The Other Side of Midnight (7 page)

Sacrifices

Jacob, driving for two years

In the overflow parking lot at the St. John's International Airport,
upwards of thirty cab drivers wait their turn to head down and park
in front of the entrance. Only three cars are allowed there at any given
time. They all hope for the “big score,” a run that will take them out of
the city and onto the highway. A sheet is provided to them by their employer
and held to the sun visor with elastic, or stuffed in the glove compartment,
which lists prices corresponding to communities. One driver
brought a passenger to Corner Brook through a snowstorm for more
than $1,000. But those kinds of jobs are a rarity—one in a million.

Driving a taxicab is not all that glamorous. Jesus Christ, in eight hours, I've made $63. At the end of my shift, after I gas up, I get half of what's left over. Do the math on that. I'll get about twenty-seven bucks for twelve hours work. For me, it passes the time. I'm a people person; I like people. When I went to university, my psychology course, which I passed, opened my mind to a whole new way of thinking. I like driving. It gives you something to do. It beats going to jail. It beats breaking the law.

The only people who are making any kind of money driving taxicabs are the guys who own their own cars. Guys like me who work for the company, the only person we're making rich is the man who owns the company. That's why they can have ninety cars on the road. If you're content to come out and pass away some time and bring home forty or fifty bucks on a good day, then that's okay. But it can be very depressing, this business, especially with all the cars out on the back lot here now. There's nothing on the set. There's no one phoning in. You might as well sit here and wait for a job that's going to Gander. I've been out eight hours, and I've got $23 on the meter, plus two twenties. Like I said, sixty-three bucks. I'll get down to the front of the airport, and the customer will probably say, “I'm heading to the Comfort Inn.” You sat for three hours, and he wants to go to the Comfort Inn, which is right there, for ten bucks. And then they bitch about the price. If the radio is going, there's no sense even being at the airport. You've been sitting in my cab for ten minutes. The radio is working, and you haven't heard anything come out of it, have you? Not very much. So you sit, and you wait.

I make enough money to pay my rent and to pay my bills. I drive a school bus, and that helps. I'm separated from my daughter's mother, and I pay child support. I'm also paying for a couch so my daughter has some place to sit. The old couch was garbage. I had to buy something else and I'm not even living with them now. But I still went over to Easyhome. I'm paying forty bucks a week so my little girl can have some place to sit. I eat once a day. That's the truth. Yesterday, I had a slice of pizza at about two-thirty in the afternoon. I haven't eaten since. Sometimes you have to sacrifice.

Raising a Family

Mark, driving for twenty-one years

I got two little girls. One is thirteen, and the other is eight. My oldest daughter is in Grade 7, and my youngest is in Grade 3. To get them ready for back to school I had to punch in a lot of hours. You don't know from one day to the next what you're going to make. You could make $400; you could make twenty bucks. There's no set pay at this. That's about the worst thing about the job. You're gone from home a fair bit, too. But I try to be home as much as I can. I'll go home for a couple of hours here and there in the evening to spend a bit of time with the family.

Typically, I do six days a week. I usually come to work at about eleven o'clock in the morning and work until probably two or three that night. You're looking at fifteen hours a day six days a week. That's eighty to ninety hours per week. By the end of the week, I've almost always made the same amount as the week before. It usually works out that way—there's not a lot of variation. Some days you might have less; other days you might have more. I got two kids and a mortgage. Taxiing is not a gig where you can go home at five. You got to stay out until you make your money.

My family understands. They'd like it if I was home more, but they know that's not how it's going to be. I simply can't afford to be home more. These days it's a challenge for anyone with kids.

My father has been driving a cab for forty-five years. When I was growing up, he was gone a lot, too. He used to come home when he could, but he wasn't there every evening. I just remember he was gone almost all the time working. I don't know if it wasn't as busy then and it was harder to make a dollar. I haven't asked him. It's not a conversation that we've ever had. I was thirteen when my parents split up. So he lost a relationship over taxiing. I've thought about changing jobs. I was an electrician for a while before I started at taxiing. I did an electrical course at trade school back in the early ‘90s, but there was no work. That's when I started driving at Valley Cabs. For a span of about four years, I worked as a dispatcher for a courier company. That was a nine-to-five job. But I struggled with the routine. After doing this, I found I didn't want to be bound to an office.

I manage to leave my job in the driveway when I go into the house. I've been married fifteen years, and I don't think I spent ten minutes talking to my wife about this. It's just something I don't talk about. It's not something that interests her, and there's stuff that goes on that you got to deal with that I don't want her knowing about. With the girls, they don't usually ask too many questions. They know the hours I punch, and they know that this is Daddy's job. But that's the extent of it. It's not something that I ever get into. I'm not sure it's something I actually want to discuss with my daughters.

I mean, all you got to do is turn on the news to see St. John's is starting to get some bigger problems with crime and things like guys getting held up and assaulted.

A couple of years ago, I picked up three young guys, and they wanted to get dropped off at a gas station. They went in and came out with a bag of cigarettes, a couple cartons of cigarettes. I had to take them to another location, and they went in and came out with money, or whatever. They used a stolen credit card to buy the cigarettes. I didn't realize this until about halfway through that something wasn't adding up, something wasn't right.

I just didn't feel safe with these guys. It's just one of the times you get a bad feeling. I'm at this a while, and it's not often that I get spooked. One of the guys in the back never said a whole lot, but he was watching me. I thought,
If any trouble happens, this is the guy
who is going to cause it
.

I've never mention anything like that to my wife.

