Phil Cohen War Stories: Driving Upside Down
War Stories By Phil Cohen
Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s three-part saga returning to his wild days driving a cab on the streets of NYC in the early 1970s. Here’s Part I in case you missed it.
Part II – Driving Upside Down
I was always on high alert when walking to the subway several hours past midnight. The majority of muggers initiate contact with victims by asking a polite question requiring an answer, leading to a discussion and building trust while casually approaching. A typical scenario goes like this:
“Excuse me man, do you have a cigarette?”
“Sure.”
Now the predator has a pretext to draw closer and accepts the cigarette, still at a discreet distance. “Could I also bother you for a light?” As the unsuspecting mark flicks his Bick from inches away he hears a click not coming from his lighter and feels cold steel against his throat.
The secret to avoid finding oneself in this position is to answer all questions in the negative with a gruff, angry voice, but without hurling any insults. It makes muggers wonder how crazy you might be and if the target was worth the risk. As strange as it sounds, robbers consider themselves to be performing their job. Confronted with what sounds like irrational anger but not personally directed, they make a business decision to seek profits elsewhere.
One night as I walked toward the subway on the empty side of the road, two young men strolling on the lane divider called out, “Yo! Do you know what time it is?”
“Do I look like I own a fuckin’ watch?” I screamed back, conveying that I was both poor and unstable. My would-be assailants were convinced that easier money could be found if they kept looking.
I sometimes encountered a man about my age in the driver’s lounge who struck up an acquaintance. He appeared very clean cut but made the most crudely bizarre use of profanity I’d ever heard. Everything he didn’t like was denounced as being dick: “This delivery truck cut me off when I was about to pick up a fare! That’s dick!...A guy wearing a nice suit didn’t even leave a tip! Now, that’s dick!” He used the uncouth expression at least ten times within any five minute period. One night we pulled in at the same time and ended up walking to the subway together. He immediately crossed to the populated side of the boulevard.
“It’s a lot safer to stay on the other side,” I advised.
“Why? The subway is on this side. I never take the longer route. That’s dick.”
As we passed the row of bars and patrons lounging outside, he launched into a racial tirade, punctuating his remarks as expected. “Keep your voice down!” I whispered. “You’re gonna get us killed.”
“I ain’t afraid of none of them!” he loudly boasted. “I deal with them all the time. They’re all dick!” The truth is he was a skinny guy with no street smarts who couldn’t punch his way out of a paper, bag but guardian angels must have been with us and we made it to subway. Once aboard the train, filled with other workers returning home after a night shift, he embarrassed me during the entire ride by loudly sharing his distasteful observations.
New York was hit by a blizzard in late February and I awoke to see snow still falling on three-foot high drifts. I immediately recognized an opportunity to cash-in. Drivers who owned their own cab wouldn’t risk their vehicle under these conditions and many fleet employees would also play it safe and stay home. I called the dispatcher and asked if we were still open for business.
“Come on down and I’ll give you a shovel. It you can dig out a car, it’s yours for the night.” I was soon standing knee deep in snow under the 59th Street Bridge, frantically trying to extricate the car that appeared least embedded. After an hour of hard unpaid labor I was cruising into Manhattan. It was a hustler’s dream. There were ten desperate passengers for every empty taxi. I traveled down partially-cleared avenues putting together group rides in the process. I ran the meter and the fleet got its cut, but everything else was mine. I interviewed prospective passengers before unlocking the door and if someone wanted a ride to another borough, I negotiated a fare amounting to three times the meter. It was a true seller’s market.
I picked up a businessman ready to pay almost anything for a trip back to his suburban home in Brooklyn. Shortly after turning onto the Manhattan Bridge, I went into a skid and bounced off the railing three times before regaining control.
At 2 a.m. I was handsomely compensated by a young couple wanting nothing more out of life than a warm bed in their Bronx apartment. As I headed back to Manhattan via the Henry Hudson Parkway, I went into a cataclysmic skid across three traffic lanes. I employed the conventional wisdom of steering into the skid to avoid crashing through the railing and down an embankment, but remained out of control as the cab began spinning in circles around the temporarily deserted highway. If a vehicle came cruising toward me at sixty mph we were all dead. I resisted the temptation to grab the wheel and prayed while scanning the lanes for oncoming traffic until the skid eventually lost momentum. I made it back to Manhattan, continued lining my pockets, and returned to the garage at dawn with $68 on the meter and another $125 in my pocket.
