I started driving a taxi in the summer of 1977. I had just (in)completed my first year of college that April. By the time July slid around I figured I should find myself a summer job.... then I saw an ad at the student job bank. Someone was asking for people with a knowledge of Hamilton to drive cab.
"Hmmmm....", I thought. Taxi driving might be an interesting job. Go places, meet interesting people, make good money plus tips. Why not?
Subsequently, I learned a few facts of life as it relates to taxi driving in Hamilton:
there is no place to go
"take me to the Moosehead."
"take me to the Carleton."
"take me to the Balmoral."
"take me to the Galley Pump."
"take me to the Wellington House."
"take me to Copper John's."
"take me to Hawzies."
"take me to de-tox."
there are very few interesting people
"I'm gonna pick up a six pack and go watch the game." (lucky you)
"Will the groceries all fit in there?"
"Is it OK with you if I just puke out the window?"
"I've been drinking for the last 72 hours."
"The Leafs are winning!"
"Belch."
"They have the money at the other end."
"I've been drinking for the last 72 hours."
"That Harris is an asshole."
"I'm a senior"
"I've been drinking for the last 72 hours."
"Don't worry driver, it was just a fart."
"I just put my hand in something!"
"take me to de-tox."
Money?
if you want to keep on smoking and drinking resign yourself to living in some room above a tavern.
and if you want to eat.... you'd better quit smoking and drinking anyway.
See Robert De Niro in the film Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese.
What night driver hasn't started to go a little insane after being on the mean streets for a period of time? You can buy the movie. Available in VHS and/or
DVD from amazon.com. Also available on DVD in widescreen format.
"The state is that fictitious entity by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else."
Milton Friedman
"Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.... Economic freedom is also an indespensable means toward the achievement of political freedom."
Ayn Rand
"Any alleged right of one person which necessitates the violation of the rights of another is not, and can never be a right.”
."
H.L. Mencken
The theory behind representative government is that superior men--or at all events, men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity--are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honesty. There is little support for that theory in the known facts...
Ludwig von Mises
"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."
Robert Green Ingersoll
"Without Liberty, the brain is a dungeon."
Oliver W. Holmes
"The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think."
