As Christmas approaches I am going to take you to Ft Worth, TX and over the next few days you will meet some people I became friends with that most people would never meet.  On Christmas day I will share with you a very humble taxi tale which will live in my heart forever.  Like my story about Phillip this is a no punches held back accounting of things just like they happened.  For those of you who can appreciate the fact that there is good in everyone . . .  even those in the bowels of a city . . . then you will find a lot of love and redemption from some of my taxi tales, but if you are offended easily and think you are too good to even read about someone because they might sell their bodies or even their souls to survive . . . . then this is probably time to tune out.  Just giving you warning.

It was 1981 and only two weeks after Harry Chapin was killed.  Since I received the news I had felt like my best friend passed away.  I had been depressed and had to take some time off the cross country trucking job I had been working at non-stop for the last three years.  When I got back into Springdale, Arkansas a few days before I had turned my truck in and told them I didn't know when I would be back.  I had to have some time off.

Inside I  I knew I wouldn't be back.  I was closing a chapter of my life and getting ready to open a new one.  I wasn't sure where or when, but there was a blank page before me and it didn't have eighteen wheels on it.  I didn't know much about taxicabs other than they were kind of like little trucks that picked up at point A and dropped off at point B.  "What's the difference?"  I thought to myself.

Of course you usually knew what to expect from what ever you loaded on a truck. I suppose with people I couldn't be so certain. I slowly made my way down to Texas where my drivers license was registered.  When I came to the path in the Interstate where I had to choose between Ft Worth and Dallas I chose Ft Worth and thanked Robert Frost for helping me make that decision.  It appeared to be the path less traveled .

Arriving in Cowtown I checked into a Motel 6.  "How many nights?" the desk clerk inquired.

I  was thinking about Ft. Worth and had let my thoughts wonder.  "I don't know." I responded.  "Probably one" was my answer, but thinking out loud I thought about the city where I used to talk to the traffic giving the news on the radio as they drove home from work and added. "Maybe the rest of my life."

"Here?" he looked at me like he feared I might be checking in to one of his rooms to blow my brains out and leave a mess for him to clean up.

"Just thinking out loud", I said.  "Don't panic."

In my room I wasted no time.  There were several taxi companies in the Yellow Pages, but I wanted my first taxi to be yellow.  Just a thing.  If I ever buy I firetruck I want my first one to be red.  The taxi company was hard to find, hidden behind an auto dealership on a dead end street.    Really a dump to be quiet frank just off West Seventh and hidden away so the public couldn't see all the junk taxis they had laying around everywhere.

 I talked to the operations manager and he outlined the rules. He told me for the first week I would only be allowed to work 12 hour days on half day leases.  I would check a taxi out and bring it back in 12 hours with $35 to pay for the day's lease.  I bought my own gas and everything else was mine  I soon learned it often took 10 hours to break even and I might make a profit in the last two hours.

But before I could start I had top spend half a day riding with an experienced driver.  He had the dispatcher call for one.

The experienced driver arrived and off we went and we soon had our first fare.  We took dispatches from the radio and stayed busy for about two hours and then came a break. While waiting for the next fare I thought we we just cruising.  We weren't.  He was taking me somewhere. 

He turned into a cemetery and drove up to a grave.  I saw where a man whom I calculated to have been 23 year old when he died was buried there and it had been about six months since his passing.. 'This was my best friend," the experienced driver told me.  "This is what can happen when you get stupid driving a cab.  He was murdered by a heroin addict for $15."

We got back in the taxi and my experienced cab driver/teacher said, "Use your outside mirrors for traffic.  The one on the front windshield should always be focused on the eyes of your passengers.

When the day ended I had been given a lot to think about before I returned the next day to begin my first half day lease on my own.