry?” He asked #69

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” Ray answered, and began talking about how he was now broke and would have to fight his brother, who was twice his size and as mean as Adolph Hitler and Osama Bin Laden combined, for some money to pay for the ride. When they finally arrived at Ray’s apartment on Rickey street, the meter was at over $28.00. Ray got out of the car, and as he walked by an elderly man opening the door to his own apartment, he told him to get fucked. After a few minutes Ray came out and had $570.00 in seven bills in his hand, and handed #69 a $50.00.

“Is my mouth bleeding?” Ray asked.

“No, it looks fine,” #69 said.

“Well, it feels like it’s bleeding,” he said. “Will you drive me to Stars?”

Eeeoooui told him that he would drive him wherever he wanted to go, so they began driving to the strip club on the other end of town. On the trip there Ray began to talk about the eventual economic collapse of the Federal government of the USA, because of the influx of illegal immigrants, and the communist policies that are being put into place by the current administration. He explained that states would become like countries, and some would form alliances, with guarded borders, and passports required for entry. He said that there were already underground cities being constructed, and soon domed cities would appear, with force shields that were impenetrable by air launched weapons. The governments would vary from state to state, but eventually stability would occur, he said.

By the time that they arrived at Stars, the meter was at $42.70, and Ray told #69 to keep the change, as he exited and announced that he would be calling for a ride back home in a couple of hours, when he was broke again. Eeeoooui thought about how Ray was prime ICUD material, with his obsession with the creation process. He thought that it was ironic for a species of life like humanity, to be recruited by the NUC, when they were clearly anti teleo in their nature. Of course until the gestation period for transformation was over, an abortion or miscarriage could still occur. Then if the NUC could be prevented from annihilating Earth, the planet would ripen until it would be devoured by the interdimensional scavengers that feed off pre-gestation or aborted overmind potentials, which the ICUD was an agent for. These interdimensional scavengers are simply known as Zene. They are nearly invisible, until they become excited by site of a pre-overmind, that they will be devouring. The purpose of The ICUD is to prevent the universe from spawning new universes for the sake of longevity, so the Zene may continue to thrive and grow, as they travel from universe to universe and dimension to dimension devouring everything with teleo potential.

First Weekend Back

2010-08-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Weird scenarios and driving a cab go hand in hand like sex and babies. In the case of the cab driver, his participation is required for the birth of these stories about the people that he transports, from one location to another. He does it for a living, and depends on his fares to provide his livelihood. Fares are like wrapped containers that contain a variety of complex personality combinations. Sometimes you pick up a rich philanthropist who gives you a $20.00 tip after you drive him to the Portland airport for $120.00, while other times it’s a fast talking scam artist who gives you a sob story about why he can’t pay you today, but will call for you tomorrow and give you a big tip. This weekend was peppered with drunks, from a dozen bars, and venues doing everything from stopping at Taco Bell, before going home after the ZZ Top concert at the State Fair, to hitting another bar.

Around 9:00 PM, Friday night I picked up a guy at the Silver Dollar and took him down the road a few blocks to the Pink Elephant. On the short trip there he began to wax philosophical about the meaning of life, and asked me what kind of a legacy I was leaving behind, and then wanted to know what I would tell someone about life if I knew that I would be dead the next day.

“What advice would you give someone, if you knew that it was the last thing you ever said?” My passenger demanded.

“Do you read books?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he told me. “I like to read non-fiction mostly, biographies and informational books.”

“Have you ever read the Bible from cover to cover, until you understood it?” I asked him.

He looked at me with a shocked look on his face, and said that he never read the Bible. I told him to read it like a book, to try and make as much sense of it as he could, but to remember that it was actually a collection of shorter books, letters, history, poetry and even a play, all dealing with the subject of man and his relationship with God, at different points in time, as told by one particular culture.

“Yeah, but there are all the thous and therefores, and it get’s too confusing,” he said.

“Skip over the stuff that you don’t understand or that confuses you,” I told him. “There are chapters that are building plans that, unless you are planning on building those items and structures.”

“But it’s all important,” he insisted, “because it’s the inspired word of God. Do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” I told him, “but you asked me for advice about life, so I gave it to you.”

“Yes, you did,” he said, “you’ve told me more than anyone else has.”

The meter was only at $3.80, after our short trip, but he gave me a $10.00 bill and said to keep the change. I took one of my cards and wrote three things on the back, Bible – Steinbeck – Dostoevsky. Then I told him to start with the Bible and then begin reading the others, or read them all at the same time, since he could get them from the library.
I picked up two different lesbian couples at the gay bar in town, at different times. The first couple had me take them to Duffy’s hanger, so they could dance with a live band, but were upset when they saw the parking lot filled with motorcylcles, even though there were no Gypsy Joker decals. The second couple had me drive them to Jack In The Box and then to the fems house, with her butch. While were waiting in the drive through line, the fem, told me that I was creepy. To which I responded that all taxi drivers had a criminal background check every year. I was going to tell her that I quit storing my dead passengers under my house, but thought better of it. She gave me a $3.00 tip, so I guess I must have redeemed myself.

I picked up Jeremy, Norm Walters friend, who always asks for me personally, when he takes a cab. He told me that he was still reading my taxi blog, but wanted to know when I was going to write about him.

“I’ll have you in my next entry,” I told him, as I drove he and a friend to “Freeloaders.”

Sometimes drunks can be exasperating, as in the case with a group of 3 people that I picked up at Midnight on Saturday, at the Alibi. They couldn’t find their car keys, to get something out of their vehicle that they were leaving at the bar, so I waited for 10 minutes and finally started my meter. Then the guy gave me a $5.00 for waiting and said that they didn’t want to leave yet, and didn’t need me. After I did my paperwork and called it in, my drunk passengers got back in the cab and said that they changed their minds and wanted to go to the South Liberty Bar & Grill, so I called Larissa the dispatcher back, and told her. On the way there, they changed their mind and wanted to go to Taco Bell first, and then to their house. By the time that I dropped them off at home the meter was at nearly $30.00 and they gave me a $10.00 tip, and the female passenger said. “I would hate your job, if I had to deal with people like us.”

One of my last calls of the night was 2 guys, who looked to be about 30, that I picked up at Westside Station and drove to North Keizer. On the way there they talked about the 2 young women that they came to the bar with. They sat in the back with the one whose birthday they were celebrating. She wanted to do something crazy they said, and she was very drunk.

“I know,” one of the guys said, “let’s get naked,” and he took off his shirt. Then the other guy did and then the birthday girl took her top and bra off and the two guys began to…. Since I’m not trying to write a pornographic blog or shock, offend or disgust people, I will leave the rest of the details out. This led to a very explicit conversation about sexual encounters that we had. I had enough passengers solicit me for sex ranging in age from 23 to 76, both male and female, that I was able to keep their interest until I got them to their apartment.

It’s good to be back to seedy Salem, after the bustling fast paced insanity of traffic jams on the freeway, main streets and parking lots in Los Angeles. I once loved L.A., as much as I do Oregon now. The rain has washed the love out of me, other than in a nostalgic way.

The Grateful Dead Bus Trip

2010-08-22T01:22:00.000-07:00

I took a week off from driving cab, because I went to Los Angeles, where I lived from 1971 to 1982, when I was part of the Jesus movement, when I converted to Protestantism, after being a Roman Catholic for 24 years. The reason for the visit was to participate in a reunion at the church that I was an associate pastor at. My friend George Shearer contacted me about providing photos for a retrospective slide show, and helping to obtain a musical performer to minister, a couple of months ago. So I didn’t intend to do any blog entries because of this fact. However, since this blog is a spiritual document, what I think doesn’t matter, because like the writers of the Bible, sometimes I am inspired by the events that take place, with the realization that they transcend normality.

