London mini-cab days

 I drove a mini-cab in the predominantly Jewish area of Edgware, in northwest London, during almost three years in the early 1990's. The owner of the company was Jewish, as were many of the drivers.There were a couple of Pakistani drivers, two Hindus, a few regular Englishmen, one Irishman, and one Mexican.

I was relieved to join them, because the minicab company I had been associated with before, located some few miles to the south in Kingsbury, turned out the owner was a pederast. He was leader of a Boys Bicycle Club... So I was happy to be surrounded by mainly decent folk in my new work environment. There was a drivers' room in the office where we used to sit and while away the hours waiting for a job. We had a coffee-and-tea dispensing machine, and smoking was allowed. We'd nip down the kosher caff for a brisket sandwich and a pickle. New Greens, they called them, these pickles. Crunchier than American pickles, and a darker green in color. The owner of the cafe was from Cyprus and he held a grudge against the Turks who had forced him to leave his island country, as I recall.

So we would sit there in the drivers' room shooting the breeze. Joking and telling tall tales. Everybody got along, save the odd disagreement about who got the long fare and who the short. A couple of the Jewish drivers did seem to always get the lion's share, like when Little Steve ( there were two Steves ) got given the job of driving the plenipotentiary of the newly-resurrected republic of Lithuania around all day, because "a Jewish driver had been requested". Yeah, right. But who was I to complain. I made enough for rent and beer. One of the Hindus used to say "I always get the shit jobs". Well so did I.

But sometimes I got lucky. Sometimes some of the regular clients evinced a preference for a particular driver and would ask for said driver exclusively. There seemed to be a lot of well-off, middle-aged divorcees in the area. Kids had flown the coop and so had the husbands, into the arms of new trophy wives. So these divorced ladies would sit in their nice suburban homes, lacking nothing but with little to do. The high point of their day might be going to the hairdressers or to the local Sainsburys.

Which is where the likes of me would step in. There was one such lady, a Mrs. Gala. She must have been in her mid-fifties at the time. I would drive her once a week to her daughter's home in Sunbury, about twenty miles to the south, pick her up the next day and bring her back. It got so she would telephone me at home the night before to reserve the service.

Mrs. Gala enjoyed her tipple of Wodka Wyborowa and her Silk Cut cigarettes. Oftentimes she would summon me mid-morning for a quick run to the off-license to get her provisions. She would open the front door in her robe with a Silk Cut between her lips, and hand me a fifty-pound note. I knew what to do.

Once, as we were driving somewhere we were talking and I mentioned that whenever I asked my ten-year-old daughter a question she would answer with monosyllables. Mrs. Gala taught me how to phrase a question so that my daughter would be compelled to be more elaborate. Clever Mrs. Gala. She self-published a little green booklet with her rhyming observations on life, a copy of which she dedicated to me. I still have it around somewhere. I looked for it just now but couldn't find it.

I remember telling one of my fellow drivers at the time about the booklet and he said  "Yeh. She gave me a copy too. I threw it away". Apparently Mrs. Gala had already bored all the other drivers half to death with her wit. 

Well what do you know - it's two weeks later and I have found her little green gem. It was tucked in among my fiction paperbacks. The name of the book is "IT'S FUNNY... BUT"

                                            From drinking alcohol each day

                                            We're told the liver rots away,

                                            While eggs and cream and butter too

                                            Are now extremely bad for you,

                                            Smoking will endanger health,

                                            And gambling deplete your wealth.

                                            So if the things you have enjoyed

                                            You will, from this day forth avoid,

                                            You'll have a longer life to do

                                            The things that don't appeal to you.

 

That was Mrs. Gala. 

Then there was Old Mr. Barber. Originally from Amsterdam, in 1940 he rode a bicycle 200 miles to Dunkirk just ahead of the Nazis, and managed to board one of the flotilla sent to fetch back the British Expeditionary Force. He had been in the diamond business, and by all accounts ( by his daugher's and his, anyway ) after the war had lived in Angola for quite some time before returning to England, where he settled. The walls of his living-room were adorned with paintings made by his dearly departed wife, a full-figured Jewish lady from London, who seemed to have been a prolific artist while in Angola; mainly oil-on-canvas landscapes, portraits of some of the locals, and a self-portrait that I remember.

