I don’t react violently to getting stiffed—which means not receiving a tip. A lot of drivers do. I realize there are some people who are barely just able to afford cabs, who really can’t afford to tip. People who live in fairly rough neighborhoods, who are afraid to walk the streets and feel much safer taking a cab. There are others, who may have recently immigrated, who aren’t familiar with the custom. Puerto Ricans generally tip. Mexicans don’t, as a rule. Apparently Mexican cabdrivers don’t expect to get tipped. A matter of custom. I don’t feel I’m the one to familiarize them. Some other driver will, one way or another. I can say for sure that the best tippers are not the people who live on Lake Shore Drive, or the businessmen. They’re generally the blue-collar people I pick up in the neighborhoods.
A lot of drivers, they’ll agree to almost anything the passenger will say, no matter how absurd. They’re angling for that tip. I’m not just going to nod my head in agreement with someone I don’t agree with, just for the sake of getting a tip. After five years I can handle myself pretty well in downtown traffic. A lot of drivers wind up with ulcers. They’re the most likely candidates for a heart attack. Driving a cab tends to shorten your life span—if one does it for a career—especially if the driver spends most of his time downtown.
And the fumes and the traffic. That driver is breathing in the exhausts all day. This applies specifically to drivers of Checker cabs.
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The ventilating system in this type of car is not constructed for the convenience of the driver. The vents are right in back of the engine. So we’re breathing in fumes from our own engines, as well as those of the other cars and trucks,
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The company doesn’t give a damn about the conditions of their cabs. Some of them are pretty wretched, low brakes, bald tires, bad valves, most anything. These cabs are given to part-timers. I see new drivers driving these junks day after day and breaking down with them. A cab has to break down five or six times before something is done about it. They’re dangerous. Neither the company nor the union gives a damn about us. As far as they’re concerned, we’re machines—as wretched as the cabs.
A person who’s driving a cab a number of years tends to become hardened. I hate having to turn somebody down. On the other hand, I think of the reality. I may have sixty, seventy dollars on me at the end of a good day. The money itself is expendable, but my life isn’t. I read of incidents in which drivers have been shot even after surrendering their money. This may sometimes happen in the case of junkies. I think most guys who hold up cabdrivers are junkies. They can’t control themselves. It’s not that they’re malicious people, it’s just that they’ve got this habit and they’re desperate. It’s fear. It’s fear that results in a lot of cabdrivers passing up black people. This includes black drivers.
On the right sun visor of every cab is a sign that says, “Not for Hire.” All we have to do is pull that visor down. When I’m ready to check in, even when I’m downtown, I throw the visor down. Then I’ll ask where he’s going, black or white. If the fare’s going in my direction, fine. Generally people understand. They know the real reason—I’m scared. Most people are aware that you have to lie.
After you’ve been driving a cab for a while, you can sort of tell—like a sixth sense—what his attitude is, whether or not he’s going to give you trouble. But you can’t always tell, that’s the point.
There’s appearance. The attire, such as the leather jacket and shades and this sort of menacing expression. I think it’s probably just a front. A lot of these fellas are just covering up. In their everyday life they feel themselves being really shit upon and they just have to feel that they’re somebody. And this is their way of manifesting it. Much as I hate to say it, I sometimes pass them up. Now if a guy is wearing an attire that is really far out—a brightly colored dashiki sort of thing or an unusually large natural—I’ll pick him up.
I was robbed once. The fella was dressed in a nondescript sort of fashion: white sport shirt, brown slacks, just medium-thick Afro. It happened last year. I picked him up downtown, in the afternoon, about three’. Brought him out south. On the way, we had a very amiable conversation. So it came as a complete surprise. When we got out there, he pulled a gun on me. First he got out of the cab and came around to my window to pay. It was a hot day so I had my windows open. I’d never suspected he’d draw a bead on me.
