The Story of "The Thing."

In the fall of 1995, I was driving a Yellow Cab in Jacksonville, Florida.

It had been a very easy job to get. The "Drivers Wanted" sign in front of their sprawling property, that looked like equal parts taxi company and Crown Victoria junkyard, wasn't kidding.

3 of their drivers had recently been murdered, when I came along and got hired on the spot.

The story was that there was some new gang in town that had an initiation requirement that the prospective member have to murder someone in order to pass muster.

I guess the cowardly way that some of them hired a cab to bring them to the east side of the city, where there was nothing but a dock by the river, and then shot the drivers in the back of their heads, was not held against the new members "credibility."

That was the story from the Yellow cab people, at least. Not to worry, it's not generally a dangerous job, it's just that this gang is making it look so...

But, my mission was to drive the hell out of a cab until I had enough money to buy any kind of little 4 cylinder car, in order to go back to the relative sanity of delivering pizza, and possibly living in that car until the next goal of finding a place was realized.

I had a car in early 1995, before I had gone to jail for 28 days for growing marijuana plants on federal land. But that car had been stolen by the very person whom I had called from the jail to ask if he would go and retrieve it from the parking lot where it, and I had been sitting, when I got arrested.

I knew that the thing would be towed and impounded at one of several junkyards that contracted with the police -junkyards where the impounded vehicles, very frequently had had their stereo systems stolen out of them, somewhere between the spot where the driver was arrested and the junkyard -but not within the junkyard- despite the little pieces of audio wire laying right around where the vehicle is sitting in the junkyard. "You can file a police report..." type of thing.

So, I had taken a chance on calling my roommates at the time, after having signed paperwork to "release" my car keys to them, from out of the property that I had had on me when arrested.

They stole the thing, and sold it for cash to a neighbor, who was about to leave Florida (probably due to a warrant for him being issued) and head back to Rhode Island, where he, and his wife and 2 young kids, had come from. A car would be very helpful to him, once he got there.

These were my roommates, and friends (who had extended the invitation to me to live with them while I checked out Jacksonville, Florida and,"Who knows; you might like it here and decide to get a job and stay!" And if there is any viable defense for their actions, it might be that the "normal" penalty for cultivating marijuana on federal property started somewhere around 3 years and increased from there, depending upon the weight of the confiscated bud, and my friends could have conceivably thought that I was going to be gone for a long, long time, so, why not sell my car for cash to someone; it would mean a weekend, or maybe two of partying; beer, weed, barbecue pork, maybe a little bit of cocaine; hell yeah, sell the car!

So, my friends really might have thought that I would be locked up for a long time, and that my car would sit in their driveway the whole time, and probably wouldn't even start by the time I returned from prison.

But the very harshness of those penalties was what caused the state to not want to prosecute me for what had amounted to a half dozen one foot high plants, that I had scattered along a river bank in the Jennings State Forest, where I jogged along the sand roads frequently.

itself, even if there are scraps of audio wire laying about on the ground right around where the impounded car sat, waiting for its owner to get out of jail.

But, in the case of myself, I benefited from the fact that the charge of cultivating marijuana on federal property entailed a lengthy

I had a warrant put out on me after it was discovered that I was growing pot in the Jennings State Forest, which was right down the street from the house where I lived with the very guy and his family.

They had been my friends in Massachusetts, who had moved to Florida after the very same guy had slipped and fallen on some ice in the apartment complex where we lived, and then had enlisted the help of a very appropriately tagged "slip and fall" attorney, and had sued the place, to the tune of $25,000 dollars.

The same guy (who is a Facebook friend of mine, now 30 years later, and probably thinks that I have no idea to this day who stole my car, back in 1995, but I do) also had another accident, where he cut one of his fingers off, using a piece of equipment at the factory where he worked.

As he told that story, the business, which manufactured caskets, by the way, had just hired a new employee whom this guy was training to run this particular machine which chopped pieces of velvet into sections that were used to line the caskets.

He was in the middle of explaining to the guy how important it was to be very careful not to put his fingers too close to the part that did the actual cutting of the velvet.

