The Other Side of Midnight (8 page)

A month before the inquiry was over, they called me: “Do you know about this piece of equipment?”

“Vaguely.” I mean, I've shipped parts and equipment to six different continents.

I went down and testified. Anyway, they cut me off at the knees. In so many words, Eastern Health said my services would no longer be needed. Ninety per cent of my business was gone overnight. My options were limited, but I just happened to know the taxi industry. I know how to make a living at it; I haven't got to learn anything. Anyone who gets into this industry new does it because there's nothing else that they can do. For almost everybody who is over fifty or sixty, they're probably at it to supplement their income. You almost need to be on a pension, because sometimes you don't make minimum wage at this. I talked to a girl out in the Goulds at one of the local convenience stores. Her father is retired, and he went taxiing. About a month ago, he worked for nine hours on a Saturday and made $8. That's true. I've done it. Not recently, but I've done it.

Some people have no idea. Pick a Saturday or a Sunday morning when there's fuck all doing. How long are you prepared to sit in that car? Twelve hours in an average shift. We got eight or nine different places where we park: Knights of Columbus, Traveler's Inn, Stockwood's, the Quality Hotel, the Battery Hotel, Churchill Square, Cougar Helicopters, Stanley Steamer on Torbay Road, the trade schools. Workers' Compensation is another. We got small law firms. Stuff like that. You go find one of the stands to park at and hope that it gets busy. At any given time there are twenty-five to thirty-five cars on the road. If it doesn't get busy, you don't make any money.

What do you think is the longest shift I've ever worked? Twenty-eight hours without a break. My mortgage was due, and I never had it. I went to work until I got it. That's downright fucking dangerous. That's shit you shouldn't be at, but there are guys who do that on a regular basis.

Here it's quarter after seven in the evening. I've been up since five o'clock this morning. Someone could say to me right now, “Here's $800. Take me to Corner Brook.” I'd be gone in a flash. Our stand rent is $335 a week. We pay our stand rent on Wednesdays. I got to pay them $335 tomorrow for stand rent. Today, this is a bad day. Right now, I've probably made $100 cash, including charges. Forty-seven dollars of that comes out for my stand rent. That leaves me with $53. I've got to put gas in the car. That's $10, or $15. That leaves me with $30. I smoke. I bought a pack of cigarettes today. You can't take sandwiches with you if you're out twelve or fifteen hours. It's just not practical. If you get a bite to eat, what are you left with when you get home? Not much.

Every year we got to bring our taxis down to get them inspected. You bring them to the garage, and then you bring them down to City Hall. The taxi inspector just makes sure you got all your paper work, that you got $1 million in liability on your insurance. He'll check out to make sure your signal lights are working. Just basic stuff. You've come from a garage and you've had your car inspected by a licensed mechanic. Then you pay the taxi inspector his $100 fee that goes to City Hall for your licence for a year.

There's just no end to the fees. There are fees for fucking everything. When I put this car on two-and-a-half years ago, it cost me $1,700. I had to pay it off before I put her on the road because you can't drive a taxi with a loan on it. The car company knows you're going to run that car down to the ground. So I had to take out a second mortgage to pay off the car and to pay off some other bills that allow me to go taxiing so I don't have too many bills racked up to the point where I can't make enough to live on. I had to get a meter and a sign installed: $700. My first insurance policy: $2,500. That had to be paid up front.

Then you're working all night and you get this asshole that jumps out of your car at two o'clock in the morning that owes you $50. If you're driving for someone else, you got to gas up. Now instead of making $250 for that busy night you're only making $200. Do you know what a “water haul” is? Ever see a fisherman haul up his net and there's fuck all in it? It's the same thing as going to somebody's house and nobody comes out. That's a water haul. If they send me to Mount Pearl, that's five bucks in gas and an hour out of my time wasted. You wait fifteen minutes because you want to make sure you're going to get your job. So you lost an hour on a busy Friday night, and you got $5 in gas burned. You get two or three of them in a night, and it'll ruin you. A typical Friday or Saturday night, you got $60 worth of gas gone, you bought a pack of smokes and something to eat because you've been working twelve hours. You got $70 left: $35 for the guy who owns the car, and $35 for yourself. You go home and say to the wife, “This is what I made.”

