I had left Phoenix on a hot late July day in the summer of 1999. It had been 115 degrees.
I had called my mom to check in and inform her that the cab company had laid me off.
They apparently used the doldrums of the slow summer tourist season to pare down their crew of drivers and to basically have less cabs on the road competing for the same fares.
This was like a plum for those drivers whom they were supporting in this way, so that they could maintain their status, support their families etc. through this time of year when hardly any tourists show up to swelter in the 113 degree air, and to try to hike up camelback mountain or ride horses through Hollywood inspired fake settings of corrals, and take cabs to and fro...
For the driver who came out of a cave in South Mountain, well, there was that time when he was picking up passengers with a sleeping young lady in the passenger seat.
Technically, when you are renting a cab, you own the thing. You can tell the driver to go left or right or straight, you can load your purchases from Lowe's into its trunk and then tell the driver to go left.
And it is kind of in the fine print somewhere that the car should be yours solely to occupy.
This presents itself more in the case of when you are working downtown and already have a passenger who is en-route to wherever and you get a call about someone wanting to, say, go to the airport, which is in the same direction as where you are going and is a huge fare, say, 65 dollars, and you have to reject the fare because you already have a passenger, who owns the cab.
But, sensing your plight, your passenger, who might be of a good nature, and maybe even drunk, might tell you that he has no objection to you picking up a person who wants to go to the airport and making a good chunk of money, provided that the person has no objection to riding part of the way with a person of good nature and maybe even drunk also in the cab.
But, in my case, I had had at least one complaint about the beautiful 16 year old "Erica" slumbering away in my passenger seat.
It wasn't the twenty something guy who had made a sound as if he had just bitten into a caramel upon the sight of her who had lodged the complaint, I am guessing.
It was 113 degrees outside.
"I'm letting her get some sleep, she was stuck outside," I would say something like.
And, there was the complaint from the bank where I had walked into to pick up a fare, and had lost my cool and cussed after learning that whomever it was had gotten a ride, or something.
It wasn't their problem that I was working a cab in July in Phoenix and that I had driven far enough to the bank to have cut into the profit from any fare I might have gotten out of the bank, and that I was sleep deprived because even in my cave the daytime temperatures were in the mid nineties making any sleep gotten feel somehow not effective enough, and that I was further stretching myself in trying to support a beautiful girl who went by the name of Erica.
And so, I had cussed out nobody in particular at the bank and probably deserved to be one of the ones laid off so that the remaining drivers could make a living and support their families...
So, I was on the phone with my mom talking about that when she mentioned that I sounded very distant and "out of it" and, after I explained that the only way I could get any sleep in Phoenix in July was to leave my cab running with the air conditioner cranked and get sleep that way, which was not at a bad rate; the cost of the gas to keep a Crown Victoria idling with the AC cranked, times eight hours...maybe about 13 dollars in gas for a night's sleep in the back seat of a cab.
But then, that left only 4 hours on the lease of the cab to make at least the 57 dollars just to possess it, maybe just so you could sleep in it the following "night."
And, when you have the beautiful Erica knocking at the passenger window, her having divined your location at the top of Dobbin's Peak in the parking lot, then you might as well add the cost of a can of Dr. Pepper with a cup of ice to your running expenses...
Mom implored me to "get out of there" before I was made irretrievably goofy by the heat. She grew up in Vermont.
So, to the Greyhound station I went, and was soon on a bus headed for Flagstaff, Arizona, where I spent the first night shivering in air 60 degrees colder than what was in Phoenix.
I wound up going back to the bus station to sleep, pretending that I was waiting for a bus in the morning, and buying a ticket for Las Vegas to prove it, after the security guy needed to see it to allow me to sleep there.
I actually had a light jacket, but it did hardly anything to keep me warm in the 52 degree air.
I had called my mom to check in and inform her that the cab company had laid me off.