Our old friends from Los Angeles, Denise and John lent us their second car to drive during our visit, so we didn’t have to rent a car. The day that we were leaving they were both unavailable, so we had to drop the car off at their apartment and take a taxi to the Amtrack station where we had to catch our Greyhound bus. I put in a time call with City Cab, for 1:10 PM, and when it didn’t show up by 1:18 PM, we were concerned so I decided to see if I could use the phone of one of the apartment residents, since we don’t have a cell phone. When I went into the apartment courtyard there was a man of about 60 with a grey haired pony tail exiting his apartment. I asked him if I could use his phone to call the taxi company to see when they were coming, since our bus left at 2:25 PM.

“I’ll give you a couple of bucks to use the phone,” I told him. He let me use the phone and I laid 2 dollars on his couch next to the table with the phone. The cab’s phone answerer told me that the cab was on the way, and I thanked the man who let me use his phone.

As I was leaving he handed me my 2 dollars and said, “here’s your money back. Pass it on to someone who needs it. I’m not a Republican.”

I pocketed the money, as I wondered why a rich Republican would want my $2.00, and as I exited Kathy my wife called out and said that the cab arrived. After we loaded our luggage, I told the driver our destination, and asked him if he knew how to get there? He had a GPS finder, but said that if I knew the way that I could tell him. So I told him to take York Blvd, until it turned into Adams and we were on our way. I asked him how long he had been driving a cab and he told me 4 months. I told him that I drove cab in Salem, Oregon for 7 years and we exchanged complaints about demanding passengers who latter made up stories about their driver, and accused them of taking the long way, when you went the short way. He expressed his apprehension about the danger in driving people. I told him about the guy who sucker punched me and broke my glasses, who later paid me $1,000.00 in reparation. When we got to the Amtrack station and unloaded our luggage the meter, which ran hot, read $20.90, and I asked Kathy to give him $25.00.

It was in the 90’s as the sun beat down on us, in spite of a dozen palm trees attempting to offer shade, until we hid in the shade of a roofed waiting area, with 8 other people who arrived after us. There was a Chinese couple going to San Francisco, an Arab couple, sending someone off and some Latinos. When the bus arrived 20 minutes late the driver announced that there were only 4 open seats, which caused an uproar. Since we were the only ones with printed out tickets, we were allowed to board. It was 2:54 PM when we started heading North to San Fernando, and then Bakersfield, Fresno, Stockton, Sacramento, where the bus was cleaned. Next was Redding, and then sleep, until Central Point, where we stopped at 8:00 for breakfast. I had two burritos from Taco Bell and a diet Pepsi, and then we headed to Grants Pass.

When we started loading in Grants Pass, the bus was swamped with passengers, who then took up every available seat. So I had to give up my empty seat, where I kept my back pack with the broken zipper, when a young woman asked me if it was alright for her to sit there. I immediately removed my back pack from the seat and put it carefully in the overhead compartment. I sat on the inside, since I wanted to try and sleep if I could, since I only got about 4 hours, thus far. I talked to my neighbor, and found out that she was going home to Spokane, but found out that she had lived all over the country while she was growing up, and she was only 20. I told her that we were from Detroit, and then lived in Los Angeles, until we moved to Oregon in the 1980’s. Then our conversation seemed to hit a wall, or maybe I was too fatigued to continue. Whatever the reason, we both became reticent and I fell asleep, until I was awakened by the driver announcing that we were now in Eugene.

After a couple of people exited and an equal amount entered to occupy the momentarily vacant seats, the driver announced that the next stop was Corvallis, as I asked my neighbor, whose name was Dominique what she was reading?

“Archeon,” she said, and continued, “it’s about mythology and immortal beings.”

“That reminds me of ‘The Boat of a Thousand Years,” which was a science fiction novel about immortal beings who could not die, except by suicide. It began in ancient Pheonicia in the second millennium BC. It was a love story about these two immortals who had a love hate relationship for 3,000 years until they were part of an immortal group on a spaceship traveling to colonize a new planet. Dominique then opened up to me and began to tell me about her life.

“I’ll be homeless when I return to Spokane,” she said. “I’ll be living with a girlfriend for a while, but don’t know how long that can continue. I broke up with my fiancée, who was my boyfriend for 6 years. We were living together, and I was working to pay all the bills, while he sat around and hung out with his friends. I told him to get a job or leave, and he left. Then I lost my job, because I had a baby with no babysitter, since my boyfriend who was the father left. My mother is a crack addicted prostitute and my dad is in prison. I lost the baby and then I couldn’t get a job, even at McDonald’s. When I went to some churches for help, even $20.00 for food, they wouldn’t give me anything.”

“Then you were going to the wrong churches,” I told her. “Churches are like people, they are all different. Some will show you the door, while others will give you the world. Take a directory of churches from the phone book, then look them up on the internet and find the ones that are concerned with their community and have some sort of a homeless or unwed mother outreach, I told her. Union Rescue Mission has a place in Salem that helps women get housing and jobs. There are actually people who care and will help you, but you have to search them out.

I then told her of my history. How I was drafted into the Army and became a hippie after my discharge, and eventually moved to Los Angeles with my girlfriend, where we found Jesus, and lived for Him for the next two decades, as we expanded our family from 2 to 9. How we lost all of our possessions and became homeless in 1984, after moving from Bakersfield, California, to Detroit, Michigan, during the Reagan recession. Then I told her how I lost everything again in 2003 and was still recovering from it. I told her about 39 years of marriage, full of good times and bad times and times that I wish that I were dead, and hated the world.

I reminded her about how when we left Eugene the driver warned passengers about drinking alcohol, as well as using drugs. “They included the drugs,” I told her, because Ken Kesey, the father of the hippie movement, was from Springfield/Eugene, and when he died a few years ago they had a big parade for him. The Oregon Country Fair in Veneeta is the longest running hippie festival, that began in 1969, the same year as Woodstock. She told me that she had attended it about 6 years ago. I told her that I attended it in 1999, with my 21 year old married daughter. We exchanged many other commonalities that could only be related to by an awareness of the streets, as they existed wherever there were people. I told her that I was a taxi driver and saw every strata of humanity pass through my doors, from the worst to the best. Then I told her about my 28 year old son with a degree in chemistry that he earned from Oregon State University, by working in a pizza parlor, while he attended school and worked as an assistant research chemist, until he was struck down by an infection that ate out his hip socket.

“He’s been crippled for over 3 years now, and has had two hip replacement surgeries,” I told her. “Both of them have gotten infected, and now he is on antibiotic treatment, again, which is draining all his energy. This is the thing that is ripping me up inside.”

Then I suddenly flashed back to the “Grateful Dead,” again, and told her, “as weird as it may seem, the ‘Grateful Dead’ were the transitory element for me to merge the secular with the sacred. When most people are pressed to explain the meaning of the “Dead’s” name they often list morbidity, yet the truth is quite the opposite. The name comes from a collection of stories by English born folklorist, Francis Childs, in the 19th century, although the original source is much more ancient, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC.”

I told her that every time that I told the myth, it would move me emotionally to shed tears. Then I proceeded to tell the tale, “as the story goes, there is a traveler passing through a village, where he comes upon a corpse rotting on the side of the road. When he asks why the body isn’t buried, he is told that the man owed money and, because his debt was unpaid, he didn’t deserve to be given the honor of a burial. The stranger then uses his last resources to pay the corpses debt, so that it can be buried. As the traveler continues his journey, he is joined by either an animal or another human, who is the embodiment of the spirit that he paid the debt for. Then the traveler encounters a travail or situation where his companion provides the solution, fulfilling his obligation as the ‘Grateful Dead.’”

I dried my eyes as we were pulling into the Salem, Oregon Greyhound bus station, as I finished my story. When the bus came to a stop, I got my backpack and pulled out a copy of the Wittenburg Door, with my address and telephone number stamped on it. “Here, I told her, take this and read it, it may help you, I interviewed a homeless man who through God’s intervention began working with an art dealer, and became his partner, after the art dealers wife died of a horrible cancer. She took it, but when I offered her $20.00 she refused it, with a determined look in her eyes.

It was a test for me, because I had a $100.00 dollar bill in my wallet next to the $20.00, but I offered her the lesser of the two. I failed the test.