"You want to be really careful not to put your fingers too close to the-" and then; whomp! off came the ring finger on this guy's right hand, serving as a very persuasive visual representation of what might happen should the new guy not heed his advice.

"The new guy quit right then and there," said the guy, whose name I am resisting mentioning. Although I might just do a "find and replace" of every instance of "this guy" and replace it with "Jesse" after I'm done with this story.

That particular episode netted him another $75,000 dollars.

He then decided to leave the state of Massachusetts, where lawsuits were the bread and butter of so many people, back in the 1980's, with people seeing that a jar of mayonnaise, maybe, had broken upon the floor of a major chain supermarket and then faking an accident, filing a lawsuit, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe they even had a partner intentionally drop the jar on the floor, as part of a tried and true system for getting over on the system.

It's amusing that the far left leaning Jean Broughey Dean, who has recently unfriended me on Facebook lives in that "bleeding heart liberal" state.

The term "welfare queen" may as well have originated there.

I lived in the same apartment complex as Jesse, and the apartment above me was inhabited by one Puerto Rican lady who had something like 11 children by about 5 different fathers, was married to none of them, and was collecting about $8,500 per month for her troubles.

Add to that the boyfriends who periodically came to stay with her, with payments of food and money and gifts being part of the deal -a lot of these guys with more of a sexual interest in her children, who ranged in age from infant to up to around 15- and this lady was doing pretty well, considering her apartment was free to her, as a single mom, struggling to raise a family.

Once her girls got to be old enough to have children of their own (12, or 13) then they siezed the opportunity to go out on their own, or to add their own kids to the role call of dependents for the mother.

The lady may just have been an illegal immigrant on top of it all.

She drove a Mercedes.

She would kick guys out if they ran out of money. Money that they had gotten for either slipping and falling, or after suffering some similar mis-fortune.

But they would have had a good run of staying in the apartment above me and having sex with the ladies children before it was time for them to get out there and slip and fall again.

This was the culture. Massachusetts was a very "liberal" state.

After The Donald was elected, I kind of smiled to myself at the thought of the Lejti's of the world (as that was her name, as phonetically close as I can get it) getting their just dues, for having had such a free ride and having screwed the system over so shamelessly for so many years. Her, and who knows how many other thousands of people.

While the U.S. born citizen paid the tab through higher tax rates, higher insurance rates and a higher instance of being victimized by her morally depraved children, which is a whole other slant, beyond the scope of this post.

It sure was a good opportunity for a pedophile to have sex with a 13 year old Puerto Rican prostitute though. Massachusetts was a haven for them. The guy wouldn't even need to wear a condom because there was no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy for these children of illegal immigrants, bend upon taking advantage of "the system" for all it was worth.

So, I sarcastically say that it is a shame that Trump is trying to build a wall to keep the Lettie's of the world out of our country (did I say "our?" I'm sorry; I didn't mean to sound white-ly supreme) and to deport the likes of Lettie. And to keep the 13 year old hooker offspring of the Lettie's of the world separated from their Lettie's in detention camps where they might be at risk of being raped, but not making a dime off it. That is just cruel...

Oh, but this is a story about "The Thing," and I have digressed.

So, my car had been stolen by my "friend," whose family I was staying with, in Florida, after they had invited me to move there, after I had called them to see how they were doing.

They were doing alright. They had bought a house, after putting 7 thousand dollars down on it.

That was 7 thousand dollars that was left out of the 100 thousand that Jesse had gotten in insurance settlements.

The couple had gone to Florida and, I guess while they were shopping for a house had gone through a lot of money, visiting Disneyland, getting a makeover for the wife, Donna, and using about 200 dollars a day in cocaine, to celebrate the blessing of money that had come into their lives.

After weeks of partying and champagne and caviar, it was time for them to get serious, and think about the future, and put 7 thousand dollars down on a $50,000 dollar property -a house, which kind of resembled a trailer without wheels, on a plot of land which was just one foot above being swampland; which had the scrub pines cleared off of it, and was 30 miles outside of Jacksonville.

There, they had begun their lives.

Then, I had called from Massachusetts.

I was living in my car.