Mr. Barber was always cheerful when I picked him up. Maybe he'd go to the clinic, or the library, or to do some shopping. He had this little key-chain harmonica on which he would blow the Ode To Joy. I would share in his happy vibe. It was contagious. On Sundays, I would drive  him some few miles to the east to Southgate, where we would pick up his daughter Adinah, who was a spinsterish schoolteacher in I'm guessing her late forties at least, with whom I got friendly over time.

Adinah and I hit it off because we were both music lovers, as well as amateur musicians. She had a piano that had belonged to her dearly departed boyfriend, and a guitar. She sang Yiddish folk songs, as well as the Joan Baez repertoire. Ended up we went to many concerts together. Bob Dylan was one such. Or she would invite me to her house, around the corner from her father's, and feed me a nice supper of an expensive soup carton from Marks and Spencer, maybe the Bouillabaisse one, or the Leek and Potato, with warm crusty bread and a glass of Sancerre. She wouldn't partake of this sumptuous repast; maybe a half a glass of wine. It was usually me that finished off the bottle. Thin as a rake, Adinah subsisted mainly on rice cakes. You see where this is going? well it aint goin' nowhere, cos nothin romantic happened. She wanted, but I didn't wanna, tell the truth. Just wanted to hang out. We would travel to the West End on the Underground, enjoy a cheap Chinese meal served by sadistic but diverting waiters at the Wang Key Cafe in Chinatown, then maybe go watch a movie, or walk across to the Southbank Centre to check out what was going on in The Arts.

One day Mr. Barber died of a heart attack in his living room. He had been trying to get to the phone but didn't make it. His cleaning lady found him sprawled on the carpet. Sounds kind of like a movie. Or it's reminding me of a movie. Maybe the one with John Hurt, To Live and Die in Long Island, I think it's called. 

Sometimes us drivers would drive down to the airport to pick up people coming back to Edgware. We'd stand there in the arrivals hall holding a cardboard rectangle inscribed with our passenger's name. This one time I picked up a lady coming back from visiting an old friend from school days who had married an American and lived in Santa Barbara, California. She was telling me her friend was inexplicably proud of her two boys, who were clueless lumps of suet, to hear my passenger talk. They were in their thirties and still lived at home. Also she mentioned her friend had developed the risible habit of  wringing out her teabags into her cup before disposing of them.

In retrospect, I enjoyed working for Beeswax Cabs. I looked up the company recently. They are still going, though they are Pakistani-owned nowadays.

 

                     

 

 

                                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abasolo y Allende la frontera y el padre Hidalgo, además.

A ver cómo me las arreglo para justificar este titulito... pasa que quiero hablar del Gabacho, y me acordé de lo mucho que detesto la frasecita esa de a "allende la frontera". Suena muy pedante, no? "del otro lado", y ya. "Pobre Mexico, tan lejos de Dios..." A lo que voy, es que para mí El Garbanzo no es El Gran Satán, como le dicen los ayatolas. En muchos aspectos el gabardino tiene una sociedad mucho más igualitaria que la de acá. Recuerdo estar en el elevador del democrático Hotel Toledo en CDMX junto con un plomero que venía bajando del techo. El pobre bajó la vista tímidamente, como si yo fuera su superior. En mi oficio de chafirete siempre odié levantar a chilangos ricos en San Diego. Uta madre, hasta me hacía el gringo, para que no me agarraran de su mozo! súbete tu propio equipaje, hijo de puta. Porque ni propina daban.

Recuerdo también llevar a un cuate emigrado de Jalisco en el taxi del centro de San Diego al aeropuerto, quien me dijo que en E.U. se sentía más libre; que la burocracia totonaca no le había puesto más que puras trabas. Leí por ahi que si quieres que un empleado postal italiano te venda un timbre es necesario llamarle "su excelencia". De por ahí nos viene. Acostumbrado a la facilidad y sencillez de los trámites de notaría en California, me he rehusado a sentarme a hacer horas-nalga en alguna Notaría Pública Número tal de TJ, con su antesala presidida por la obligatoria secretaria malencarada. Por esto continúo intestado. Además por algún motivo el té negro, del cual soy gran consumidor, es mucho más caro de este lado... estoy al tanto de las atrocidades del imperialismo, y de los Niños Héroes de Chaputepé. Y llevo tres meses esperando a que me llegue de Corea mi dvd de "Memorias del Subdesarrollo". Que el virus, que no sé qué, se excusa el vendedor. Ah: dice que ya lo fleteó, en la Nao de la China Poblana.