Self-Discipline

Johnny, driving for three years

When you drive a taxi you can leave whenever you want. You can take your breaks whenever you want. You got to have a lot of self-discipline; you got to put the hours in. If you happen to leave you might miss out on one of the corporate jobs. We drive for Cougar Helicopters. You might hook a run with one of those guys going out to Bay Roberts. That's a $300 fare. But you got to wait that extra hour sitting down doing nothing. In the winter, there are your slow months. March and April gets pretty scanty. You're hunched over in the front seat, you got gloves and a hat on, and you're blowing on your hands trying to stay warm. You run the car for ten minutes, and you turn it off for half an hour. You turn it on for ten minutes, and turn it off for half an hour. So you're steady starting and stopping.

I quit doing day shifts because I was out one Monday and made $25 for an eight hour shift. I had to halve that with buddy who owned the car and then put gas in. You want to say, “I'm quitting this right now.” But you got to take the good times with the bad. During the last George Street Festival, I made $2,800 in seven days.

The State of the Economy

Allen, driving for twenty-two years

Whatever happened to the blue collar jobs, the middle-class jobs? You either make ten to twelve bucks an hour, or you make $30 an hour. There's no twenty to twenty-five dollar an hour jobs out there. There is no blue collar, middle-class jobs out there, anymore. The state of our economy is fucked. I was making $50,000 a year. My employer made my job redundant because he could hire someone fresh out of school for $25,000 a year because they have less salary expectations, as opposed to me who is twenty years older. The whole concept of society here in Newfoundland is that you're either poor or you're rich. There's no in between.

All They Were Interested in Was Eating

Charlie, driving for thirty-seven years

Back in the ‘80s, all the old guys who were sixty and seventy grew up during the Depression. In the 1930s, if you're twenty-something years old, what's your biggest priority in a depression?

Putting food on the table.

You're fucking right, buddy. You got to eat. If you got a family, they got to eat. What do you do? You worked. Do you get an education? No, sir. That's the last thing on your mind. You're in Grade 2? Get out and go to work! And there are guys who will tell you that. For the guys who grew up in the Depression, all they were interested in was eating.

So back in the ‘80s, these old guys were driving around town. They knew the streets, not by their name, but by location. You see what I'm getting at? They knew where New Cove Road was. They knew where it started, and they knew where it ended. But they couldn't read the sign.

It might've been May 24th. It was a holiday weekend. I remember it was a cold night, but there was no snow, or anything. The dispatcher sends this old guy up to Cherry Hill Road. It was just up from New Cove Road there. I think it was maybe number sixteen, or something.

The dispatcher gives out a few more jobs over the set. About a half an hour goes by. He said, “I got that lady on the phone. Are you up on Cherry Hill Road?”

“Oh, yes,” the driver said.

“Well, I got her on the phone, and she can't see you.”

This driver got little or no education—he can't read. “Well, I'm here.”

“Are you out in front of sixteen?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I'm out in front of sixteen.”

“That lady can't see you. You got to be on the wrong street.”

“No,” he said, “I'm not.”

“Go to the end of the street, and spell the street name.”

A minute later: “Go ahead, Bobby. I'm here.”

“Spell out what's on the sign.”

“S-T-O-P.”

Cut Off at the Knees

Leonard, driving for four years

Few of the taxi drivers admitted to being behind the wheel by
choice. For them, there is a lingering resentment for the life they once
had or the possible future that slipped from their grasp: the agricultural
plant manager, a victim of downsizing; the assembly line worker too
broke up and worn down to keep working. One said, “There are firemen
and teachers at it. There are a lot of retired people driving taxis. There
are unemployed tradesmen at it. When a taxi hauls up to your door,
you don't know who is going to be your driver. It could be the most educated
man you've ever met, or the lowest form of human life.”

Are you familiar with the Cameron Inquiry? I was the witness who had the mysterious piece of equipment. They wanted to know how I got it and what had happened to it. Apparently, there was a computer in the machine with patients' records. But like I told them, I didn't even know about the computer until I saw it on the news. For years, I worked on my own, selling and repairing new, used and refurbished medical equipment. Basically, anything and everything with a plug. I was generally referred to as a “field service technician,” “field service representative,” or “field service engineer.” Take your pick—they all mean the same thing. I wasn't making a big lot at it, but I was making a damn size more than I am taxiing.

Everything that Eastern Health got rid of, I was the last stop before the dump. What you got to understand is when a machine became redundant and had to be replaced, they would keep the old one around for several months to make sure that the new one was working. When they determined their new machine was working properly, the old one got tossed. If I didn't take it, it was going to the dump. Say your wife wants to renovate your kitchen. After you get it half done, she says, “We need to get a new fridge and stove.” What do you do with your old fridge and stove? You check to see if any relatives want it for their cabin, or something like that. Two weeks later, the fridge and stove is still sitting in the kitchen. Then the wife decides she's going to throw the things out. That's exactly what they used to do in the hospitals.

A lot of the instruments down there were worn out. Seven to ten years is the average lifespan of a piece of equipment. God only knows how long some of that stuff was down there. Take a family of twelve, for instance. How long is that washer and dryer going to last in their house? Not very long. If you have a family of four, you'll probably get ten years out of it. A family of twelve won't. That's what it was like for a lot of the stuff at Eastern Health.

I know we're not talking about the taxi industry here. I'm just trying to explain to you how I got back into it. The short order of it is I had no other choice.

I had taken this autostainer about five years before the inquiry started up. They asked me if I wanted it: “Get it out of our way.”

I made a living the best way I could. I knew the instrument had some value, and I didn't want to see it go to the landfill. If that machine had been absolute garbage, I would still have taken it for parts.