She says, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because no one else will have me.”

The other day, this lady got in the car. I got a rattle in the back. I know what it is. It's the sway-bar bushing. It can make an awful racket if you hit the right bump. Later that day, missus phoned in and complained down to the stand. The manager told me, “You're probably going to have to take your car off the road.”

I called back. “Listen here, you get that lady who called. Tell her to pick the mechanic of her choice, and I'll get a full inspection done.”

I don't drive a Cadillac, but I look after what I got. The thing about it is, if I lose a motor tomorrow I'm out of business. I can't afford to put a motor in the car. So then I got to go to work for somebody else. If that happens, I got to get another job because that isn't going to cut it. That person probably got two drivers on the car: a day driver and a night driver. The day driver wants to work certain hours, and the night driver wants to work certain hours.

A few months back, a guy in a truck ran up the side of my car. That was $4,000 worth of damage. Buddy struck me in an F-150 pickup truck just down the road here on O'Leary Avenue. He hit me—it was clearly his fault. He told me it was his fault: “Sorry about that. I wasn't looking.” The passenger in the back heard what he said. I was stopped, he was going, and he hit me. My insurance company contacted his insurance company. You know what they said? I'm 100 per cent at fault. I'm taking him to small claims court. [
He
points to a camera mounted on the dash.
] If I'd had that in my car at the time, I wouldn't have to prove a thing. Everything would have been on tape. It was the best $78 I've ever spent.

I put this car on the road the day after the Cameron Inquiry. That's two and a half years ago. Co-Op Taxi was the only stand that had an available licence. When I had the car on in 1997 or 1998 it was with Co-Op. If I wanted, I could leave here now and in a half an hour I'd have a taxi on at any of the stands in St. John's. Because I got the experience. But they're all alike. What's better, the devil you know or the devil you don't know? That's exactly the way it is.

Look, a lot of guys in the taxi industry, they're at it because they can't catch a break—for whatever reason. They're not necessarily illiterate; they probably got a good education. I mean, there's teachers and everything else that's after driving a taxi at one time or an- other. After the inquiry, I applied for fifty jobs. I'm probably the most experienced lab technician in the province—maybe in Canada— and I couldn't get a job. No one ever gave me a reason why they wouldn't hire me. I'm after taking stuff off of my resume. Can you believe that? I had to take stuff off of my fucking resume. It was either I had too much experience, or they thought I was looking for too much money, or because I was too old. I'm driving a taxi not because I want to but because I got to.

There Is No Life as a Taxi Driver

Brian, driving for four years

I was working for Newfoundland Farm Products Corporation as a plant manager. A year before they privatized the place they made my job redundant and put me out through the door.

I was eighteen months away from a full pension. Then, all of a sudden, I had nothing. I developed a stress disease. I went to my family doctor, and he said, “If you don't do something soon, you've got four to six months before you're in a box.”

“Is that so?” I said. “You have a good day.”

I left his office, went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of rum and started drinking.

My wife came home and said, “What's going on?”

I said, “Nothing. I'm just having a few drinks.”

It was out of the normal because I never drank like that.

The next day, I got up, made a few phone calls, and went to work for AT & T Canada as a sales representative. I stayed at that for a few months, and then I went into business with Integrated Poultry Limited. They had just bought out Newfoundland Farm Products Corporation. IPL never lasted; they went under. But I knew that, anyway. Having been the plant manager down there, I knew right away what was going on. I knew the industry inside out. When they went under, Country Ribbon took it over. Because I was only there under contract, they got someone else to do the work I was doing for them.

When that finished, I went to work up in Alberta, did some training and came back home.

I knew Peter Gulliver, and I asked him if he was in need of any drivers. He said, “Sure. Come to work with us. No problem.” I've been here ever since.