I Blew A Hose

2010-08-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

I blew a radiator hose in front of Lefty’s, downtown, so I had to get towed in again, which cost me an hour. Naturally the night had been slow, leaving me without a call for nearly 2 hours, when I called for help. As soon as I called the dispatcher, the phones started ringing, and calls went out, while I helplessly waited. Once I got a new cab, it was dead again, as I simmered, top down on Amtrack.

I got a call for McDonald’s on Ricky and picked up a dark skinned man in his early 30’s who looked like he was from India. He spoke perfect English, so it was obvious that he was either born in the US or arrived at an early age. He wanted to go to an address in the shallow South, but first wanted to stop at Bob’s adult book store on State. When we arrived the meter was at $5.50, and he asked me to wait for him, until he came out, as he handed me a $20.00 bill for up front money. Anytime someone asks you to wait for them, if it’s going to be longer than a few minutes you get up front money, so you don’t get burned, or complaints about the amount. At $40.00 an hour waiting time, the meter was at $33.00 when he finally came out and told me that he was going to pay me and stay there longer.

“What’s your number?” He asked, “I’ll call you when I’m done.

I gave him my card, and ended up with another call for the “Silver Dollar,” where I was supposed to pick up a female named Sandy. After I asked the bartender, I found out that Sandy was on one of the video poker machines, so I walked up to her and told her that I would be waiting outside. She had over $15.00 left to lose in the machine, so she asked me if I would wait.

“Sure,” I told her, “but I’ll have to start the meter if you don’t come out in a couple of minutes.”

She said, “okay, I’ll be right there.”

After a couple of minutes I started the meter, and by the time that she finally came out, it had increased $5.00 from the initial $2.70 flag drop.

When she saw the meter, at $7.70, she said, “you asshole,” I can’t believe that you ran the meter on me. None of the other drivers ever run the meter on me.”

I didn’t waste my breath by asking what she tells her boss, when he asks her to punch out and work for free. I bit my tongue and drove her to the destination that she gave me, in between insults. Her house was only a few blocks away, and she complained about my starting the meter while I was waiting for her, all the way to her house, so the total fare came to $9.90, instead of the normal $5.00, when we pulled into her driveway. She pulled out a wad of $20.00’s, $10.00’s and $5.00’s, and finally gave me a $20.00 bill and told me to keep the change, as she drunkenly stumbled out of the cab.

About two hours from the time that I left the guy off at Bob’s Adult Books, I got a call to pick him up. When I got I had to go inside and ask one of the clerks behind the counter where he was. One of them said that he would tell him that I was there, and he walked off to get him, as I got back in my cab and waited. My passenger came out in a couple of minutes and, since I already had his address I just confirmed that we were still going there.

Just as I was putting my cab in drive, a tall man, with dishwater blonde hair, in a flowered shirt came out of the building. He looked to be around 40 and motioned from the side of the cab, where he was walking. My passenger told me to stop, so I put the cab in park, with the meter still at the $2.70 flag drop. He got out and talked to the man in the flowered shirt, and then came back and told me that he wouldn’t be needing a cab now, as he handed me $3.00 and apologized for wasting my time.

It was around 2:00 AM when I picked up a Latino gentleman, at one of the Hispanic night clubs on Portland Rd. On the drive to his destination he tried to converse with me in English, but between my diminishing hearing, road noise, the dispatcher’s voice on the radio and his bad English, I had a hard time understanding him. What he wanted was to get laid, and he wanted me to get him hooked up. I tried to tell him that I didn’t do that, but could tell him where to go to set it up himself. He wanted to go there right now, but I told him that it was too late, since the bars close at 2:30 AM and it was almost that now. When I got him to his apartment, he paid me the fare, and then gave me a $3.00 tip. I was surprised since Latinos, who don’t speak good English usually don’t tip, so I said “thank you.” Then after a second I said “Gracias.”

“What did you say?” My passenger asked in an irritated tone of voice, that reflected the same kind of hostility that I would encounter if I insulted him.

“Gracias,” I said.

“I may be a Mexican,” my passenger said, “but I speak English. Don’t give me any of that gracias bullshit.”

“Okay,” I said as he got out of the cab. The next night I picked him up again at the same place and drove him home, but he didn’t seem to remember me, and when I got him there he paid me with no tip included.

Hindu Wrath

2010-08-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

I got a call for Costco, on Mission, and found a couple in their 30’s with a basket full of groceries, and a hyperactive 5 year old waiting for me. After we loaded everything in the back, while I tripped over the 5 year old a couple of times , until we all got in and I found out their destination. After I put it in drive and started to cautiously proceed, since there was a lot of foot traffic, I had to slam on the brakes a couple of times. Then just as I thought that it was clear to go, a dark skinned man darted in front of me with a shopping cart, as he glared at me.

The man sitting up front with me, said, “I thought that Hindus were just crazy cab drivers, but I guess they can’t even drive shopping carts safely. Praise be to Allah,” he said, as I thought to myself, Hindu’s don’t worship Allah, their deity is Shiva or Krishna, among others, but I try not to correct my passengers, unless they ask for my input. Nobody like’s their cab driver to know more than them, unless it’s the “Cash Cab.” So I try to play dumb for a tip.

As I proceeded through the parking lot and onto Hawthorne, into the rush hour traffic, his continued reference to Allah and a Hindu made me think of a negative encounter that I had with a couple of Sikhs, a few years ago, since Sikhs combine Hinduism and Islam together, so the Allah reference would work.

“I was travelling South on Commercial, and turned into the Mongolian grill parking lot,” I told them, “since it’s the only way that you can get onto the street I was called to.”

As I entered the driveway, I saw 2 men with turbans on their heads, indicating that they were Sikhs, walking on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Their temple was just a couple of streets away, so it wasn’t unusual to see them in the area, but they became visibly upset when I drove into the parking lot. They started shaking their fists and yelling about something. The only thing that I really knew about Sikhs, other than the fact that they were the result of combining the best parts of Hinduism and Islam together, was that one of them assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. So I decided not to stop and see what upset them, but drove past them to my destination.

As we were laughing about Hindus, Allah and angry Sikhs, I caught a red light with two cars in front of me. When the light turned green, the car in front of me didn’t move, then the light turned red again, and their emergency flashers came on. I decided to pull around them, but, when I stepped on the gas I found that my cab was stalled. When I turned the key it failed to start my cab, and as I continued to try, I continued to fail in my attempt to get the engine going. Then the key wouldn’t even turn, as I pulled it in and out of the ignition, occasionally turning it upside down. Finally I had my passenger sitting up front with me try to turn the key, but it was jammed in the ignition.

I couldn’t believe this was happening, and at the same time my passenger started to talk about bad Karma. Finally I had to give in and accept that I needed a tow truck, and acknowledge the bad Karma suggestion. I tried to reach the dispatcher to tell him that I needed a tow truck and another cab to take my passengers to their destination, but because it was the busiest part of my shift the radio was jammed with calls and I failed to get through. Every so often I tried to start my cab while I was trying to get through on the radio, but failed on both accounts. After nearly 10 minutes, the key turned, the ignition turned over and my cab started, as I pulled in front of the stalled vehicle and finally got through on the radio.

“I’m going to 6059 Battle Creek,” I told John the dispatcher, as I turned East on Highway 22. We drove all the way to their house without any problems, and on the way there I vowed that I would never make fun of another religion, even if they were going to hell for holding a false theology. After I helped them carry everything into the house they paid me and gave me a $3.00 tip.

Later that night I picked up a woman who had been attending her 20 year class reunion, and had me drive her home. On the drive there, we began talking about how much 20 years can change a person. Then she started talking about how times were different from when she graduated from high school in 1990, till now. I thought to myself, “then imagine how different it is from 1965, until now”?

She told me that her daughter, who is now in high school, came out of the closet to declare that she was gay, when she was 12 years old. At first I didn’t say anything and there was silence, but then curiosity got the best of me and I asked how her daughter could determine that she was gay at such an early age.

“How old were you when you realized that you were straight?” She asked.