And, though I had parents who were from a different generation; like the one that Archie Bunker sang "Didn't need no welfare state; everybody pulled his weight" about, and they had sent me to private schools at a great cost to them; I just hadn't gotten the full memo -maybe my folks were too politically correct to spell it out for me, but I just hadn't stayed the course.

I hadn't gotten a degree in chemistry or law and then followed through and landed a job with a good company; the "full time job; with benefits" that my father preached about, unless I had some other stroke of genius and thought I could do better.

But, I had this dream of being an artist and a musician and dwelling in a world that I would be in, but not of. Maybe I should have become a priest.

But, I packed up my station wagon on a cold November day in 1993, and headed south, to go live with my friends, who had moved out of Massachusetts after having successfully worked the slip and fall game in that most liberal of states.

OK, back to "the thing."

...driving a cab in the fall of 1995.

My car had been stolen by a guy who had been letting me live in his house, 29 miles outside of Jacksonville, and so, after I got out of jail, after serving 28 days for growing marijuana in the Jennings State Forest -an offense that could have been handed over to the federal court, with a lengthy prison sentence imposed, but wasn't, due to the very small amount of plant matter involved- I learned that the car had not been recovered by my friends and secured in their driveway, but had rather been sold by them. The guy wasn't a good liar.

Jesse, as that was his name, had indeed driven it to the house, after I had released the keys to it, out of my "property" that was being kept at the jail i.e. everything in my pockets upon being arrested that I wasn't allowed to have in my cell (not much use for a set of car keys in cell block C) but, after having gotten it to the house, and since he and Donna already had a car; they sold it to someone, most likely because the title to it was in the glove box because I had recently bought it; and really had no other place to store the thing, being "on the run" from the warrant for cultivating marijuana on federal property, and living in the thing; while I scrambled to acquire an ID in another name, so I could slip back into society.

I just wasn't into the slip and fall game and I certainly didn't want to work at some job which was high paying on the surface but which was brought back to earth by the high cost of living entailed by supporting the Lettie's that flocked there to have their children and become parasites.

offering me a room to rent rather cheaply.

"Who knows, you might like it here and want to get a job and stay," Jesse had said over the phone; when I called to see how they were doing.

I wasn't doing well in Massachusetts. Taxes were so high (for some reason) that the state had picked up the nickname "Taxachusetts" as well as insurance rates (for some reason) and rents (because those who paid them had to pick up the slack for all those on welfare) were so high, that it really wasn't a good state for a white man to live in, unless he had a college degree in chemistry or computer science. Plus, it got very cold in the winter.

But it was a Democrat state; probably the most Democrat of all fifty of them.

A white man, born there needed

with access to their pretty daughters, one of which was 12 and the other 7, with neither being the offspring of my friend; the one who stole my car.

and head back to the place of his birth, which was Florida.

He had come into enough money at that point to buy himself out of whatever trouble had caused him to flee the sunshine state and move up north in the first place; probably a lot of child support payments in arrears, and possibly some monetary restitution for whatever his other sins had brought upon him.

I guess it seemed like chump change to a man who had become enriched by over a hundred grand, in one fell swoop and another

It had been really easy to get a job driving a Yellow Cab, because 3 of their drivers had recently been murdered; part of some gang's initiation rite, is what the gossip was...

But, I was working in the middle to upper class neighborhoods, so I never picked up a fare in the ghetto and dropped them off along the docks of the east side, where the 3 drivers had been found.
Actually one of them survived and had severe brain damage as a result of his encounter; something that prompted the other drivers to comment upon how the company carried no kind of insurance against such a thing, and how the guy was shit-out-of-luck and at the mercy of whatever kind of health care is available to the poor huddled masses, in the greatest country in the world...

There were times when I picked up a fare in the nice neighborhoods, and transported them to the east side. But, after having conversed with me along the ride and determined that I was 
, which I also slept in, having strategic locations at all four corners of that largest city in the nation. One by the ocean, one by the zoo, another one , which is the largest in the nation; edging Phoenix, Arizona out, I believe.