Ya se trajeron de California el avión presidencial. Cómo carajos lo van a vender, si las aerolíneas tienen sus flotas paradas. Ni quién ofrezca un peso plata por él.

Pero al pinche Trompas debieran llevárselo en cadenas a La Haya, por crímenes de lesa humanidad. En cuatro años ha convertido a Los Yunáits en un infierno fascista. Un amigo muy querido dice que sólo son patadas de ahogado, que todo volverá a la normalidad en Noviembre. Dios te oiga, manito. Para que se regresen a su closet los millones de rednecks racistas. O que se les reubique a todos en el estado de Idaho. Allá seran muy felices porque hay puros pieles-pálidas. Bueno, no. Cuando anduve de troquero me tocó cargar en una procesadora de patatas que estaba llena de paisas, allá en Pocatello.

Pero ya que se acabe el trompas, y que se acabe el virus del trompas para poder regresar al mismo desmadre de siempre. Ajúuuua. Sí señor.

Al Padre Hidalgo le concedieron su último deseo de un tazón de chocolate caliente antes de que lo fusilaran y le cortaran la cabeza.

Este es el Año del Covid-19. Estaba leyendo un artículo en una revista budista donde la autora sugiere que todos estamos afligidos en menor o mayor grado porque nunca habíamos pasado por algo parecido.

Yo, que de por sí padezco de ansiedad, ahora ya tengo algo en concreto por lo cual sentirme ansioso. Ya no es aquella ansiedad difusa de antes, como de que algo malo va a suceder. Mi vieja compañera de viaje.

Llevaba varios días de sentirme bien, despúes del último ataque de nervios. Hoy en la mañana fui al Menudo de La Doña. No había ido desde el invierno pasado y ya traía antojo. Manejé mi viejo pick-up en el tráfico mañanero hasta la esquina de Díaz Ordaz y Clouthier, que es donde se ubica el restaurant. El aparcamiento ahi es muy reducido, porque lo comparten con un taller mecánico, pero afortunadamente sólo había otro carro ahí.

Me senté en la banquita de afuera y pedí un menudo chico. Me gusta ese lugar porque lo hacen muy sano, sin tanta grasa. Estilo casero, pues. Y limpian bien la pancita antes de cocerla, de modo que no tiene ese desafortunado apeste que caracteriza a otros restaurantes. No digo donde, porque se pueden enojar los de Menudería Guadalajara. 

Ya me trajeron mi plato, con tortillas y todos los condimentos, y un bote de Coca Light. No tomo mucha soda, pero a veces combina bien. Estaba a punto de meter cuchara, cuando llega un gordito en una moto con la caja de Uber Eats y pide dos grandes para llevar. Y empieza a toser. Un chavo joven, de esos jóvenes tontos que se sienten inmortales. Y siguió tosiendo. Como a tres metros de mi, al aire libre.  Bueno, solamente lo escuché toser dos veces primero, y otras tres después. Sin cubrebocas, que finalmente sacó y se lo puso. Pero ahí fue cuando le dije a la muchacha que mejor comería adentro. Afortunadamente no estaba ninguna de las cuatro mesas ocupada. 

Me la paso todo el día encerrado y cuando finalmente salgo, nunca deja de suceder algo como esto para que empiece a preocuparme otra vez.

Various and Sundry

I wouldnta bin writin this except I went to the corner shop bought a Diet Coke and a ass pocket pint of Bacardi. This, after waiting in my truck with my German Shepherd in back outside the local Veterinary office for near to two hours. My friend Rafa said you better take that dog back to the vet else he be dead in a week... I woulda bin a writer except writin woulda kilt me dead just as dead as Kerouac. William Burroughs said it wasn't the drink kilt Kerouac, it was the writing and I believe it like the Gospel according to themeninblack. Kerouac's liver explode he huggin the toilet bowl puking blood, said it hurts mama. Like a lotta alcoholics he lived with his mom. Or his wife was a mom surrogate. Or he liveth with BOTH his mom and his wife. Just the three o' them in a household in 1969 watchin blackandwhite TV in Florida somewhere. Momma it hurts and pouf he gone. You get the gist where I'm comin from.