“Back in the 1950’s things like that weren’t even in our vocabulary,” I told her. She then asked when I had my first orgasm, and what I was thinking about.

“Naked women,” I told her.

“If you were gay then it would be naked men,” she said.

As we continued to drive the conversation became very explicit, and of a sexual nature, until my passenger said, “I can’t believe that I’m having this conversation with you, this is more intimate than I talk to anybody other than my sex partners.”

I didn’t say anything after that, but kept silent, until we picked up her boyfriend, at his apartment. Then we proceeded to a convenience store and to her apartment, where I dropped them off. She gave me a $5.00 tip and I thanked her for the conversation, as she and her male friend exited my cab.

What Scares Me The Most

2010-08-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

What scares me the most is knowing what people are really like. If this is the first blog entry that you’ve read, then you need an explanation, but if you have been following me through my shifts for a while, I think that you know what I mean. I’ll lean to the former and offer an explanation. I just began my 7th year of driving a taxi here in Salem, Oregon, on the 5th of July. During that time I’ve driven a minimum of 3 – 12 hour shifts a week, with an occasional 4th, to help pay the bills.

For the purpose of the following calculations, we will consider the time that I’ve taken off from driving a taxi, for the purpose of an occasional vacation, medical procedures or illnesses to be offset by the occasional 4th day, which varied from every week for a month, to one or two days a month, and even an occasional no days a month. Since there are 52 weeks in the year, and 3 days a week times 52 equals 156, that will be the base number. For a year. Each time that I pick up a fare, depending on whether I’m driving a sedan or a van, I may be able to pick up anywhere from 4 to 8 people. Then there were the times that before the seat belt law was passed in 2007, I could cram as many as wanted to squeeze in my van or sedan. I drove a clown car on many an occasion, and still do if the tip is right, since I could lose my license and get fired, if caught. But wait, I’m incriminating myself, so I want to announce that I repent of any wrong doing, and will walk the straight and narrow path of righteousness, and obey every law that Caesar requires me to follow.

For the purpose of this blog, let’s get back to the point, which is how many people I have driven in my cab over a 6 year period. Since the number varies from 1 – 7, how about if I call it the number 2, as my average amount of passengers? The number of trips that I do each day varies as much as the passenger do. If a driver has an average of 2 fares an hour, for a 12 hour shift, that is 24. Some nights a driver may have less trips, that travel longer distances, or it may be slow. Since I always work the weekend, on Friday & Saturday night, I am guaranteed 20 – 30 trips, regardless on the economy or time of the month. My other regular day is Monday, which is sometimes good, until 10:00 PM or even Midnight, and if the dispatcher cuts loose, some of the drivers that want to go home, even Monday becomes a 20-25 trip night. The other nights that I drive for a 4th shift are pretty much like Monday, and vary from week to week and month to month.

So for the purpose of my calculations, let’s say that I have an average of 20 trips a night, with 2 passengers, which equals 40. Then multiply 40, by 156, which we already established as the base number for a year. The result is 6240, which then needs to be multiplied by 6 years, resulting in 37,440. This means that I have driven 37,440 people. Some I only drove once, while I drove others multiple times ranging from a few to hundreds. I drove an arbitrary cross section of humanity, who by chance or planning needed to take a taxi, at the precise moment that I became their driver.

My passengers ran the gamut of possibility, from completely stark raving insane to alcohol poisoned drunk, from battered, abused and fleeing to spirit filled, rapturous and fulfilling their destiny. There have been drug dealers, prostitutes, strippers, students, seminarians, merchants, marines, mercenaries, young people and old people, and every kind of person that can be imagined, but the bottom line is I need to make some extra cash, and driving a cab is the best way for me to do it.

I’m a writer, and whether I appreciate it or not, driving a taxi gives me stories that most people only watch on their TV sets. If I’m going to be somebody’s TV program I want to get paid like one of the people on CSI or Sex in the City, but I’m only reality, and nobody wants to hear about that, because they live it, even if not as intensely as me.

Like this past Monday night, when I picked up an arguing couple at the Roxxy, and drove them home, while they had a borderline hysterical argument, about how much the guy played in the video poker machine after his girlfriend said enough. They were originally going to go to Stars, a strip club, but went to their apartment instead after the guy got in and was angry. The 15 minute drive was at a volume that even my diminishing hearing was able to understand. The only good thing about it was that the woman paid with a $20.00, for the 12.60 fare and said to keep the change, which is why I do this in the first place.

The Problem

2010-08-03T05:31:00.000-07:00

It was the worst of weekends and it was the best of weekends. Two cabs broke down on me, and I had to get towed in from highway 22, on my way back from Stayton, after my transmission went out. At the same time it was sporadically busy from the time that I started, until I got off both days, but for some reason the bar rush time was exceptionally busy, especially on Saturday night. The weather was hot, but not unbearable, when it reached the mid 80’s, so I had my air conditioning on most of the time, even when it got cool later, so the drunks wouldn’t get sick.

Early in the evening, while it was still light, on Saturday, I picked up a literature major from Willamette University, who was going out to the Eolo Inn, where I would wait for him for about ten minutes with the meter running and then drive him to Willamette Vineyard’s by Enchanted Forest. He would be using a Willamette Safe Ride charge. On the drive there we began talking about literature and told him that I graduated from Bible college and was a freelance religion and music journalist. That triggered the direction of my passengers diatribe on the first leg of our journey.

“The problem with most Christian literature, is that much of it is bullshit,” my passenger said, as I drove him to his destination. “It has to have a positive uplifting ending and message. However, life is not positive and uplifting, it is ambivalent, exhausting and concludes with death. Anyone who has actually read the Bible, from cover to cover, and has digested the contents, will tell you that there are no happy endings. Just take a look at the major stories of the Bible if you want proof of what I’m saying,” he continued, as I drove.

1. “Noah’s Ark – Everyone in the world drowns except Noah and his family, plus all the chosen animals.”

2. “The Tower of Babel – communication for the purpose of understanding each other is obliterated, as everyone starts to speak a different language, and are alienated from each other, which is the root of Nationalism and war.

3. The Exodus – All the Egyptians are either tormented by all the plagues or actually die, as the children of Israel happily march off to the promise land.

4. David and Goliath – A bellowing Philistine gigantic braggart, gets struck down and decapitated by a teenager, triggering the youth’s fellow soldiers to butcher enemy Philistine soldiers, in a glorious blood drenched victory.

5. King Solomon – A power hungry king’s kingdom, is reduced to civil war after his death because of the harsh injustices that were endured, while he was alive.

6. The Psalms – King David is attributed to writing many of the psalms, and he was a man after God’s own heart. Many of the most loved Psalms, like #1, #23 and #27 were supposed to have been penned by David. Yet at the same time he was the most blood thirsty of all the kings of Israel, and God wouldn’t let him build the temple, because of this.

7. The story of Esther has a guy hanged at the end, while everyone rejoices.

8. The story of Jesus is a horrendous saga of misunderstandings, legalistic rigidity and the reason for separating church and state, that ends in a torturous death.

9. The positive message is that after the torturous death, Jesus is resurrected 3 days later.

10. The Book Of Revelation – Everyone who is left on the earth after the rapture, if you happen to believe in this recent theological revelation, endures some kind of horrible death, either through persecution, divine punishments or the battle of Armageddon.”

“So there you have it,” my passenger concluded, as we pulled into the Eola Inn parking lot, he told me to tune in to AM 540, that his theology professor , Dr. Blackwell, was doing a live radio exposition of the book of Romans, that I could listen to while I waited. The meter was already at $16.00 when we arrived, but then he had a Willamette account, so I wasn't worried, as he went into the bar, and I tuned the radio in

The voice on the radio spoke about what he called a post Christian exegesis on the book of Romans, using the Revised Standard version of the Interlinear Greek – English New Testament.

“Tonight is the first night of our series on the book of Romans,” the voice said and continued, we’re going to call our study of this important book, that the apostle Paul penned, ‘Out Of The Box,’ because this study will be out of the box of most conservative theologians, but then you know that I don’t buy into that philologistic bullshit! So let’s read. Romans chapter one, verse one reads, ‘Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.’ The epistle to the Romans begins with the writers name, Paul.

