Last weekend I was driving over the Freemont Bridge, and for those of you that don’t know; it’s a freeway bridge, with no sidewalks or bike lane. In fact the fucking thing is something like 300 feet above the Willamette River. Anyway, around eleven o’clock I was headed east on the bridge on my way to pick up a friend in the cab. On the right side of the freeway there was minivan covered in mud with a flat tire and a dented fender. The thing looked as if someone had tried to drive it off the bridge but was stopped by the guard railing and the tire was punctured by the fender caving in it from the impact. But I only got a quick glance. Just past the van was man covered in mud with a limp and a drunken stager waddling down the freeway with no regard for the sixty plus mile per hour traffic just to his left. I pulled over and asked him if he needed some help. He gargled something at me and got in the back seat. When I asked him what happened he plainly stated that a cat or maybe a dog had run out in front of him and he lost control of the van. He said it in a way that makes you think he had been practicing for a while in the van before embarking on his journey across the giant freeway bridge on drunken foot. I said, “a cat really?... on this bridge?”
“Hell yeah, on this bridge, fucking thing jumped right out at me, a total suicide mission,” he barked back at me. There are absolutely no cats and no fucking dogs on this bridge, this was a suicide mission all right, but there was no domestic creature involved.
I got him off the freeway and dropped him at Emanuel Hospital at the base of the bridge so he could use the phone or get arrested or whatever happens to vagrant alcoholics who fail to drive their car off a bridge.
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Here is my list of everyone that was in my cab last night the time and how much they paid:
420pm Paradox Girl $18 – took her from NW to SE to the Paradox Café for a work meeting. She was cute but very domestic. Kept talking about home furnishings and how much money she saved by living in an apartment with her boyfriend rather than a house.
440pm Asian Lesbians from Sacramento $13 – They said “hella” a lot!
455pm Older couple from The Republic Café $8 – At first glance you would think that these two were normal people or at least not the repulsive freaks of nature that they turned out to be, but if you have any experience with the people who usually take a cab from the Republic Café you know that its where Portland crazies go to get decent Chinese food. This guy gets in with his wife. I looked back in the rear view and she’s drooling on herself and mumbling in his ear, then she kisses him, a big wet sloppy one with drool oozing from the corners of her mouth on dripping down his food stained an unshaven cheek. Then he opened his mouth and began to speak. This guy sounded like Kermit the Frog with a frog in his throat trying to gargle the alphabet backwards. I couldn’t even make out any logical syllables let alone a word. And once he started he wouldn’t stop the was probably talking so much to keep his wife from drooling on his face in public anymore. I almost missed their stop at 11th and Clay because I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
520pm Middle aged asshole to Park Kitchen $10 – People can be so discourteous it pisses me off. This guy gets in says, “Park Kitchen,” then immediately returns to his phone call that couldn’t wait another eight seconds for a cordial hello how are you before giving me orders. I take him there and it’s in a strange spot wrapped tightly in one way streets, so I have to go around the block he still says nothing to me. I stop the car and the meter and look back, he says, “receipt,” and hands me a ten. I right one out for ten bucks and he gets out. Fucking asshole.
535pm Fat Lady with a cane $7 – First of all this lady is at a restaurant on a side street down town and I pull up across the street and look at her, this is where everyone from this restaurant gets in the cab, it’s common knowledge that you cross the street to get your cab here. This lady waves her cane at me and slaps the curb in front of her signaling in a very obese way that she wants me to swing around so she doesn’t have to exhaust her self crossing the street. She gets in the car nearly bottoms out, this lady doesn’t have a cane because she’s old is to balance her so she doesn’t roll away. Like a block under a wheel of car stopped on a hill, or a parking break. After a one dollar tip with her credit card she relieved the shocks on my car and vacated the cab.
550pm Delivery Bus to Beaverton (box) $34 – This was a little confusing, I’m not getting paid for this until next week apparently because the credit card approval is locked in the office of my cab company’s manager and I won’t see her until then… very odd, but I guess 34 bucks is 34 bucks.
630pm Middle Age Fat Man (round trip beer run) $10 – He was another fat slobbery type, but nice enough. I’m always amazed at the kinds of people that live in the suburbs, this guy seemed like he belonged in a project in Chicago not a clean faceless apartment complex in Raleigh Hills.
