2/27/23
Newsletter #260
The Crack of Dawn
In 1978 when the bunch of us were twenty, me, Bruce and our two buddies, John and Mike, all started driving cabs for Southfield Cab on the night shift. Southfield is the largest suburb of Detroit, and we were only allowed to pick up in Southfield, but then we could go anywhere, although it was usually Detroit.
It was entirely a cash business and we didn’t have protective shields between the front and the back. Southfield Cab was owned by the Bezak family, although they only owned about fifty of the cabs. A wonderful old guy named Ben Wyler owned forty cabs, and the renegade, black sheep, youngest brother, Ray Bezak, owned one cab – #33. Ray hired me to drive his cab at night, and he drove in the day. On my first day Ray explained the job. He kept a three-foot screwdriver in the front seat that he called the “sticker.” Ray said, “Someone gives you shit, don’t even turn around, just stick ‘em with the sticker.” He said, “You’re gonna get a gun, right?” I said no. Ray said, “Yeah you will. And remember, after you shoot somebody make sure to put a shot through the ceiling.” I naturally asked why. Ray said, “When the cops get there you say, ‘I told him to stop, he wouldn’t stop, so I fired a warning shot through the roof. He still wouldn’t stop, so I had to shoot him.’”
Instead of buying a gun, I took a different approach – be nice to everybody. I brought a cassette tape player with me and about ten tapes. If black folks got in the cab (which was the majority of our customers), I put on Motown music. If old white ladies got in, classical. Rednecks, Hank Williams. If they looked hip enough, jazz. If they wanted to smoke “herb,” go ahead. My theory was, you don’t rob someone who’s being friendly to you.
This was soon born out when John, the surliest and snottiest of our bunch (who went on to produce many of the Coen brothers’ movies), was robbed at gunpoint. John and Mike immediately quit. Bruce, on the other hand, stopped driving and became a dispatcher. Being a taxi dispatcher is extremely difficult and most people can’t do it. I gave it one try and I couldn’t do it. You’re in contact with 40-50 cabs on the dispatch radio, and you’re answering a telephone with ten lines. As calls come in, sometimes ten at a time, you radio out the location, like “Ten south,” meaning Ten Mile Rd. and Southfield Rd., then all these cabs start radioing back their locations, “Nine south,” “Eight south, “Ten green” (meaning Greenfield Rd.), and you assign the ride to whomever you deem closest. For most of us this turned into an untenable shitstorm in about ten minutes. Bruce, on the other hand, being an actor and all, could not only do it, but was able to parody it while doing it. Bruce noticed that when the phone rang the other dispatchers would immediately begin saying, “Southfield Cab,” as they reached for and answered the phone. Therefore, the customer was only hearing, “—Outhfield Cab.” So, Bruce would answer with, “—Outhfield Cab,” which he kept shortening to, “—Field Cab,” and finally, “—Ab.”
Bruce finally quit, too, but I kept driving for two more years. I watched many drivers come and go. Many of them got robbed or stiffed, and coincidentally, many of them were unfriendly people. Oddly, driving a cab at night in Detroit carrying a box of cash in your car didn’t seem to attract particularly congenial people. Nevertheless, I continued with my “Be Nice to Everybody” policy, and in three years I was never once robbed or stiffed.
One night I picked up a young black kid of about eighteen and took him to the biggest, shittiest housing project in Southfield, on Eight Mile Rd., the now-famous border of Detroit. We pulled up in front of a building with about five hundred apartments. The kid said, “Oh, man, I haven’t got any money on me. Is it OK if I go in there and get some?” If he went into that building there was no reason on Earth he ever had to come out – I’d never be able to find him. So I unhesitatingly said, “Sure.” It was a $3.00 run so I wasn’t risking much. The kid was flabbergasted and said, “I can just go in there and get the money?” and I said, “Sure.” The kid went into building and I thought to myself, “I’ll give him ten minutes,” and lit a cigarette. Just as I was finishing my cigarette the kid returned and paid me the three dollars in rolls of pennies. I kept those rolls of pennies for years.
There was a public safety commercial in the early 1960s warning kids to not play with “Blasting caps.” What were blasting caps? Although they didn’t explain, blasting caps are used to detonate dynamite. Even in the early ‘60s dynamite wasn’t commonly used in construction anymore; not since they completed the Interstate freeways blasting tunnels through the Rocky Mountains. The announcer warned, “These are blasting caps. Do not touch them. They will hurt you.” Although I was only five or six at the time, I remember thinking, “Is this really a big problem? Why are you wasting my time?”
Y’all come back now, hear.