Formerly Saul of Tarsus, according to biographical information provided by a Greek physician named Luke, in the book of Acts. Paul was a first century marketing genius, who was eventually able to eclipse the then popular mystery religions of that day, with Christianity. Some of the most prominent mystery religions, of the 1st and 2nd century CE Roman Empire, were Mithraism, Serapism and Magna Mater worship. They involved a theological system that included resurrection, virgin birth, being born again, and cleansing by bathing in blood. The thing that set Christianity apart from the mystery religions was its non-exclusiveness. It was open to the entire population, irregardless of race, social status or sex.

Paul calls himself a servant. In the Greek it’s the word doulos, meaning a slave. So he was a slave of Jesus Christ, but at the same time he had a destiny, and being Jesus’s slave helped him to achieve his destiny. Paul’s destiny was being a messenger for Christ just like Hermes, Mercury or Tiu were for their respective supreme deities, Zeus, Jupiter, and Woden. The Greek word apostolos literally means one sent out with a message, and this letter is about that message.

Being separated, or set apart for a particular purpose is a recurring theme in the New Testament. That purpose is always the same. It centers around something called “the gospel of God”. In other places it’s called “the good news of the kingdom.” Whatever it’s called, one thing is for sure, it’s “good news,” because it’s the key to transcendence. Not just a mystical transcendence, but one having practical application in the material world.

Then my passenger came back outside and got in back in the cab, with the meter at $35.60.

“Take me to the ‘Bourbon Street’ instead,” he said.

As I drove there he wanted me to continue listening to Dr. Blackwell’s exposition, so we did.

“Verse 2,” Dr. Blackwell said, and continued, “which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures,” God promised the Good News a long time ago. All you have to do is read the holy writings that the prophets left. Nearly all religions have some form of holy writings, from the Hindu Upanishads, to the Islamic Qur`an. The Hebrew TeNaKh, which later became the Christian Old Testament, was ratified, as being the authorized Hebrew scriptures, by the council of Jamnia, between 90 – 100 AD. (3) The TeNaKh was accepted by the Christian Church, which it later added to the 27 books of the New Testament.

Then he continued, “verse 3: ‘the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh’. The key to enter the kingdom is the person of Jesus Christ, so the good news is also about him. According to the scriptures, he’s a direct descendent of David, the second, and greatest king of Israel. The same king who in 1000 BC brought Israel out of the bronze age, and into the iron age, where it established itself as an independent kingdom. The ties of this lineage are through the genetic posterity of the flesh.”

“Verse 4: ‘and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,’ This descendent of David was the designated, destined and predicted “Son of God.” Besides being a descendent of Israel’s greatest king, He was also a direct descendent of the deity. This designation was declared in power. The Greek word, which is translated as power, in this passage, is “dunamei,” which contains the root word for English words, like dynamite, dynamic and dynamo. This is the kind of power that has its source in the divine transcendent realm. It is beyond human ability or comprehension. The proof of that power can be found in Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead”

“The name Jesus, is the English translation of the Greek Iesous, which is the translation of the Hebrew Yeshua, which in turn is translated as Joshua in English. Jesus was a common name among the Jews in the first century CE, about as common as being named Joe or Bob in the USA during the 20th century. All names have meanings, and Jesus, like Joshua literally meant, “God is salvation.” The common feeling among the Jews, at that time, was that they needed a savior, or leader, who would free them from the yoke of Rome, so they could regain their place as an independent nation.”

“The most popular form of government in the 1st century CE world, was a monarchy. Although both Greece and Rome existed as a Democracy or Republic, that was no longer the case. Ever since Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, in 49 BCE, the Emperor has ruled an empire. (6) The Jews longed for a theocratic Monarchy, so it was logical that popular sentiment should lean towards bestowing the title of Lord or King on their personal choice, who would be Moses, Joshua and David all rolled up in one.”

By the time that the first installment of Dr. Blackwell’s study of the book of Romans was over, the meter was at $78.90, as we sat in the Bourbon Street parking lot. He filled out the Safe Ride charge for $100.00, with a $21.10 tip, as he opened the door and got out beneath a three quarter moon rising large in the East.

The Last Weekend of July

2010-08-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

Last Weekend had the full moon, but this weekend had thunderstorms on a sunny day for 10 minutes flying through the valley, requiring me to turn on my windshield wipers, as I pulled into the parking lot of one in a series of somewhat docile drunk pickups, that comprised the totality of Friday night.

“Me love you a long time!” My passenger dressed in a slinky red dress told me, as I drove her and the butch in slacks and blouse, that was her companion to the gay bar. The butch was reticent, but the beauty was rabid with excitement, as she told me that she was going to turn 40 and was going to Las Vegas to celebrate. Then she asked me what she should do and where should she go to have the best time when she got there?

“Catch a cab, and ask the cab driver when you get to Las Vegas,” I told her.

This answer made her happy, until she asked why we were taking the route that I was driving. When I explained that it was because she changed destinations after I started driving them to their first choice, she seemed satisfied, so we proceeded. When we got to the bar that she suggested, the parking lot was empty and the last of the people were leaving behind locked doors, so we proceeded to the first destination.

My talkative passenger continued talking about sexual topics, as she had done most of the trip, requiring me to engage her in subject matter that I wasn’t comfortable with, but after driving a taxi for 7 years, you learn to somewhat roll with the punches. Of course after driver’s think that they served above and beyond the call of duty, by tolerating their passengers pornographic propositions, cabbies will find themselves explaining to the boss why they were lewd and indecent. So when they asked how they could request me personally to come pick them up, I wanted to give them somebody else’s number, but it’s easier on my conscience to tell the truth, because the truth never comes back to bite you.

“It’s #25, I told her, we pulled into the parking lot, I handed her my card, with all the information on it.

“You’re not going to charge us $22.00 for the ride here are you?” The fem said.

I hate it when passengers can’t accept the meter, because of their own stupid drunken blunders, and sometimes ask them if they try to argue a lower price with the cashier at Walmart. However, in this case I didn’t, but just said, “give me $17.00 and we’ll call it even. They paid me, and they both gave me another $4.00 for a tip.

My next call was at Walmart, on Turner Rd., where a young woman dressed in very short shorts and a halter top got in the cab, with a small plastic bag. She was going to Keizer, and on the way there told me, that she worked at Pussycat’s on Market Street. I heard that Pussycat’s was a lingerie modeling venue, but asked her exactly what it was. She responded with the following answer.

“You know how you can buy a private dance with a girl at one of the strip clubs?” She asked.

Even though I don’t frequent strip clubs, I know all about them, because I have to go in them to find my passengers. I can tell you everything that you want to know about any of the 6 places presently in business, especially after this passenger.

“At Pussycat’s,” she continued, “it’s all private dances. You pay a girl to come in a room with you, and she’ll do whatever you want.”

I decided not to ask what they might want, since my imagination could easily fill in the blanks, but found out that she had been the girlfriend of #73, one of the taxi cab drivers that I was friendly with. Many strippers are unfriendly when I drive them, on work days, but become very talkative on their days off. Most strippers, regardless of the fact that they live off tips, are bad tippers, and so it was the case this time, but then her current boyfriend or handler was the one who actually paid me.

I picked up Larry the mentally challenged guy who has a season pass to the Volcanoes, the local minor league baseball team, here in Salem. Larry attends every game and will tell you blow by blow, what happened that night, whether you want to hear it or not, while you drive him home. As we approached the split where Portland Rd. merges with Lancaster, I began slowing down.

Why is that yellow light blinking? Larry asked.

“It means caution,” I answered.

“Caution for what?” Larry asked.

“It’s a dangerous 3 way intersection.

“Why?” Larry asked.

It’s at this point that you realize that you should have ignored him, and resist the temptation to tell him to shut up. Fortunately his apartment only took a few more minutes to get to, and I had him home in another 5 minutes. It was fairly busy and uneventful for the rest of the night, as I drove drunks from bar to bar, until around 2:00 AM, when I picked up a guy from Presley’s Playhouse. He was standing out front waiting for me, and got in the cab as soon as I pulled into the parking lot.