He came around the window and said, “Give me your money or I’ll kill you.” Naturally I gave him everything I had—about sixty-five. I gave him my changer and all the bills in my wallet. Funny thing, he didn’t demand my wallet. I just pulled out the bills and gave them to him. He ran into the alley. I wasn’t about to chase him. I was frozen, my mind was a blank. I was like paralyzed. Oh, wow! I just sat there for about ten minutes. Then I realized how close I had come to being wiped out.
I must admit that one incident sort of changed my attitude, made me a little more wary of who I was picking up thereafter. Before that incident, I didn’t really give anyone that thorough a going-over. A person would hail a cab and I’d pick them up. Now I really find myself deliberating: should I or shouldn’t I?
I don’t find myself getting into as many conversations. I’m not sure that’s due to a change in my own attitude or that of the public generally. It may be a bit of both. It’s especially true of women passengers, the younger ones. They have this fear—of not talking to strange men. People are just becoming more uptight.
People on the verge of a break up . . .
“One time I picked up a woman who wanted to go out to this landing strip at O‘Hare. She said her people were being held captive on the landing strip. ‘My countrymen . . . ’ She appeared to be an actress right out of one of those foreign intrigue films, very slender, with blonde hair, very expensively dressed. In this very thick Polish accent. I explained I couldn’t drive out to the landing strip. The passenger terminal was the best I could do. ‘That’s not good enough,’ she hopped out. I had a feeling as soon as she got in I wouldn’t be taking her anywhere, except maybe Chicago State.
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There’s been an occasion when I wish I could tell people I was something else than a cabdriver. I feel there’s a lot more I could be doing than just shuttling people from place to place for a price. Older guys with families, they have no choice. I wouldn’t want to raise a family as a cabdriver. At this point, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do. I had been intending to teach. But with the glut on the market, I don’t think by the time I get my B.A. I’ll stand much of a chance. I’m thinking of the field of mental health—if by the time I get my degree I still have my own sanity. (Laughs.)
WILL ROBINSON
He’s forty-seven. He has been a Chicago bus driver for twenty-seven years. He works the swing shift, which allows him a two-and-a-half-hour break in the middle of the day. He prefers it to the straight run because “going eight hours straight out there is kinda rough.”
During this Sunday conversation, his wife, on occasion, speaks her mind.
“It was a nice job in the beginning. As the time goes along, it gets harder. I was in the second bunch of blacks that was hired. Nineteen forty-five. The job was predominantly white. We had all kinds of facilities in the barn: we had pool tables, we had a little library, we even had a restaurant there. As more blacks came in, they started taking these things away. Now you don’t have anything to do but go in, check in for your run, check out, and go home.”
His wife recalls, “When the job was first given to blacks, it was a prestige job.”
“This was right after the war. It was a giant step coming from the Depression into a good job. I can remember when a black man, working on CTA,
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instead of wearing a dress suit on Sunday, they’d wear their uniforms because it was a prestige thing. It was a little Eisenhower jacket. I wore it on social occasions. I lost the sense of that, oh, about twenty years ago. It had status once. Not so today.”
You have your tension. Sometimes you come close to having an accident, that upsets you. You just escape maybe by a hair or so. Sometimes maybe you get a disgruntled passenger on there, and starts a big argument. Traffic. You have someone who cuts you off or stops in front of the bus. There’s a lot of tension behind that. You got to watch all the time. You’re watchin’ the drivers, you’re watchin’ other cars. Most of the time you have to drive for the other drivers, to avoid hitting them. So you take the tension home with you. And most of the runs are long runs. From one end of the line to the other would be about an hour and twenty minutes. Most of the drivers, they’ll suffer from hemorrhoids, kidney trouble, and such as that. I had a case of ulcers behind it.
In the beginning you had to punch transfers, we had to make change, we had to watch traffic. We had to do all this at the same time and drive. We had the tension when people who look suspicious would get on the bus. You had the tension as whether this was a stickup.