In order to make any money at this racket you got to work a lot of hours. I used to make $60,000 a year. I worked eight hours five days a week and made $60,000 a year with six weeks holidays. With taxiing, you got to work every day. You can't have weekends off because if you take weekends off you won't make enough money. You can come out here and work twelve hours and go home with $30 in your pocket. Whereas you can go downtown on a Friday or Saturday night and make ten times as much.

There is no life as a taxi driver. There is just no life. But you got to make a living. I usually come out around ten or eleven o'clock and I stay on until twelve or one in the morning. Last year, I started driving the school bus. I get up at seven o'clock and pick up the bus and start working. I could take off a day, or two days, or however many I want to take off, but then I got no salary coming in.

I was out of a job for thirteen months, and I had to use my pension in order to live. I had a mortgage and car payments. I had to draw on my pension to live. If I had left my pension alone, if I was able to, I'd have a pension today and I wouldn't have to be out taxiing. But I couldn't do that.

For me to get another job I would have to leave the province. At my age, I'm not going to do that. I'm fifty-seven. I'll be fifty-eight on my birthday. I'll be doing this for another little while, I guess— until my wife retires. Then I'll say to hell with it. Life's too short.

I'm Stuck at This

Steven, driving for eight years

I hurt my arm; I got repetitive strain. You can tell because I have to hold it up. It happened while I was working on an assembly line doing the same thing over and over again 5,000 times a day. For five and a half years, I did everything Workers' Compensation wanted me to do. Most people go down to the Miller Centre for six weeks. My treatments ended up lasting six months. I went down every day doing foolish stuff like walking up and down the hall with a wooden box in my arms. I took injections of cortisone and did hydrotherapy. Compensation classified me with what's called “permanent functional impairment.” That got me $5,500 out of them. They give you the money because you're stuck with the injury for the rest of your life. But five grand is nothing. Then they offered me a taxi. I was like, “No, I don't want to go taxiing. I don't want to drive people around. Give me a little van for couriering.”

“No, you can't do that,” they said, “because you have to lift stuff.”

I said, “That's not lifting. That's envelopes and small parcels.”

It seemed to be the thing back then. People would say, “Go down and tell them you want a taxi. They'll buy you a car, or a van. Whatever you want.” I guess it depends on how long you're on compensation and what your injury is. If you lost both of your legs, it's no good giving you a taxi.

Then they told me to get a job as a meter reader. She said, “You got ten weeks to get a job at it, or you're cut off.”

I said, “A job with Newfoundland Power?”

“Yes, you got ten weeks.”

I said, “My ducky, you need a letter from God to get a job with Newfoundland Power. I haven't worked in five and a half years. I wouldn't even hire me.”

“If you think a letter from God will help, maybe you should get one.” Those were her exact words.

I sold everything off, and me and the missus and the four kids moved to Ontario. I had no reason to go to Ontario. We were fine here; I was getting enough on compensation. I was Mr. Mom, and she was working. At least we had two incomes coming in. Then my wife had a nervous breakdown and came back to Newfoundland out of it. She never came back to me. I went painting cars for a little while. Then I went detailing cars—fancy cars. But you don't make a living at that when your rent is $1,200 a month. You're only getting $15 an hour. I said, “I got to get out of here. I don't care if I'm flipping burgers.”

I phoned my buddy, and he said, “I'll get you a job taxiing.”

I came back home, and I started at this. At first, I loved it. Then I liked it. Then I didn't mind it. Now I hate it. In a half an hour, I'll have eight hours punched in. As it is now, since four o'clock this morning, I haven't made fifty bucks, and that's everything on the meter. I'm working for about $3 an hour. Since four o'clock, I think I've had five jobs. That's it. I wouldn't recommend taxiing to an enemy, to be honest. It's the only job I know where you don't get stamps, you don't get compensation, and you don't get holidays, or sick leave. If you don't work, you don't get paid. I'm in a bind now. My rent was due last week. I had $120 for him yesterday, and the only reason I came up with that is because I went to Placentia for $285. I only have the use of one arm, and I can't do anything else. I'm stuck at this.