Heffernan - The other side of midnight: taxicab stories

THE OTHER SIDE OF

MIDNIGHT:

TAXICAB STORIES

St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador
2012

2012, Mike Heffernan

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the
Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF),
and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism,
Culture and Recreation for our publishing program.

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Cover Design by Darren Whalen
Layout by Todd Manning and Amy Fitzpatrick
Printed on acid-free paper

Published by
CREATIVE PUBLISHERS
an imprint of CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING
a Transcontinental Inc. associated company
P.O. Box 8660, Stn. A
St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador A1B 3T7

Printed in Canada by:
TRANSCONTINENTAL INC.

Heffernan, Mike, 1978

The other side of midnight : taxicab stories / Mike Heffernan.

ISBN 978-1-897174-96-8

1. Taxicab drivers--Newfoundland and Labrador--St. Johns.
2. Taxicab drivers--Newfoundland and Labrador--St. Johns-Social conditions.
3. Taxicab industry--Newfoundland and Labrador
St. Johns. I. Title.

HD8039.T162C3 2012 388.4'13214097181 C2012-904660-4

With Taxicab Stories, Heffernan has meticulously crafted a timely, historicallyinsightful collection of tales told from the front lines of one of the worlds oldestprofessions. Brace yourself for a scrappy, page-turning expos full of stark blackhumour, raw violence and gut-wrenching compassion. Youll never hail a cab,or cruise the streets of St. Johns, quite the same again.

Joel Thomas Hynes,
author of Down to the Dirt and Right Away Monday

For Lesley.

And the taxicab drivers of St. Johns.

Work, is, by its very nature, about violenceto the spirit as well as to thebody. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well asfistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is,above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumphenough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.

Studs Terkel, Working

I taxied up and down this town since 1954
Wore out ten or a dozen cars over thirty years or more
Drove the other side of midnight to the clear edge of dawn
Heard a whole lot of wasnt right
And more of what was wrong.

Ron Hynes, Killer Cab from Face to the Gale

Table of Contents

A taxi driver has a way of life. Someone who drives taxi has anoccupation. One is a subculture; the other is a job.

unpublished diary;
quoted in Kimberly Berry,The Last Cowboy

The first horse-drawn taxis in St. Johns appeared on Water Street in the 1860s. By the start of the First World War, automobiles operating as taxicabs arrived in the city. The industry then went through a boom during the Second World War to accommodate the influx of thousands of Allied (American, British and Canadian) troops. There are now 364 taxis and anywhere from 500 to 1,000 full and part-time taxi drivers operating in St. Johns. Exact numbers are difficult to determine because the city only keeps a record of taxicab licence holders. But, outside of the stereotypes, the public doesnt know much about the working lives of taxicab drivers. Even taxi drivers in cities like New York, where they number somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000, have had surprisingly few serious studies devoted to them.

The Other Side of Midnight: Taxicab Stories is not a traditional history of the St. Johns taxicab industry. Instead, its a collection of first-person monologues based on approximately forty interviews conducted with taxicab drivers and dispatchers over the course of more than three years. Incorporating elements of creative non-fiction and oral history, it describes the commonly shared experiences of an underrecorded portion of Newfoundlands working class.

This book explores the daily experiences of its subjects, as well as their thoughts and feelings about their choice of career and their clients. Every segment of our society, from the elite to the marginal, utilizes their services: business executives, drug pushers, tourists and prostitutes. Comical, absurd and often dramatic, their reminiscences are of long hours and years on the job, high hopes and decayed dreams.

Many St. Johns taxi drivers have been working behind the wheel for decades. They have witnessed the city evolve from relative poverty and isolation to the post-1990s financial upswing and the boomtown phenomenon that a great deal of of them believe has followed closely on its heels. But its important to read these monologues within their proper context. As historian Jean Barman has pointed out, Perceptions of past experiences are often filtered through a contemporary lens. The interviews, or monologues, presented in this book compose a chorus of voices whose lives have often been ground down by years of economic uncertainty. Long gone are the aspirations of their youth. They drive a cab not by choice but by necessity. The answers to the questions posed to them were often shaped by that resignation.

Parallel to this, a major hurdle with the research was finding willing interview subjects. As soon as a microphone was turned on the taxicab drivers were often unsure about the process, even after anonymity was guaranteed. In fact, it was explicit that details would be masked to hide their identity. This book does not name names nor does it target specific companies. Only several former and current stand owners and cab drivers are identified; the rest are pseudonyms. The book does, however, identify industry-wide problems.

The modern nature of the taxi business has made many drivers nervous. They fear retaliation from their employers as well as their co-workers. Even the Commission of Inquiry into the St. Johns Taxicab Industry, established in 1990 to complete a comprehensive review of the taxi industry and to determine the appropriateness of the existing Taxi Bylaw, couldnt get more than a few drivers to come forward to air their grievances. Instead, the city heard from the fleet owners and the brokers (a multiple-lease holder who rents his cars to taxicab drivers for an even share of the profits). This book lets the taxicab drivers of St. Johns speak for themselves without fear of recrimination.

There are standby lots spread out all over the city, places where drivers wait for the dispatcher to send them on a job: strip malls, gravel patches just off the main roads, colleges and government buildings. Taxis wait at airports and at hotels with which the company has a contract. These were the sites of most interviews. Some were in homes; some were in coffee shops. As to finding interview subjects, a taxicab driver occasionally introduced a friend. Other drivers were approached blindly but often without much success.