Then we’d have people get on the bus and pay their fare just like any other passenger, but all the time they’re a spotter, see? They’re watching everything that goes on. If there’s anything you do wrong, two or three days later you’re called into the office. I was called in about a year ago. (Laughs.) We have the fare boxes. As the people drop their money there’s a little lever there, and you’re supposed to continuously hit this lever so that the money can go down into the bottom. I was called in. Some spotter on the bus said I didn’t make the money go down—which was very erroneous. I’d forced a habit of just steady hitting this all the time. There’s a little door that lets the money go through. It’s spring operated. Once so much money gets in there the weight’ll make the door open anyway and it’ll fall down. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway. Once the money goes down all you can do is see it.
They will report if any passengers are getting by you without paying. They check up on the transfers that you issue—if you give someone a transfer with too much time on it, or if you accept a transfer that’s too late. A spotter will get on the bus and give you a transfer that’s late, purposely, to see if you’ll observe it.
Then you have the supervisors on the street. They’re in automobiles. If you’re running a minute ahead of time, they write you up and you’re called into the office. Sometimes they can really upset you. They’ll stop you at a certain point. Some of them have the habit of wanting to bawl you out there on the street. That’s one of the most upsetting parts of it.
If you’re running hot, ahead of time, they’re afraid you’re gonna miss some passengers. If I go out there and run three or four minutes hot, then the guy in back of me, he’s the one that gets all the passengers. You got a guy in front of you two or three minutes ahead, you gotta carry the whole street. It’s pretty rough.
They call these checkpoints. On my run I have three, four checkpoints between one terminal to the other. You’ll never know when they’ll be there. Most of ’em are in little station wagons. If you come late to a checkpoint, there isn’t much they can do about it. They allow you time for being late, with traffic conditions. But they say there’s no excuse for running ahead of time. They’ll suspend you for a day or two, whatever the whims of the superintendent. He’s the guy who has the say in the garage. If he decides to suspend you for a week, you lose a week’s work. If you’re caught running ahead of time, within about six months you’ll get whatever he feels he wants to give you.
The union, as far as that goes, it’s nothing. That’s why we was on strike. It was as against the union as against the Company. You don’t have any court of appeals. We had this wildcat about the buses not having good tires on the back. No threads, slick. That’s a hazard to us. It’s also endangering the lives of the passengers. During rainy weather or snowy weather, that’s when we’re really into it. We don’t have any traction whatsoever. That’s why I got off the Outer Drive. On those slippery mornings, you go into skids. That was one of our grievances. They promised there would be good tires on the buses. But it’s still the same.
I’m too young to get a pension and too old to be a checker, which is a safer job for yourself and the passengers. After you get a certain age, you don’t have the reflex you have when you’re younger. I think when a man gets up a certain age, they should give him the easier job. My doctor told me to quit driving. (Laughs.) But there’s nothing left for me to do, so I have to keep on driving. The earliest retirement age is sixty-two. I’ll be eligible to retire in about fifteen years. That means I’d have had to work forty-two years.
We should have a contract where we can retire after twenty-five years’ service. Service instead of age. When it came up before us, the pensioners didn’t go along. We got to negotiate a new contract, the absentee pensioners, livin’ in Florida, have the right to vote on it. They automatically vote against anything that’s progressive. They’re practically all white. The only thing they vote in favor of is the pension plan, because as it goes up for us, it goes up for them.
A fella worked with me that was eligible for a pension. He was so ill, his private doctors said he couldn’t work. He had a terrible case of bleeding ulcers. The company doctors said he could work. So he died fighting for his disability.
Mrs. Robinson remembers the early days: “They even had some kind of incentive. They used to give Will shirts if he didn’t have an accident. They’d give ’em all kinds of things to at least show they were aware that the men were trying to be good drivers. On Christmas, on Thanksgiving Day, they would give them turkeys. Now nothing! When the whites were there, their families would come up to the barn and have dinner. I used to go up there with Will when I first met him. I’d have lunch, sit around, play the piano. It was like a recreational center for the neighborhood. But not now. Nothing, since it’s all black.”