“Where to?” I asked my passenger.

“Just get me the fuck out of here,” my passenger exclaimed, and continued, “take me to Stars. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah, I know,” I told him. Like I already said, a taxi driver knows every strip club in town, and why you would want to go there. So I called it in and began driving North down Commercial. On the way there my passenger, who’s name was Dave talked a mile a minute. Maybe he was on speed, then again maybe he was just a talker, but he was the personification of Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty of the “On the Road” series.

“I’m one of Jerry’s kid’s,” Dave said.

“When was the last time that you saw the “Dead?” I asked him.

“He had Chuck Berry with him and it was in Eugene, I think, but then Jerry died. Do you know why Jerry died? It was because of his heart, he had a heart so big that it finally exploded. He died, and Ken Kesey went Cuckoo with Jack Nicholson over on Center Street, but he never saw the film. The Hell’s angels distributed Owley’s acid and then it was the day that the music died. That was the day that Jerry died. His heart was so big that he couldn’t take it any more so he died. It exploded. Dylan had it right when he sang about the wicked messenger, but what was that song that the Dead used to always do?

“Bucket of Rain?” I asked.

“No, I can’t remember, but do you know why Jerry died?” He asked and answered, “because his heart got so big that it exploded.”

I ended up dropping my passenger off at Canton Gardens, and then had to go to the Speakeasy to pick up the Dykes, that ended up not being there.

The Lord’s Work

2010-07-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

Driver #11, Dora Dimes was sitting In front of the Amtrack station at around 2:30 AM waiting for a call, while she was listening to a talk radio show about re-incarnation.

“Now what your telling me,” the show’s host said to his guest, “is that everyone goes to heaven, because we are all the same person?”

“Exactly,” the guest said, and further explained, “the same entity lives every life that ever was, is and will be, until completion is accomplished. At some point the same entity is everyone from Mother Teresa to Adolph Hitler, so how could they go to hell?”

“But then if there is no hell,” the radio host countered, “how can there be a heaven?”

“There really isn’t,” the authority answered. “I use the term, because culture demands it. It has become part of the group mind, zeitgeist, and I’m just trying to stay on that wavelength.

“So then if there is not heaven or hell,” the host asked, “what is there?”

“Another dimension of reality,” the authority answered. “What you have to remember is that all we know is…

“Number 11, get Wal-Mart North,” the cab radio blared, as #11 turned down the talk show volume to hear the call.

“Okay,” Dora said, as she wrote it down on her trip sheet.

“Do you have a cigarette?” The voice startled #11, so that she jumped and let out a stifled scream. “I’m sorry,” the voice, that was connected to a homeless man, whose age was probably somewhere between 40 & 60 years old said. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but do you have a cigarette?”

“No!” Dora emphatically said, “I don’t smoke.”

“Are you a Christian?” The homeless man asked.

After waiting a minute, #11 answered with a “yes.”

The homeless man then held out his hand with something in it and said, “here, take this for the Lord’s work.” Then he put something in Dora’s hand.

When she looked at the piece of paper in her hand she realized that it was a hundred dollar bill, and held it up to the dome light to check for the water mark. “This is a hundred dollar bill,” she said, as she put it in her shirt pocket.

“Yes it is,” the homeless man said, “and I want you to use it for the Lord’s work, because the end is coming soon. Jesus Christ will be returning to Earth to take his followers with him, after he smites his enemies and reigns in the new Jerusalem for a thousand years. Then he turned and began to walk off.

“Wait,” Dora called, “do you need a ride?”

“Yes,” the homeless man said, “I need to go to Wal-Mart on Lancaster to get some apple juice.

“Then hop in,” she told him.

After he got in and they started to drive, the homeless man told Dora that his name was Larry and that he was a born again Christian, although he smoked 10 joints one time with Abbie Hoffman, and that Mario Savio had been a personal friend of his.

“The next stage in Christian marketing will be Christian Pornographic stores,” Larry told her. “Every church can open its own pornography store. Imagine, pornography that features only born again, married porn stars, having sex with their spouses. Then there could be dildos shaped like a cross and frankincense and myrrh scented body oil. Imagine a video or Jesus having sex with Mary Magdalene in heaven or Salomé having sex with John the Baptist just before he was decapitated.”

Then he changed the subject and began talking about how Jews controlled the world, and that he was a Jew, so he should know. “I used to know Henry Kissenger very well and talked to him about some of the policies that he helped create, back in the early 1970’s. He was a very smart man, but was very evil.”

“Obama is a great man, and I have the deepest respect for him,” Larry said. “Have you read his book, ‘Dreams From My Father’?” He asked and then went on to explain that it was the story of his Kenyan father. The book begins with him living in New York…” Larry wandered from one subject to another as we drove down the deserted streets, towards Walmart.

“…The Sahara desert was where the garden of Eden was. After God drove Adam and Eve out he set an angel at the entrance with a flaming sword, to block anyone from going back in, after He banished them. The angel represents the sun, and how after drought created the desert, the garden of Eden became a myth.”’

Larry apologized for talking so much, but he said that he had a mental disorder that caused him to talk continuously, so it was okay to ignore him. Then he offered #11 another hundred dollars, but Dora refused to put out her hand to take it, so he finally put it away, as they pulled up to the grocery door, where her next passenger was standing with a shopping cart full of groceries. Larry got out and started talking to the man and asked him for a cigarette, but he told him that he didn’t smoke, and asked #11 if she was picking him up.

“Yes,” #11 told him, as Larry turned back to her and asked for her Yellow Cab hat, to which she refused.

“I would like some kind of a souvenir from our encounter together,” Larry said.

Dora thought a minute and then popped the trunk, and opened up her back pack find a Yellow Cab ball point pen, which she handed him. After he thanked her, and walked away, she turned to the elderly man who looked to be in his 80’s with a shopping cart full of groceries. On the drive to his apartment he ranted about the way that people whined about the bad economy, when they didn’t know what deprivation was. “I was born in 1927,” the man said, “ two years before the stock market crash. I grew up during the great depression, so I remember it like it was yesterday. What they call a bad economy today is a joke, compared to back then. There was no welfare system or even social security. People died of starvation. Since then safety nets have been put in place, by the government, so that people are taken care of in a bad economy. Now you have Starbucks and latte stands all over the city, along with tattoo parlors and other unnecessary frivolity, that this spoiled generation considers a need.

After she helped him carry in his groceries and he paid her, #11 gassed up, and headed back to the office, since her 12 hour shift was over.

What Is The Purpose Of Religion?

2010-07-07T22:47:00.001-07:00

John Fro is an area celebrity, who plays at the Salem venues like the Triangle, The Big Kahuna, The Ike Box and The Space, and other local venues. He was playing this weekend at the Space and #52 must have had a half dozen fares throughout the night coming or going to the show. Number 52 had a special interest in John Fro, since he knew that he was driver #25’s son, and Fro was just his stage last name, from his skateboarder days when he had wild curly hair that looked like an afro. He had 4 albums out, including a rap album called Room 4, a rock album with Nuclear and 2 solo albums. Tonight he was going to be playing solo, to a sold out packed house, for 3 shows, at $5.00 a head.

His fans talked about him like he was the messiah revisited. Number 52 found out that he was one of the best skateboarder’s in Salem, back in the late 1990’s, and was in bands back then, like Sylphid, with Steve Seahorn. The discussions tended to gravitate towards the metaphysical or spiritual, as the night progressed. When #52 picked up the last passenger, from the 3rd show, at nearly 3:00 AM, his shift was nearly over, when his drunken passenger asked, “what is the purpose of religion?”

Trevor didn’t respond immediately, since the question caught him by surprise and catapulted him back to his youth when he was a student at the NUC academy.

