For decades many people have told me that I should write a book of my experiences. I am what my wife calls a ‘weird magnet’ or what I refer to as a ‘strangeness attractor’. In other words, unusual occurrences always seem to find me even though I never seek them out.
Many of these events happened during the ten years of my adult life spent behind the wheel of a taxicab. These ten years were not consecutive. They were from 1973 to 1979, 1984 to 1985, and 1988 to 1991. And, they were not in the same geographical area. The first six years were in the Tidewater, Virginia area, and the last four were in and around Phoenix, Arizona.
To this day I still consider myself a cab driver, though I’ve been successful at several other endeavors that have nothing to do with driving. And I don’t think I’ll ever actually haul human cargo for a living again. But, with the economic downturn, who knows? Once being a cabbie gets in your blood you’ll never be rid of the urge to immerse yourself in the side of humanity with very few pretensions.
I was twenty years old when I first got behind the wheel of a cab. I was attending community college and cab driving seemed like a good fit with the flexible hours and independence it seemed to offer. It was the first Nixon administration, the Vietnam War and the Cold War were in full swing. Men were walking on the Moon and the sexual revolution was in full swing. I was single, and I was in a young single man’s paradise.
The primary tourist demographic in Virginia Beach in the late 60s through the mid 70s consisted of college aged men and women. This was in the days before Affirmative Action and the tons of government tuition programs, so there was a high degree of intelligence to be found among the tourists. The Draft was still on and you had to maintain a C average to keep from getting pulled into the military. So the majority of the young tourists I met from out of state were pretty smart. But this is not to say that the tourists were mostly male. Oh no, not at all. Many young ladies came to the beach from Northern colleges and art schools in droves because of the many sailors and other young service men that were stationed nearby.
Forty years ago Virginia Beach was a small sized resort town that bloomed from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It was somewhat dependent on the three month long tourist season, but in the off season it had the advantage of being a bedroom community for the city of Norfolk.
As far as cab driving in Virginia Beach went, there were very few of the associated vices that go along with being a hack in the large urban areas like New York or Chicago. There was some prostitution along with a few other shady things, but it was easy for a cab driver to stay clear of those elements and still make a good living. Robberies inflicted on cabbies were not completely unknown, but in six years there I heard of just one of two and did not personally know any of the victims.
Probably the neatest thing about living and working at the Virginia Beach oceanfront was the fact that I did not need a car. My cab office was a few miles inland and the boss let me drive the cab to and from home. And when I was not working, I could do everything on foot, including shopping, entertainment, and partying. Virginia Beach back then was a unique mix of the military, counterculture, Southern heritage, foreigners, artists, spiritualists, and freethinkers. And I was a cabbie right in the middle of it all.
This first post is simply an introduction. I have many stories to tell, and though lots of them involve cab driving, many do not.
You may be wondering just what the term ‘high flagging’ means. It comes from a time when taxicab meters were mechanical and not electronic as they are today. There was a metal ‘flag’ that protruded from the front of the meter that usually was located on the dashboard of the cab. When it was in the ‘high’ position, the flag was up, meaning the meter was off, and was visible from outside the cab. When the meter was running, the flag was down. If you had a passenger or passengers and your flag was in the up (meter off) position, you were ‘high flagging’ and not reporting revenue to the company. It was an illegal practice as well as dishonest and the police would stop you if they noticed.
More to come.
