Back Door to L.A. (Eddie Miles novels Book 2) by Jack Clark

Author:Jack Clark [Clark, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jack Clark Ink
Published: 2016-09-12T12:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-NINE

I liked riding buses. I always saw plenty that I missed while driving the same streets in the cab. I even liked waiting at bus stops if it wasn't too cold. It usually reminded me of my days as a juvenile delinquent, hanging out with the corner boys on Madison Street watching the world go by.

But it felt strange not to have a car to call my own. Ernie's cab might not have been exclusively mine. But it had been mine from six at night until six in the morning seven nights a week, and that was usually all the wheels I needed.

Now I didn't have anything but the Chicago Transit Authority. The Montrose bus got me up to Western Avenue. But there wasn't a Western bus in sight.

Lack of wheels had gotten me into the cab business in the first place. I was recently divorced and delivering pizzas which was nice because it meant daily pay. Unfortunately, I was spending most of what I made just as quickly in one saloon or another.

I'd blown a head gasket on my Chevy but I didn't have enough money to fix it. Without the car, I was suddenly out of work. Someone in a bar suggested driving a cab to get the money for repairs.

This was the desperation job of choice back then. A few million Chicagoans before me had probably said, "Worse come to worse, I can always drive a cab."

The ad in the Tribune said, "A thinking fellow drives a Yellow." And that’s where I went. They took what little money I had, gave me a two hour training course, and sent me downtown to take a twenty-five question test and be fingerprinted. Later that same day I had my temporary license and exclusive use of a shiny Yellow Cab.

And I actually liked the job. I'd always liked driving, and now I found that I didn't mind driving and driving and driving. I'd stop home to take a quick nap and count my money. I didn't have to wait for somebody to order a pizza. I could go out and find someone who needed a ride. I didn't have a boss breathing down my neck. Even the worst passengers were usually out of the cab in a couple of minutes.

Times had changed. Now, if you were starting out, you needed to go to a city school full time for two weeks. That cost a couple hundred bucks. After school, you had to take an 80-question test. If you passed that, you still had to take a drug test and a physical and pay for both out of your own pocket. The English proficiency test and fingerprints were free. But before you got your Chicago taxi license, got behind the wheel, and picked up your first passenger, you'd probably spend more than five hundred bucks and at least a month of your time. This was the main reason Americans no longer drove taxis. With their language problems, the foreign guys didn't have much choice.

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