I like that vet a lot he got this disarming, self-deprecatin' way about him. Makes me feel good just like Doc Feelgood even tho my dawg may die in the process of the vitamin shots and the ten days of antibiotics he cant breef too good this terrible cough cant even hardly eat all skin and bones and wobbly and weak. Looks straight outta Treblinka, the poor thing.

You know how you hit it off with someone rightaway that's the vet. And also this guy in a munitions ship on Pier K at the Navy Base. We got to talking about music and agreed on everything. He's from Arkansaw. Said why am I still working my friends are all retired I'm not a worker I'm a hunter. Hunt for elk, venison, fish for red salmon. Couldn't wait to get back to the Ozarks. You bin to the Ozarks? I have. Drove a big truck all the way up the scenic route by mistake one Sunday in 1996. Some guy in a pick up truck talked to me on the c.b. sayin what are you doin up here you shoulda gone around on the straight and level.  I said I dunno, I'm new. Ha. Somehow survived that and made it to Pine Bluff, parked the truck at a truck stop walked to stretch my legs past a Negro Pentecostal Church they was chanting the Gospel, big ol' wooden structure painted white, on stilts. I say Negro advisedly, cos I wanna be black. Don't you? I want one o' dem black girls wid the legs like Tina Turner.

Paris Blues

 

 

So me an me grand-daughter Jasmin flew to Paris and we wuz met at the airport by my cousin Maria-Claudia, daughter of my tío César, and I'd only bin to Paris once befo', in about I think 1991, wid me then-girlfren Jane, wot had the 'ump more often that not, so, so glad I did not end up marrying her... but we had our share of fun for a little while. It's coz of Jane I can boast of 'avin kisst a girl by the River Seine ( whilst a femme gendarme watched on, unimpressed ) Ya gotta kiss a gel down by the river at some point in yer lifetime. It's de rigueur.

"'Avin' the 'ump" is cockney for being pissed off. Don't quite remember WHY she seemed to be pissed off so often. Even the time we went to Barcelona and its environs she'd suddenly get in a bad mood...there we were, holidaying at the beach in Blanes, and out-the-blue, BAM! bad mood and bad vibes galore... I remember leaving her in the room of the hotel so she could sulk to her heart's content while I had a peaceful drink by myself. Also I needed to get outta there because something or someONE was making a hellacious racket out in the corridor.

Turned out it was the daughter of the hotel owner. A fetching little butch lesbo bitch, elfin and gamine ( I love these two adjectives. I'm-a try to work 'em in again soon... ) with short dark hair, jeans and t-shirt, and a leather pouch on her waist, like carpenters wear. She was drilling with a Black and Decker on the wall outside our room just to be obstreperous, doing somethin to the light switch, I think because she intuited Jane and I had bin havin a bit of a 'ow's yer father; a lil' horizontal recreation, as they say. Although what business of hers it was escapes me. She said to me, when she found me some few minutes later in the near-empty hotel bar: "Eres cachondo, Mexicano", which a loose translation of might be "you're a horny bastard, Mexican".

But 25 years laters, my cousin Maria-Claudia picked us up at Charles de Gaulle Airport on a sunny and warm late September Sunday afternoon, and took us to her abode near Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Jasmin my grand-daughter was on her best behavior throughout our two-day stay, I'm happy to say. Jasmin is 25% sweet, 25% indifferent/lethargic, and 50% terrible... but more on this later. Maria-Claudia lives with her boyfriend Alexis, ( it's his place, actually, as I was to find out ) a polite, well-mannered Parisian building contractor. He buys and remodels run-down dwellings and lives in them meanwhile he sells them. When we were introduced he asked me if I liked Paris, like it was important I did. Of course I said 'yes'. And I do.

Their apartment is in an old building with an inner courtyard the neighbours all share, to hang their washing, and to sit at the picnic table therein to chat and gossip. I saw two Chinese ladies doing just that. Another neighbor is a ceramicist who invited us in to view his work in progress of a female kneeling in front of a man, with her head in his lap performing you-know-what. I had to re-direct Jasmin out the door and have her wait at the picnic table, meanwhile we politely viewed the artiste's, er, they weren't really sculptures, more clay miniatures and figurines. This guy is pals with a homeless intellectual who sleeps on  a mattress in a shop doorway around the corner on Chemin Vert, a busy commercial street leading to the Pere Lachaise Metro. See the guy in the picture, a small figure in the distance coming down the sidewalk? that's him.