“What is the purpose of religion? Superior Entity Zzzyyk rhetorically asked, and then after a long enough silence, for effect, he proceeded to answer his own question. “The purpose of religion is to regulate the evolution of a planet as sentience incubators transform the group mind into the stuff of the over mind. This of course would raise the question, what is the overmind?”

Superior Entity Zzzyyk loved to hear himself talk and would wax eloquent, as the students sat, in polite deference to his irritating harangues, not realizing that he was explaining secrets of the universe that most sentient beings would never have a clue about. Students, he would begin, “The overmind is the aggregate collection of all the individual minds, that were once part of the group mind, prior to their discorporation.”

Then of course would come, the question, “what is the purpose of the overmind?”

To which Zzzyyk answered in his monotone staccato recitation delivered in a robotic manner. “The purpose of the overmind is to take its place as one of the infinite number of parts that make up the whole that never was , but always will be.”

Superior Entity Zzzyyk specialized in the subject of paradox, and founded the 1st Gathering of Skeptical Scoffers. The true nature of the universe and its ultimate purpose was first understood when ultimate entity Qqqwwm went on the first birth expedition to the 3333347th galaxy to observe the birth of an overmind, after the destruction of its host planet. After overmind exploration began, the first mathematical formula was created to explain the purpose of existence.

Once an overmind achieves maturity, it begins to collapse in on itself, and initiates a vortex that absorbs all matter within a diameter of a few billion parsecs. The resulting black hole becomes the Blastula of a new universe, after the cosmic ovum is impregnated. This process takes place billions of times within a universe, until it finally becomes empty of all sentience and takes its place as part of the lifeless mosaic of anti-bara.

After a few minutes of silence #52’s passenger said, “Okay, I understand,” “you don’t want to lose your tip by getting into a religious discussion.”

“No not at all,” #52 said, “I was just pulling my thoughts together, to answer your question, ‘what is the purpose of religion?’ The purpose of religion is to act as a brake in the liberal progress of civilization, at least if you accept Toynbee’s comparison of the evolution of civilization to that of an organism.”

“But that reduces us to mere cells, in that organism,” #52’s fare responded.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Number 52 Asked.

“I’m not sure, but how does God figure into all of this?” He asked.

“That’s another question,” Trevor answered, “but I’ll try to answer it to the best of my ability. God is the organism that you call the universe, and we are the fingers of God and are creating what He requires, while at the same time we do it through googolplex variations in the form of stories that weave themselves into a tapestry that is the universe of our reality. Our stories fulfill a function, whose purpose is to achieve ‘teleo.’”

At this point #52’s mind reached into his passengers mind, who called himself Jim Long, and the connections were made, for “teleo.” Then he imparted the thought that God is a trinity of mother/father/it, because of being asexual in nature. Universes are being reproduced of an infinite number and always have been, yet never were because none of this is happening, except as a story, if you take all of this to its logical conclusion.
By this time they reached their destination, and #52’s passenger paid him, as he called in his clearance and headed back downtown. There were no calls in the South, and he needed to gas up anyway, since his 12 hour shift would be over in less than half an hour.

Reversing The Tower Of Babel

2010-07-05T00:56:00.000-07:00

“Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter 11,” the voice on the radio said. When it’s a slow night or I’m driving without a passenger, sometimes I turn on talk radio or a religious station, just to hear something different. You never know what you’ll pick up on the AM band, after midnight, as stations fade in and out from leaping frequency’s emanating from who knows where. Tonight I had some radio preacher who was doing a study of the story of the “Tower of Babel.”

“Read with me beginning in verse one, ‘And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.’ Then the writer, who was penning God’s word, that most conservative scholars believe was Moses, said that this mass of humanity that was the earth’s civilization at this time journeyed to the East and settled in the ‘land of Shinar,’ in what is today Iraq. It says that they took burned brick made out of straw and mud to build a city called Babylon, and then erected a tower in the center, that was supposed to reach to heaven. They had plans to become something great and God was going to help them do it. They were erecting a ziggurat, which was an observatory for studying the stars. They figured out the first yearly calendar and began to make astronomical calculations that would have advanced them faster than their philosophical base had support for. Imagine if they had discovered iron and steel and created the internal combustion engine. Before you know it they would be building colonies on the moon, and polluting the solar system with their shallow theology, so in order to slow things down, until a more sophisticated theology and philosophy could be developed over the period of a few millennium through wars, pestilences, famines and other character shaping episodes could create a collective consciousness that is worthy of being controlled by the overmind.”

“So it says that the Lord said, ‘let us go down and ‘confound their language,’ and so He did, along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. God speaks in the plural, because the Holy Trinity is being established at this early point, because He knows that non believing anti-trinitarians, like those heretics the Jehovah’s Witnesses will try to say that the Bible doesn’t support the trinity. They try to use Tertullian’s treatise on the trinity, from the second century, as the beginning of trinitarianism, but they fail to realize that the Bible was Tertullian’s source for information about the trinity. Just because Tertullian believed that Montanus was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and followed him out into the desert to wait for Christ’s second coming, where he was massacred by Roman soldiers along with the rest of the heretics, doesn’t mean that his writings are just as crazy as he was.”

“My point is this,” he said and continued, “God created all those different languages to keep people out of communication with each other, but now, the computer reverses that act. How do we deal with this morally? After all what is the brain of a desk top computer called? ‘A tower!’ And what is this tower made of? Plastic, whose early forms was called Bakelite. The bricks that the original tower of Babel was constructed with were burned or baked bricks made out of clay and straw. Now doesn’t baked bricks sound like Bakelite? I believe that in His infinite wisdom, the God of the universe caused the word bake to enter into the vocabulary of both events, for the purpose of linking them together.”

“You can buy computer programs that allow you to translate one language into another, and blog sites like this one offer the opportunity to change the language to any of a number, depending on the readers preference. What will happen when every person on the earth is able to communicate with others and exchange ideas, until our technological advancements give us the capability to create a new universe. Then what do we do? Do we play God, or do we commit suicide. I choose the former, since I believe that God wouldn’t allow us to play God, unless He wanted us to. Maybe we will destroy reality and create hell, but then again we may create heaven, or we may just create a new universe that we can be the God of…

“Number 25, they need 2 vans at the St. Paul Rodeo,” Dotty, the dispatcher said, “and I’m sending you and #37 to pick up 2 parties, that I already have credit cards run for. When you pick them up make a copy of their credit card with your slider and I’ll give you the authorization number. Since neither of us knew how to get to St. Paul Dotty told us to head up Wallace Road, in West Salem, until we saw signs for St. Paul. We did so and after we reached Dayton, #37’s GPS said that we should be on the East side of the river. Then Dotty said that we should have gone up River Road in Keizer on the East side of the river instead. So now we had to drive North to a bridge to cross over, since the Wheatland ferry quit running at 9:00 PM, and it was nearly 2:30 AM. I was running low on gas, so we had to stop and fill up.

By the time that we finally arrived at the fairgrounds the party of Chris, that I was supposed to pick up was still there, but #37’s group was nowhere to be found. So I ran his credit card on the slider and headed back to Salem. They lived in Keizer, and we made it there in 20 minutes. When we were back at the yard vacuuming out our cabs, #37 said that he could choke Dotty for getting us lost, and wasting so much time for nothing, since he would not get paid, since he never found his party.

Born On The 4th Of July

2010-07-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

I was born on July 4, 1947 just like Ron Kovic, but when I was drafted, they sent me to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma for 2 years, instead of Viet Nam. Lucky for me, some say, but I didn’t care. I was young and stupid, and came from a culture that accepted war as a way of life, and doing your duty by fighting and possibly dying for your country was an accepted part of the picture. My father’s father was a Cossack drafted into the Czars Army before immigrating to America in 1912, and my father was drafted into the Army and fought the Japanese in the South Pacific in World War II, so why shouldn’t I go fight the Viet Cong Commies in South East Asia?

However, as I said, that didn’t happen, and then while I was in the Army the entire country went through a revolution and the society that I returned to, two years later was a different one than the one I left. No longer were people passively accepting that their sons, brothers and husbands go die for their country, but mass protests were happening, everywhere, not just in a few hotbeds. The crux of the protests rested on the draft, which no longer exists, now we have an all volunteer army.

