Violence

March 16, 2005

Cowardly Statists Harass the Weak

Hard Lesson

It was the spring of 1979. I was driving car number 18 for Yellow Cab. Dispatch sent me to a street on Hamilton Mountain, 82 Atwater.

I arrived in front of the house a few minutes later to observe a house full of young people, a typical drinking party. I honked the horn and someone came to the living room window and gave me the "one minute" signal with his index finger. After you have driven cab for a while you learn that the "one-minute" signal actually means:

"We ain't ready yet so you'll just have to wait until we are good and ready, which could take from five minutes to half an hour. Then again, we might not come out at all because... you see.... we still haven't even decided if we are going anywhere. We still have to spend half an hour arguing about where we're going to get pissed to the gills tonight. Yeh, we know we're wasting your time but hey, cabs are expensive, and if we're going to pay five bucks for a taxi ride you'll just have to put up with it even though you're hourly rate this trip will be reduced to peanuts. And woe to you if you have the temerity to turn on the meter before we enter the cab. Why should we pay for the time we are consuming if we aren't actually in the cab?"

Well, I was a pretty green driver at this time. Not that green though. I could plainly see this was shaping up to be one of those "fuck-you-Jack" trips. "Sure, we called a cab... but we really don't give a fuck whether you sit out front all night for the five bucks we might be spending." Too green to know that I was about to make a very serious mistake.

Impatient as ever, I decided to go up to the door to see if anyone would be requiring my services before the end of the millenium. A guy came to the door as I held it open and told me, "No one called a cab here!" Considering I had already received the classic "one-minute" signal it was obvious I was now being treated to the full "fuck-you-Jack" where the driver gets no trip at all.

"Temper, temper." I should have thought as I walked quietly back to my cab. But not on this particular evening. I looked at the guy on the other side of the screen door and said, "If you don't want a fucking cab, don't call one!" Then I slammed the door shut and started back to the cab.

The guy behind the door took offense to this and came out of the house after me. I guess them was fightin' words, and this guy now wanted to fight. He had a beer bottle in his hand and, to put clear emphasis on the degree of insult he was feeling, he smashed it on the driveway. As soon as the bottle smashed another guy came charging out of the house.

This second guy, also carrying a beer bottle raised it over his head while still standing on the veranda and threw it towards me with a great deal of force. I tried to duck it, but instead moved right into it's path. It struck me on the left side of my forehead. Yup, "I am a Canadian." I immediately grabbed the wound with my hand.

It didn't really hurt that much but something told me I got hit pretty good. I rushed back to the cab believing I now had two guys after me. I opened the door with my free hand, then let go of the wound with the other hand to grap the mike and call for help. Well, when I let go of the wound blood gushed out like Niagara Falls.... I had never seen so much blood. This scared the hell out of me. I actually thought I might bleed to death. So when I got the mike I called for help and an ambulance.

Suddenly, the guy who smashed the bottle on the driveway was there... but he was helping me. I remember him telling me he had taken first aid and putting pressure on the wound. Weird ey?

The cabs got there first. Then the ambulance and finally the cops. When the cops asked me who did it I couldn't identify the guy. It had all happened too quickly. No one was arrested.

At the hospital I recall a cop interviewing the doctor who stitched me up. The doctor apparently didn't think I was telling the truth about what happened. He told the cop, "No, this guy didn't get hit with a bottle. It wasn't a cut... it was more of a gouge."

Maybe the guy shot me then! I dunno... it sure looked like a beer bottle.

This whole experience makes me want to paraphrase part of a short speech made by Seargent Barnes (brilliant perfomance by Tom Berenger) in the great Oliver Stone film, "Platoon":

"Out here on the streets you keep your shit wired tight at all times. You fuck up in a beer bottle fight and I god-damned-guarantee you a trip from the address..... in an ambulance!"

To this day, I tend to be cautious when knocking on doors. Instead of getting mad I just leave when that magical time threshold after the signal has been passed.

Domestic

Oh, there was one other time I learned something. It was during my first week of cab driving I think. I was sent to another house on the mountain. When I arrived I heard a lot of screaming and yelling and things being smashed and broken inside the house. Then a woman came out of the house and over to my cab. She opened the passenger door and told me she didn't need me. Unlike most people, she gave me a dollar for showing up.