Jas saw this destitute erudite pissing into a bottle in the courtyard and went YEEEUUUUCH!, but in France they piss in the street, or they used to, so the guy was actually behaving normally, whatever his other idiosyncrasies. 

So we got in from the airport and immediately Maria-Claudia escorted us to the Metro and showed us how to buy tickets and then split cos she had to be somewhere else. She said we should go to Rue de Rivoli if we wanted to exchange currency which we did, but it was getting on towards evening, and as we walked and we walked and we walked past the arches with the tourist curio shops, we realized all the bureux de change were shut. But we did come upon La Samaritaine, the venerable ancient department store, now closed and being converted into a luxury hotel ( "as if we needed more of those", said Maria-C, a staunch Socialist like her dad ) When we got tired of walking, we got back on the Metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. 

We mingled with crowds of tourists as evening drew in and turned on the lights. Africans selling their art and artifacts on the pavement. The aroma of dark tobacco wafting. I was being careful not to lose Jasmin in the jostle and bustle. The Tower had barriers underneath, people queuing for tickets, and military with machine guns patrolling in their red berets and green-and-brown cammos. Jas didn't want to go up anyway, so we went instead to an outdoor café opposite and had crepes, hers Nutella and strawberries, and mine a savory one with cheese, not a million miles removed from a quesadilla.

There existed a tug-of-war 'twixt Jasmin and myself all about her phone being glued to her hand. As I don't possess a smartphone on principle, we were to rely on hers for communicatin' with Maria-C. But the confounded phone kept dyin' thru permanent usage. I even had a spare charger in my pocket but of course Jas had to have it at the earliest, and when we were coming back from the Eiffel, the phone went dead at the crucial moment when Maria-C was about to tell us how to walk from an alternate Metro stop to her place because we'd taken the wrong Metro line. I asked Jas WHY was it she hadda have her damn phone on all the time, and she said because otherwise she'd get bored.

I don't speak French. I've always had this hang-up about it being the most pretentious, conceited, snobbish, highfalutin, fuckin pompous, YEEEUUUUUCH! language. Particularly when spoken by the non-French. The French themselves can be excused, as they got no choice. I always associate speaking in French with the petty bushwhacks in Mexico City. Everything in "good taste" in Mex City is Parisian-influenced, from when the Frenchies conquered our country, the days of Emperor Maximilian and his crazy wife Carlotta and that. In fact I often felt I was in Mex City, walking around Paris... I envisioned some paunchy shirt-and-tied Mexico Citizen coming on all petty bushwhack goin' mais oui, monsieur. Tres chic. Oh la la.

I was accused recently by an ex-girlfriend of being a Surrealist. Or perhumps a surrealist, no capital c, only because I've been known to harp and waffle about Luis Buñuel's devastating critique of the French petty bushwhack in his 1970s movies. I watched "That Obscure Object of Desire", and "The Discreet Charm of The Bushwhack" when a teenager, and was greatly influenced. So whenever I come across somebody putting on French airs and graces they make me wanna puke.

But French is widely spoken in Paris. I had some difficulty at the Tabac when trying to buy Gauloises Brunes. The lady behind the counter kept pushing Gauloises Blondes at me. Non, non! BRUNES! BRUNES! Oh fuckin 'ell...

I suspect my cousin's sanity is frail at the best of times, she's always going to the psychologist, and it happened that three days before we were to arrive, she found that her Sri-Lankan next-door neighbor had hung himself in the stairs! she screamed bloody murder, and other neighbors came and took him down and called the ambulance. The guy didn't die, but it nearly sent poor Maria-C over the edge. So MORE psychologist, and less time to spend with us. Kept us waiting 3 and 1/2 hours around Notre Dame while she went to her session because she absent-mindedly took the wrong train coming back and didn't realize it until she started seeing onion fields out the window...