It had been very easy to get a job working for Yellow Cab because 3 of their drivers had recently been murdered in the city. Supposedly there was a gang in the city that had, as one of its qualifications for membership, the requirement that the applicant have killed someone.
by whom they suspected were gang hopefuls, who were using the situation in order to graduate from their initiation process.  A particular gang required that

I would be sitting in my Yellow Cab cab, in the parking lot of Mandarin Trace apartments.
I delivered pizza out of the Mandarin Dominos after I had first came to Florida in late 1993, and it was only after some misfortune had befallen me that I would fall back upon the next best resource (behind the car) that I had, which was a valid license, and would drive a cab.
But, cab driving can be a dangerous job, but this is to a large degree a result of cab drivers trying to be all things to all people and working in zones in which they are like a shark out of water, so to speak.
There are areas where, a heroin addict, for example will have on his short list of where to get money when he was feeling sick and just couldn't take it any more, of, just call a cab, and rob the driver. A guy wouldn't want to lease a cab in Jacksonville, and then just work the entire city. The cab drivers who would not have to worry about this guy robbing him would be the ones who worked that "zone" regularly, and this would almost certainly be because that is where they lived, when not driving a cab. There would be few white drivers who would want to work certain all black zones, these would be like the Jim Carey's of cab drivers; white guys who qualified as the one white guy that the blacks had a stomach for, in the name of "equality," or something.
These guys would be packing heat, though, and it would be known that they were armed, etc.
I, on the other hand, would be sitting in Mandarin, which was a white middle class area, where the houses were big, and the inhabitants of which seemed to shrug off their mortgage payments, then go about adorning their places with expensive flags and lawn ornaments.
Many of the houses had boats sitting under canvas in the driveway, and, although I have come to see this as being endemic to a class of people that I was raised among and, as such, it is lamentable; they would order a lot of pizza and other foods to be delivered to their homes. They were the 10%, who made enough money to feel that throwing it around (read: flushing it down the toilet) was the way to go.
And so, paying $16.83 for an order of food which cost Dominos $2.83 in ingredients to make, just so they wouldn't have to do anything except wait for the guy to come and give him the money, was common in Mandarin.
Since I had delivered pizza in the same area, any call for a cab which came in for that zone would be from an address that I could invariably find before any other cab driver, especially one who had to glance at a map before heading to pick up a fare.
People would call all three of the cab companies, knowing that they were reducing their waiting time to the lowest denominator of whichever one gets there first (the other two cab drivers would be informed, probably by a house mate's stepping outside and doing the 'cutting the throat' sign, as a way of communicating: "He already left and/or we no longer need a cab because a friend just called who has a car and said he would take us, type of thing) and so, having the map firmly etched in my head from pizza delivery, I was in a good strategic location for flagging down any calls from Mandarin, and providing the people with good service. The white, middle class people, of course.

People in Mandarin, who, like myself, were there because they couldn't deal with the lifestyle of what was downtown, found in me a link to that existence, which turned into things like, my bringing the son of a wealthy couple who were out of town for the weekend, down the the corner of 3rd and Duval Streets to score crack, so he could return to the mansion and blaze away.
These people were, self admittedly, too socially in-adept to go down to the hood and "deal with a nigga, one on one" trying to get a fair deal on some dope, when everything from their haircut, to their brand of pull-over sweater screams: "If you take my money, I will just go get some more from the bank; I'll be more scared, than anything."
So, basically, they would see the cab drivers as being kind of a bridge to the underworld. Because, even if the driver planned upon working in the upper class zones, he would invariably pick up a fare who was en-route from one of those nice neighborhoods, with his destination being the hood.
I can remember one occasion when I picked up a young black girl from a nice house in Mandarin, and wound up dropping her off (a pretty decent fare away) in some complex where she instructed me to do a full circle around the parking lot before she got out, so she could survey it for potential predators.
But, then there were people like Tim and Veronica.
I was sitting in the Woods of Mandarin parking lot one night, when, up walked a guy, who turned out to be Tim.

He was kind of a Chuck Norris looking guy, especially in the face; tall and rather large and dressed in a button-up shirt and slacks and shoes; like someone who at least had ties to the business world.


Veronica was his girlfriend, She had one of the prettiest faces I have ever seen. She was short, maybe three quarters of Tim's height, and weighed no more than 95 pounds. She had a ready smile, which was as sly as it was pretty.