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| Welcome To Flagstaff, Hope You Brought A Jacket... |
This was like a plum for those drivers whom they were supporting in this way, so that they could maintain their status, support their families etc. through this time of year when hardly any tourists show up to swelter in the 113 degree air, and to try to hike up camelback mountain or ride horses through Hollywood inspired fake settings of corrals, and take cabs to and fro...
For the driver who came out of a cave in South Mountain, well, there was that time when he was picking up passengers with a sleeping young lady in the passenger seat.
Technically, when you are renting a cab, you own the thing. You can tell the driver to go left or right or straight, you can load your purchases from Lowe's into its trunk and then tell the driver to go left.
And it is kind of in the fine print somewhere that the car should be yours solely to occupy.
This presents itself more in the case of when you are working downtown and already have a passenger who is en-route to wherever and you get a call about someone wanting to, say, go to the airport, which is in the same direction as where you are going and is a huge fare, say, 65 dollars, and you have to reject the fare because you already have a passenger, who owns the cab.
But, sensing your plight, your passenger, who might be of a good nature, and maybe even drunk, might tell you that he has no objection to you picking up a person who wants to go to the airport and making a good chunk of money, provided that the person has no objection to riding part of the way with a person of good nature and maybe even drunk also in the cab.
But, in my case, I had had at least one complaint about the beautiful 16 year old "Erica" slumbering away in my passenger seat.
It wasn't the twenty something guy who had made a sound as if he had just bitten into a caramel upon the sight of her who had lodged the complaint, I am guessing.
It was 113 degrees outside.
"I'm letting her get some sleep, she was stuck outside," I would say something like.
And, there was the complaint from the bank where I had walked into to pick up a fare, and had lost my cool and cussed after learning that whomever it was had gotten a ride, or something.
It wasn't their problem that I was working a cab in July in Phoenix and that I had driven far enough to the bank to have cut into the profit from any fare I might have gotten out of the bank, and that I was sleep deprived because even in my cave the daytime temperatures were in the mid nineties making any sleep gotten feel somehow not effective enough, and that I was further stretching myself in trying to support a beautiful girl who went by the name of Erica.
And so, I had cussed out nobody in particular at the bank and probably deserved to be one of the ones laid off so that the remaining drivers could make a living and support their families...
So, I was on the phone with my mom talking about that when she mentioned that I sounded very distant and "out of it" and, after I explained that the only way I could get any sleep in Phoenix in July was to leave my cab running with the air conditioner cranked and get sleep that way, which was not at a bad rate; the cost of the gas to keep a Crown Victoria idling with the AC cranked, times eight hours...maybe about 13 dollars in gas for a night's sleep in the back seat of a cab.
But then, that left only 4 hours on the lease of the cab to make at least the 57 dollars just to possess it, maybe just so you could sleep in it the following "night."
And, when you have the beautiful Erica knocking at the passenger window, her having divined your location at the top of Dobbin's Peak in the parking lot, then you might as well add the cost of a can of Dr. Pepper with a cup of ice to your running expenses...
Mom implored me to "get out of there" before I was made irretrievably goofy by the heat. She grew up in Vermont.
So, to the Greyhound station I went, and was soon on a bus headed for Flagstaff, Arizona, where I spent the first night shivering in air 60 degrees colder than what was in Phoenix.
I wound up going back to the bus station to sleep, pretending that I was waiting for a bus in the morning, and buying a ticket for Las Vegas to prove it, after the security guy needed to see it to allow me to sleep there.
I actually had a light jacket, but it did hardly anything to keep me warm in the 52 degree air.
Phoenix is a motherfucker...sounds like I was there around the same time as you. I was working construction in that heat, no ac in my rig either. That heat makes people crazy mean, you did good getting the fuck out.
ReplyDeleteCool cave dwelling though, with a rattlesnake buddy to boot!
I actually was in Phoenix about that time and agree, the heat makes people nuts, and no one wants to be there during the summer.
ReplyDelete