That night us four repaired to the Brasserie on the corner and dined on fresh oysters, salad and white wine. Well Maria-C, Alexis and I did. Jas had a chicken burger and fries. I drank most of the two carafes of wine, tell the truth. The next morning I got up tried to take a shower but couldn't turn on the tap, so dressed in the clothes I'd been wearin' and went out while everybody still slept tho' it was already ten a.m. I wanted to buy a belt with a boar's head buckle I'd seen in the window of a sporting and hunting goods store. Ended up not buying it when I found out it was plastic, made in China, and cost 32 Euros.

Before you start thinking I'm quite the debonair boulevardier Bryan Ferry style, let me remind you that B.F might well be the messenger of your doom and your destruction ( how you doin' there, E. Ros, allright? ) and that I aint sofisticated. I'm just Miguel from Tijuana who likes to smoke tequila and drink marijuana, and in that capacity I will finish with a quaint commercial break, but no:

I was forgetting about Montmartre. The previous time I was in Paris, somehow I neglected to visit Montmartre; the venerable ancient once-upon-a-time enclave of impecunious urdists like Modigliani, and TooLoose Latrec, and them lot. Being a conceptual urdist myself ( at least in my head ) I wanted to breathe the same air, even though nowadays Montmartre is the last refuge of impecunious caricaturists who will chase you down the street trying to convince you to let them draw your portrait. But there still is something captivating about Montmartre, some atmosphere quaint and picturesque. We sat at a café and had lunch, and walked, and looked down upon The City of Light. At least Maria-C and I did. Jasmin looked down upon her cellphone. And then we walked back down to the Metro and fucked off. 

When I woke up the next morning back in my daughter's house in Manchester, both she an Jas had gone to their respective occupations and it looked rainy out the window, and I had the Paris Blues so bad I put a drop of Scotch in my coffee and went back to sleep

TAXI !! pt 2

Well, the taxi firm I had been working for the last eighteen years shut down a year ago, through a combination of über and bad management. So I came to this other outfit where the owner seemed a little wacky, but hey, I needed the job. And I did ok for several months, then there came a slump of a few weeks, then ok again for a couple of more months, then another slump. So far I have identified three distinct slumps in the year: the end of August, Christmas, and the second part of April, first part of May. It is now almost the middle of May and business has not picked up yet.

I am now working in a more upscale, touristy part of town, but the tourists and the conventioneers haven't arrived yet, so I mostly sit reading a book, or I take naps in the back seat.

This is going to be addressing the wacky owner mainly. As a long-time independent self-employed contractor taxi driver, I am accustomed to a freedom that is severely curtailed here. Generally a taxi company will let us drivers come and go as we please, as long as we pay the rent and don't wreck the cab, but in this particular dysfunctional rinky-dink outfit we are treated more like employees punching a time card; obliged to work until being allowed to go home. and expected to perform duties other than just driving a passenger from 'a' to 'b' such as helping with the upkeep and maintenance of the vehicle, acting as public relations, and human resources operatives, even.

For many months I have put up with this state of affairs. I thought well, at least I am making a living. But there are so many things wrong here. The radio dispatch is a complete disaster. There is a senile elderly lady at the c.b. radio during the busiest part of the evening, and she drives the craziness quotient sky high. It's a scratchy radio where you have to repeat yourself and have a hard time hearing anything she says. All other cab companies have had digital dispatch for decades. None of this shouting "repeat please? say again?". Your calls appear on the dispatch screen and you press either the accept or the reject button. Yes, and that's another thing; we are accustomed to being able to reject a call for whatever reason, whereas here, management calls it "Abandoning a Fare", like it's a capital sin or something.

At first I thought the owner's peculiarity lay in being exceptionally hard-working, but little by little, and it has taking me up until just the other day, when I wrote the owner a letter expressing my frustration, that it dawned on me that the owner suffers from an obsessive disorder. The owner is obsessed with servicing E-E-E-EVERY LAST CALL ON THE PLANET and this is clearly impossible. Some calls are going to get away. I've seen it in the previous cab companies that I have worked for. If there are no cabs available, the dispatcher says to the person requesting a cab that none are available at the time. This is the normal, sane way of doing things.