"That's fine." I said and got ready to leave. Suddenly the man of the house came dashing out and toward me. He leaned in the cab and asked me how much she had given me. I told him it was a dollar and he demanded it back. So I gave it to him.

Apparently that wasn't enough. He then told me to give him more. When I refused he started swinging his fists at me. None connected but I was scared by this guy so I put out a call for the police.

A male friend of the guy came out and wrestled him away from the cab. He managed to calm the guy down then came over to the cab and asked me if I had called the cops. When I told him I had the maniac heard me and freaked out again. He ran over to the cab again and sailed over the hood punching the windshield and cracking it. Then he came rushing around to the driver's side of the cab. I guessed I had no choice but to fight this guy now so I jumped from the vehicle. Fortunately the friend guy managed to restrain the maniac yet again.

The cops finally came and took the guy away and I went back to work shaken but unhurt.

The lesson? If you pull up to an address and you hear yelling and screaming and things breaking and smashing..... get the hell outa there! You really don't want a trip from this place.

Chivalry

Sometimes, you go home feeling really lousy. Like the night I was dispatched to some club over on Kennilworth North where a wedding had just ended and a mob of rowdy partiers were assembled on the sidewalk. About nine people climbed into my cab.... too many, we are only supposed to take five, but I wasn't going to get into an argument about it with this bunch.

A woman was just getting into the front seat but her legs were still on the sidewalk. She was arguing with her boyfriend who suddenly rushed over to the cab and slammed the door on her legs with all his might. Part of me felt like one of those things you see at the fall fair, you know, where a guy takes a great big hammer and smashes it down on this pad and a steel ball or something goes up this vertical rail. The aim of the game is to swing the hammer hard enough to get the steel ball or whatever it is to rise all the way to the top and ring the bell. The winner gets some useless prize like a stuffed dog or something.

Well, when that guy slammed the door on her legs my steel ball almost knocked the bell right out of the top of my head. I hate this job. I don't know whether he broke any bones but she was in agony. I think if I had a gun at the time I would have shot the guy where he stood. And I know I wouldn't have lost any sleep over it. One dead low-life. Who the fuck cares? The job can do that to you... it's why I was so impressed with Robert De Niro's performance in the film Taxi Driver. You talking to me?

Then the guy got into the cab and started apologizing, claiming it had all been an accident. "Yeah," I thought, "an accident, a simple miscalculation, he didn't see her legs sticking out of the door, he was only trying to be chivalrous, closing the door for the lady." Something told me this wasn't the first such "accident".

Growing Up

Well, I got an insight another time as to where this vicious prick came from. I was dispatched to an address on King Street East, I think it was a karate studio or something. There was a boy, ten or so years old. He got in and gave me an address on Cannon Street East. When we arrived he went in to get the money. He didn't come back out. Finally, I went up to the door to try to collect the fare. There were three or four guys sitting in the living room who all looked like Charles Manson... beards, dark, dirty, stringy, hair... wrinkled dirty denim and tattoos all over the place. The stereo was blasting some kind of scratchy-screamy rock'n'roll.... "Highway to Hell" or something like that. Of course, I'm often wrong about a lot of things.. so maybe these guys were actively involved in the local little league association and had met on this pleasant evening to work out the up-coming T-ball schedule.

I knocked on the door and no one even looked up. They were all either meditating or quite stoned. I knocked harder and finally one of the Manson types noticed me at the door, stood up and slithered over. I asked for the fare and he slithered back into the hell-hole to get some cash. I got paid. As I was turning to leave I caught a glimpse of what was going on in the kitchen... a woman, large and tough looking, obviously quite at home in this environment, was violently whacking the kid left and right across the head. What a place for a ten year old kid to grow up. He'll be slamming some car doors when he gets older.

I have no idea why the woman was hitting the poor kid, but it sure wasn't because he cheated on the math test.

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1. Translations.
2. Trust Me.
3. Drive!
4. Stoned Man!
5. I'm a Canadian!
6. Violence.

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last modified:Wednesday,March 19, 2008 at 04:40