700pm Old Lady Grocery $7 – I feel bad for this lady and all the old ladies like her. She was stranded at the grocery store for two hours because her daughter left thinking that her mother had gotten her own ride home. This lady was in her 80s and not all there, she wasn’t about to just get her own ride home. Her family needs to be taking care of her. She needed help walking to the car, walking to the door of her house and even help unlocking her house. She’s going to get fucked with by someone at some point, and it will be her daughter’s fault. Parents and grandparents need to be taken care of.
720pm Trasher with a car battery $15 – This guy had a car battery with him and said the bus driver wouldn’t let him on because he had battery acid with him. He was drunk and a little smelly but nice enough. I took him to a trailer park in the middle of a rich neighborhood in Beaverton. I had no idea this place existed, it was off the fucking map, and huge! There was only one entrance and exit and it was the size of a city with winding roads and forks and all the mobile homes looked the same, not to mention it was dark, and there were a million turns. I thought I was going to get jumped by a band of gypsies.
730pm Grocery Store Shopping Kids (Aloah) $10 – Two girls not more than fifteen years old were shopping for a large family. They filled the trunk and part of the back seat with shit. Nice enough girls, but sad. When I dropped them off a boy about thirteen or fourteen came out to help with the bags and they complained that none of the others came out. I wondered how many children lived in that apartment, was it like that place were Pinocchio was turned into the donkey, or more like the island of misfit toys?
800pm Crazy NYC lady shit talker $9 – I get it, Portland is not New York City. Things are different. Get the fuck over it, or go home.
820pm to 1000pm Stopped at home for food and masturbation.
1010pm Retired Hippy in St. Johns $17 – This guy moved to Portland in 1974 from San Diego, CA after a long run with the Grateful Dead. He never stopped smoking pot and he never stopped going to shows, and he looked it. He was Mexican with long hair and talked like Cheech Marin. After living all over Portland, he figured that St. Johns was the best neighborhood for him to grow pot and wonder around aimlessly.
1030pm Old Drunkard to Moon Star for “black pussy” $19 – This guy got in and said, “What kinda hang time you got…” I said, “I don’t know man, what do you mean?” “I mean I want to get some black pussy up the street and I want you to wait for me.” “Well, it’s 50 cents a minute for me to wait, but I’ll wait all night if you pay for it.” With that we were off, but he still hadn’t told me where we were going, just that we were looking for black pussy. He said, “Take me to the black bar.” And again I said, “what do you mean? I mean what’s the name of the bar you’re looking for.” I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, I understand that he’s drunk, and I get that he wants to go to a bar with a lot of black people (this guy is in his sixties probably and as pale as me), but there are a lot of bars that are all or mostly black people. I started listing some bars for him to choose from, that wasn’t working so I went with their cross streets, finally he settled on the Moon Star at Lombard on MLK. On the way there he gabbed about his internet business ElectricFireplaces.com and how he had to fire someone. Things got very heaving in the cab; the guy was almost in tears when I pulled into the parking lot on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I wished him luck with the black pussy and was on my way.
1100pm Two Surfer dues and a fat girl $15 – They were going out to celebrate this guys last night in town before moving to northern California for the good surfing and the great pot. I actually heard them refer to something as tubular. It was great.
1120pm Three Hippies One Dog No Tip $9 – These guys were dirty dread lock hippies that had a thick rope around their pit-bull puppy’s neck in lieu of a collar. They talked about how the Grateful Dead were gods and how it didn’t matter that they had never heard of The Velvet Underground, because The Dead were so much better that nothing else mattered, it was all very strange.
1130pm Judy at Gino’s – It is almost always the best part of my night when I go to Gino’s Italian restaurant to pick up my friend Judy. Not only is she great company and a relaxing break from the drunken assholes that fill my cab three times an hour all night, but she gives me free food and she pays me to take her home. On this night I had just found out that a good friend who moved to New York a while back was here in town and I convinced Judy to come get a drink with us. So after she closed up I drove the cab back, gassed up, and switched it for my black truck. We had drinks I drove Judy home and met up with my roommate and his girlfriend at my house had a couple more beers and I passed out.
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