Last October we had so much rain one day, it was a deluge of biblical proportions. We were navigating oceans of rain, and it happened to get very busy towards evening, when a lot of the drivers went home and there were I think, three of us left. Naturally there was a backlog of calls, and I was thinking to myself  I should go home too, because of the dangerous driving conditions. The elderly lady dispatcher was at the controls and she must've blown a gasket, because the owner took over the dispatching. It got so dark and so wet I could hardy discern the outlines of the road, and so was driving extremely slow. At some point I had to stop for gas, and the owner called me on the phone telling me to hurry up, and I said "You are stressing me out. It is not safe to hurry up in this weather". The owner went into a strange tirade about how I was an experienced driver, that I could handle it, and muttered something about 'people who get stressed out', like it was a handicap or a shortcoming.

There was an incident more recently, when a passenger got mad because I was thirteen cents short on his change of a twenty-dollar bill, and after some angry words, he slapped the hat off my head. I sent the owner a text requesting authorization NOT pick up this person again ( because he is somewhat of a regular caller ) and the owner phoned me and quizzed me minutely about the incident. Said I should have given the passenger a dollar back, and that I should be more diplomatic. I got a little hot and raised my voice a notch and said that it would be impossible for me to be diplomatic to somebody who in effect had assaulted me. The conversation was dragging and going nowhere. The owner has a habit of trying to talk circles around you until you give in, but I stood my ground and at long last the owner ok'd my not picking  up the offending party anymore.

The cab company boss' favorite words are "fast", "quick", and "expedite", but I'm not having a heart attack just because somebody called for a cab.

I just had my regular Sunday and Monday off, so I haven't heard the boss' reaction to my letter, in which I voice many of the same complaints I do here. Who knows but that I may be out of a job. I will know in a few hours.

A few days later the boss left me a conciliatory message, so I guess I still got the job. For what it's worth.

Me paró la municipal

Eran las dos de la mañana. Regresando del gabacho, nomás rebasas Aduanas, está una calle oculta por la curvatura, del lado izquierdo, que conduce a la Colonia Federal. Con frecuencia está ahí a esas horas una patrulla de la municipal, por si acaso. Esta vez estaban dos. Me alcanzaron a la altura del CECUT y me marcaron el alto. Ya me pasé a la lateral y paré la marcha de mi viejo y confiable Ford Ranger 1997. Este pick-up está levantado de la suspensión y es bueno pa'andar en las aguas como las que han llovido últimamente. No me gusta que llueva porque luego tengo que subirme al techo a barrer l'agua. Y como NO soy agricultor, pues las sequías me valen madre. De hecho las celebro. A mí la lluvia no me acarrea más que problemas. Perdonen eso de "de hecho" que ya sé, es sólo una muleta lingüística, pero okey. Sigamos. O seguiré yo solito, porque nomás soy yo el que está aquí.

DONDE PUTASMADRES DEJÉ MI CABALLITO TEQUILERO?! creo que lo dejé sobre el librero. O tal vez en las racas de los cartuchos VHS... ya ves que a mí me gusta lo antiguo. Las circunstancias me jalan dentro del Siglo XXI a regañadientes y en reversa. No sé qué es la tal memoria USB y no quiero saberlo. Por dar un ejemplo.

Pues me pararon AMBAS patrullas. Y ya se acercaron dos chotas uno por un lado y otro por el otro, como suelen.

"Qué pasó?" dije.

"Licencia, por favor"

"Por qué, que hice mal? vengo bien"

"Vienes cansado? vas manejando mal"

"Si vas a decir que vengo tomado, te diré que yo NO tomo. No puedo tomar, porque soy diabético"

"Nunca dije que vinieras tomado, pero vienes manejando mal"

"Mal, cómo?!"  aquí ya me estaba empezando a enchilar.

"De donde vienes?"

"Del jale. Manejo un taxi en San Diego"

"A dónde vas?"  mira mi licencia con detenimiento.

"A mi casa. Allá por la Ermita"

"De qué parte del D.F. eres?"

"Nunca dije que era del D.F. Nací acá por la Calle Tercera, en el Sanatorio Balcázar", apuntando con el índice derecho hacia el Poniente con cara de enojo.

Este policía era treintañero, con penetrantes ojos oscuros, piel morena, esbelto, no mal parecido en cierta forma.. deste...gandalla, hijoputa. Digo, por la mirada torva que me empezó a dedicar nomás al darse cuenta que yo se las estaba devolviendo igual.

"Viene cansado, enfadado?" Aquí ya se pasó al 'usted'.