She soon was at the side of Tim, who was trying to hire my cab for a run to a certain area of Phillip's Highway, about 4 miles away, and back.

Tim and I soon negotiated a fare for a round trip, and we were on our way to do "the thing,' although, I wouldn't dub it that until about the 10th performance of it.


Tim and Veronica were "crackheads," but one would never get away with calling them that, because they were above that. Theirs was an entirely different culture than that of those who frequented crack houses, and immersed themselves in the collective depravity of the society there.

Tim would buy powdered cocaine and then turn it into crack using the stove at his apartment. This would yield a high grade product that's ingredients were not a mystery, such as in what one might buy off the street.

Veronica had found a good man in Tim.
He was from a pretty affluent family. His parents owned a large house by the river.


I imagine that Tim had probably been kicked out of the big house, by the river. And this, after friction had probably resulted from his crack smokings
.
But, he had the mannerisms, typical of a private school educated kid, and this allowed us to establish an instant rapport, when he approached me, as I sat in the parking lot of the apartment "village" where he and Veronica had a sparsely appointed apartment.

They had the kitchen, with its stove, in an otherwise barren studio. This is where they cooked up their crack (but don't call it that). The stove was kind of the centerpiece of the place, in this regard.
And, the bedroom was a mattress on the floor in the back room with a couple books and sundry items, along with an alarm clock, scattered around it.

The thing had become a nightly ritual for Tim and Veronica.

My introduction to it was when I brought them up to the spot on Phillip's Highway that is known to be frequented by hookers.
There, we would drop Veronica off where the hookers frequently walk before retreating to the other side of the road about a hundred yards away, where I would sit in the cab and Tim would usually stand outside of, so as to get a better view.
Then, we would watch as some guy took the bait and a car would stop in front of Veronica. I would come to refer to them as "gators."

Veronica would then start to spin a yarn to the gator.

She would say that she and her boyfriend had just had a fight, and that she had fled him after he had started to become violent. She would then go on to say that all she wanted to do was to get a room at the nearby Comfort Inn, and that, if the gator would spring for the 69 dollars or so for it, she would be appreciative to the point of inviting him to visit her in that room.

If the gator fell for it, Veronica would be getting into his vehicle; which we would immediately take up following in the cab.
This was to make sure that he was doing as told, by Veronica and would be driving her to the Comfort Inn.
Any deviation from this course would mean that the gator had gotten a wild hare and had decided to spirit Veronica off to somewhere, thus taking control of the situation, perhaps because he was a serial rapist and/or killer of prostitutes, as are so common.
In this case, the full capacity of the Crown Victoria that I drove (with its "state police" package that included a powerful 4.9 liter engine, along with beefed up suspension to include "roll bars") would become utilized, as I would basically tail the gators vehicle until such a point where he came to a red light or something, whereupon Tim would jump out of the cab and reclaim Veronica
ostensibly for him to transport her to the Comfort Inn, where he would hand her the money for the room, she would instruct him to park where he could see the front desk from his vehicle, so that, after she had rented the room, he could go in and inquire of the front desk person which room whatever name she gave him was staying in.

go in and rent it, and then, after seeing 
 had a sort of routine, that involved the complicity and availability of a cab driver, that involved Veronica being placed upon a certain stretch of Phillips Highway which was known far and wide as being "where the hookers are" in Jacksonville, and then waiting for some guy to take the bait.

Veronica would then, under the watchful eye of Tim and myself a hundred yards away, start to spin a yarn to the guy.
She was quite an actress.
She would tell the guy (I started to refer to the marks as "gators") 

I remember the first time that I drove them there, to do the thing.

It hadn't been dubbed "The Thing," yet. I wouldn't do so until about the dozenth performance of it.

I was sitting in the cab that time, parked in a spot that I had made my regular place for just sitting and resting, or waiting for a fare.

But also with the intention of making the big yellow car visible from Tim and Veronica's apartment window.  

 it was his upbringing; how he most assuredly went to private schools his whole life, probably finished with pretty good grades, wound up with a pretty easy and well paying job (