In this present stage of humanities evolution, you need armies for the violent and overly exuberant among us to exhaust their energy, until they either get killed or tired of it, make a career of it or come back to their home society and join the police force or CIA. This July 4th weekend was busy, so I didn’t get a chance to much editing done on my book about the history of Contemporary Christian Music, that I just purchased a laptop notebook computer for.

I picked up the one legged woman in the wheelchair, who has a ramp made of 2 – 2x8 planks, that she once had me get her up. That was a dangerous maneuver and I told her that I couldn’t do it again for both her and my safety. This time she wanted to go to Walmart and just got out of the theater, where she saw the new movie in the “Twilight” series, “Eclipse.”

She talked about how the vampires were good, and was disappointed with the climactic battle scene. Then she switched over the return of Jesus, and began telling me that a lot of people believe that Jesus is coming back again soon.

“When do you think that the second coming will be?” My passenger asked.

I thought of the time that David Bergman, of the “Firesign Theater” told me that he didn’t believe in the first coming, and then I said, “well the Bible says that no man will know the day or hour,” I answered her.

“Yeah but when Jesus comes back, he’s going to make everything right and solve all the world’s problems and reign for a thousand years,” She said.

“But first there has to be the battle of Armageddon,” I told her. “The entire world will meet on a plain in Israel where they will have a massive battle, where the blood will flow like a river, and Jesus will come back with all the saints and kill the anti-Christ and his armies.”

After I dropped her off I picked up a guy at the Point after that wanted to smoke a cigarette in my non smoking cab, and when I told him no, he told me that I was a jerk for not letting him smoke. He complained so much that I began to get angry and was debating about pulling over and telling him to get out when I decided to just go with the flow. He had been difficult from the beginning by not wanting to give me his address, and finally just making one up, that I realized later. We had to drive in 3 different driveways before we finally found the right one. I was wondering whether he was as drunk and confused as he acted or if he was just trying to push my buttons, but I kept my cool. When I finally pulled up to his apartment he paid me and gave me a $5.00 tip for all the trouble he caused.

I picked up a regular from “All Stars” and drove him to his house, while we talked about Islamic Jihadist’s and insults that warranted the death sentence. Then he began to compare radical Islam with Communism, because it was more of an ideology rather that a faith inspired spiritual path. “We have to fight them the same way that we did the Commies,” he told me. Hollywood needs to start making movies about the Islamic Jihadist’s taking over the USA and forcing everyone to become a Muslim. The movie would have mass executions of people of other religious persuasions who refused to convert. This would freak people out and we would have mass paranoia about Islam.”

“Yeah, but is that something that would be good?” I asked. “It would divide the country and we have to assimilate and integrate all religions in order to create homogeneity.”

“That sounds like heresy to me,” my passenger countered. The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. We could blanket the Muslim areas with posters of Mohammed having sex with a goat, and drive them crazy.”

“What about that hippie guy, who was detained in Pakistan for wanting to kill Osama Bin Laden?” I asked him.

“That man is a real patriot,” my passenger said. “We need more like him. Imagine if people like that started to pop up all over. What to you think that Al Jezirah would say. Osama would be shitting in his pants, if he’s not already dead. They’ll never tell us if he does die. Heck he could have gotten killed when they first invaded Afghanistan. They won’t tell us, because then we can’t have the satisfaction of saying that we killed the mother fucker that was responsible for 9/11.

Soldiers And A Contractor

2010-07-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

“A soldier is anyone who ever put on a uniform and was willing to fight and die for an idea or flag. They didn’t even have to see battle or blood, but they had to wear the uniform and salute the flag. The point is, they would go to wherever they were ordered to go, even if it meant that they might never come back. But at the same time they could just be sitting in a barracks somewhere waiting for their enlistment to be over so they could go home to their civilian lives,” my passenger explained.

He told me that he spent 10 months in Iraq, stationed in the city of Bagdad, working in supply. “Supply is the best,” he continued, “you have officers that come to you begging for some item that just came in, but if their paperwork isn’t in order, you have to tell them no.”

“As long as it doesn’t come back to bite you,” I told him.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“As long as one of those officers can’t hold up or change your orders, down the line, based on you not doing what they wanted,” I told him.

“Oh no, that could never happen,” he told me.

I then proceeded to tell him about what happened to me, when I was in the army, after I was drafted, back in the summer of 1966, when I was 19 years old, before I ever heard of war protests, in the Greater Detroit area, where I lived. I became the company armorer, for the 593rd Engineering Company, stationed at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. In the summer of 1967, while the “Summer Of Love” was taking place, and right before Detroit and Newark created the summer of “Burn Baby Burn,” I was back home on leave, and the 593rd was on its yearly war game maneuvers. A returning Viet Nam veteran, who survived 13 months in the Nam, had just checked in with me, before I left the arms room to my assistant, while I went home on leave.

While I was home on leave, the returning Viet Nam veteran was killed on the maneuvers, when live ammo was somehow mixed with the blank’s, that his convoy truck was sprayed with. He was the only fatality. At the same time there was a tear gas test, and everyone had to put on their protective mask. My company commander had donated his personal protective mask to the company compliment, in order to bring it up to full compliment for the IG inspection. One of the stipulations was that he would be issued his personal protective mask, which had special eye glass inserts, so Captain Bowman could still have 20/20 vision.

I didn’t inform my assistant to hold out Captain Bowman’s gas mask, so he gave it to someone as a spare, but failed to record their name. The mask was found, but the glasses never were. So when I returned to my unit after leave, I was first threatened with an ultimatum about the glasses being found or my ass would be grass, and then a month later I was transferred from the 593rd, where I had it made, as the company armorer, to the 9th FA Missile Gp., where they only had 5 – 45 caliber Colt pistols.

“That’s too bad,” he told me.

“Not really,” I said, “the unit that I was transferred to ended up transforming my life and changing the entire direction of my life.”

After I dropped him off at his destination, I picked up another dozen fares, until it was around 1:00 AM, when I picked up an 85 year old man at the emergency room that was going home. He had been given morphine, when he first arrived, for intense pain from a lacerated artery in his arm, but it was wearing down by the time that I picked him up and he was very talkative as I drove him home on North Lancaster, at a mobile trailer park.

“I was only 19 years old on D-Day in 1944,” my passenger said, “but I came ashore in an area that wasn’t that well guarded, so most of my unit made it on the beach. The hard part was trying to advance up the hill that led from the beach. It had pill boxes with machine guns strafing the hillside, that we had orders to take out. I was in an infantry rifle platoon, and my squad was deployed to take out a pill box. I started moving out toward the target, and hit the dirt, as I began to low crawl towards it. When I thought that I had a clear shot, I squeezed off a round and was sure that I hit my target. Before I could decide whether to duck or move in for the kill, the machine guns began firing again, as it hit me in the chest. Fortunately, it missed my lung, didn’t break any major bones and passed right through me without much damage. I fell down and laid there for 2 days until the pill box was finally taken.

I have a friend named Steve, who I used to weight lift with, when we were training for power lifting meets with Doyle Kennady, back in the 1980’s, that just shipped out to Iraq, as a contractor, driving fuel trucks. He’s in his early fifty’s and was driving fuel trucks for helicopters fighting fires, since the late 1990’s, after he did a couple of stints in the army. I just got this email from his wife the other day.
Steve in not in Baghdad as planned. He is now in Khurkuq (?) Iraq. He will
be driving a fuel truck and fueling, of all things, helicopters for the
military. KBR employees will be taking this job over from the military. He
is not too impressed with this company, but he has said some of the same
things about his past employers also. He has committed to one year and will
give KBR his all for that one year. Miss him already. At least when he was
working for Erickson-Aircrane, I would be able to visit him if he was
stationed close to home. I will try to keep everyone informed as to what he
is doing when I hear from him. Looks like that might be only on the
weekends. He called me at 10:20 AM this morning and told me it was 7:20 PM
there in Iraq.

Edith