"Repito. Vengo del jale. Ha sido un día largo" Le miro directamente a los ojos con una mirada igualmente penetrante y llena de indignación, además.

El policía se empezó a poner truculento. Truculento significa "cruel", o "atroz". Bueno, no tanto así. Digamos que se empezó a pone altisonante. Alterado.

"SON USTEDES LOS QUE NOS TRATAN MAL A NOSOTROS! USTEDES USTEDES LOS AUTOMOVILISTAS USTEDES USTEDES SON!!!"  algo así, me pareció que dijo. Yo ya no dije nada.

"Tome. Aqui esta su licencia, y váyase, que dios lo bendiga. Ya no quiero estar recibiendo sus malas vibras".

Con eso, se regresó a su patrulla. Era sinaloense y andaba bien crico, el cabrón. Y todavía tuvo la desfachatez de bendecirme, como si fuera el pinchi Papa... yo arranqué hacia el Oriente por la así llamada Vía Rapida Poniente, que ni es rápida, ni va hacia el Poniente. Creo que esos chotas estaban ahi parados cerca de La Línea a la caza de algún turista o emigrado despistado, que les resultara presa fácil para una extorsión.

Llegando a la casa me serví dos o cuatro tequilas, para borrarme el feo sabor de boca. Ahora creo que me voy a liar un frajo de tabaco en greña.

Una vez levanté en mi taxi a dos muchachos canadienses de un hotel en San Ysidro y los llevé al centro de San Diego. Me contaron que ese mismo día habían cruzado la frontera en su auto alquilado, y que en el primer semáforo de Tijuana los pararon unos policías, quienes los amenazaron con arrestarlos, y a los cuales les tuvieron que dar doscientos dólares para que los dejaran ir. Que se dieron la vuelta y se regresaron a Estados Unidos. Dijeron que nunca regresarían a México.

The Crank

I'm a cranky old guy, no doubt. My crankiness has alienated some of my closest friends, like who wants to be ridiculed and belittled alla time? Not him, not her. My tío Juan was cranky I recall. My dad wasn't. He was a happy, well-adjusted man probably got to suck at his mother's tit to his heart's content when he were a tiny tot. But oh no not I, I didn't. The woman who gave birth to me abandoned me in another country and went away. I've since made that country my home to the point I wouldn't want to be a fucking immigrant in anybody else's fucking nightmare, right.

October 1993 found my dad and I driving through San Antonio Texas in his gold-colored 1985 Mercury Cougar. My dad had two and a half years left to live and we were visiting San Pedro Park, the barrio where he grew up. He and his brothers used to collect empty soda bottles to redeem them and they would hand over the 25 cents thus earned to their mother, who would take it to the local panadería for to buy a big bag of day-old bread with which to feed the family. Hard times during The Depression. Are you depressed yet?

That October day it was hot and humid in San Antonio as we were driving around looking for a motel and I must have been complaining endlessly of the heat and the humidity, because my dad exclaimed JESUS MIGUEL YOU SOUND JUST LIKE MY WIFE!

We found a motel contiguous to a golfing range you know where you get a bucket of golf-balls and rent a number seven iron and a number two driver, and whack balls into the distance? They got like yard markers 100 yards 150 yards, etc. not my cuppa tea, but my dad usedta love that shit, so he got a room, and handed me the keys to the Cougar and bid me a good trip 90 miles up the road to Austin, which I was eager to visit. The Rock and Blues clubs and that. Stomping grounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan and whomever. Lou-Ann Barton.

I remember commenting maybe I'll grow into a cranky old guy like my tío Juan. My dad riposted you already are like that, Miguel.

But I only mention all of this as an aside and introduction to what burns in my chest today although the intro has taken on a life of its own and grown like a cancer. I want to bitch about something I got no real right to bitch about and should keep my mouth shut about because I've made my bed and got nowhere else to go.

Here's a 1985 Mercury Cougar.

I'M HAPPIER THAN SHIT WORKING AT CORECAB OK BUT I'M A SELF-EMPLOYED CONTRACTOR AND I SHOULDN'T BE MADE TO PICK UP PSYCHOTIC MURDERERS AND BATTY OLD LADIES WHO WANT ALL THE CAR WINDOWS OPEN IN THE FUCKIN RAIN!

There. That's all I really wanted to say. Have a nice day.