My best friend in the driver’s lounge became an Albanian woman in her late forties named Blerina, a political refugee who’d suffered merciless persecution by the Soviet-dominated government for her Christian faith, and lost her husband along with other relatives to police brutality. She had sad, sweet eyes portraying a gentle heart and philosophical understanding of life.
I entered the lounge at 4 a.m. one night and encountered Albert, the garage activist, berating her spiritual beliefs. “Show me one piece of scientific evidence that God really exists!” he sneered. “You should be focused on standing with your fellow workers and building the revolution.”
Blerina seemed to be taking it all in stride, having endured far worse in her homeland, but I wouldn’t put up with it. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up and leave her in peace,” I shouted while approaching Albert. “She’s survived things that would’ve had you pissing down your leg twice a day. She deserves your respect, not ridicule!”
“I’m politically educating her for when the revolution comes,” he indignantly declared.
“You couldn’t survive a revolution for ten minutes. God back home, schoolboy. You don’t belong in this world.”
Once Albert had exited I offered to walk Blerina to the subway.
“I have better idea,” she said. “I have car and will drive you home.”
Spring finally arrived in New York and the fleet cabs were beginning to show their age, with the number of breakdowns increasing. A year old taxi had flipped the 100,000 mile odometer three times, having been running 24/7 in the hands of drivers who didn’t slow for potholes and understood that defensive driving was antithetical to maximizing earning potential. None the less, management squeezed every penny out of their investment and replaced vehicles every eighteen months. I was slowly entering the six-month journey through cab driver hell.
During my first breakdown I learned what a joke the downtime policy was. The first hour was uncompensated and the remaining wait for a tow truck, followed by a ride back to the garage, generated only three dollars per hour. As so many cars were already in the shop a backup was seldom available and one went home minus the better portion of a night’s earnings. Booking fares became more difficult on slower nights because affluent clientele would often wait to hail when a newer vehicle was seen approaching. But the real dread was breaking down late at night in a bad neighborhood.
On an early evening in June, I was flagged on the Upper East Side by an elderly couple going to JFK airport. As I sped down Van Wick Boulevard the car suddenly flipped over. We somehow maintained our velocity but the roof and my head were level with the pavement as my feet faced the sky. A moment before blacking out, I realized that I was suffering from monoxide poisoning and with great effort cranked my window open. I took a deep breath and watched as the old taxi seemed to slowly rotate back into correct alignment, then glanced at the rear view mirror and noted my passengers didn’t have a clue. You have no idea how close you just came, I silently laughed to myself. My reaction to near-death experiences always left me feeling exhilarated.
I didn’t report the incident to the dispatcher, but instead worked the rest of my shift with the driver’s window open, deciding I’d rather risk losing my earnings to a mugger than definitely getting ripped off by the fleet.
During a hot summer night in August at 1 a.m., I picked up an old lady going to the worst part of Bedford Stuyvesant. It took forty-five minutes to reach her neighborhood. The temperature and humidity were still brutal, but I rolled up my window as we turned off Atlantic Avenue and down side streets. She directed me to her building in a row of tenements, with a small park across the street. Groups of young men were hanging out every twenty yards.
Being in the ghetto was a very different experience than when I drove gypsy cabs. Back then, even the criminals saw me as a young white guy with balls, trying to earn a living off the street, the same as them. But in a medallion taxi I represented the establishment responsible for all inequities levied upon them.
The woman opened her door but then sat there fumbling through her purse. Fleet cabs had no air conditioning and I was soaked in sweat like I’d been standing under a shower. My engine cut off. I turned the ignition but heard only grinding noises. I checked my rearview and the passenger was still searching for her money. I looked out the front window and heads were turning in my direction. I tried the key again….the engine turned over then quit. Several guys started slowly moving my way. I waited a few seconds because if the carburetor flooded, I was dead. Finally realizing it was now-or-never, I tried again. The motor kept grinding and I stopped before killing the battery. Sweat was burning my eyes and it became difficult to see clearly.
If a person didn’t have religion beforehand, they found it very quickly in a situation like this. I looked deep inside myself and asked God: Please let the car start. Just get me over the bridge back to Manhattan. I don’t care if I break down after that.”
The passenger finally handed me her fare and left. I cranked the ignition. The motor backfired and then started chugging. I put the taxi in gear, slowly pressed the gas pedal and began moving past the approaching men. A couple of them banged on the trunk and hooted as I went by.
Every time I stopped for a light, I idled in neutral with my left foot on the brake, while gently nudging the gas pedal with the other foot so the engine wouldn’t cut off. I never stopped praying. It took ten minutes to make it back to Atlantic Avenue and another fifteen to reach the bridge. Once arriving safely on the other side, I finished my shift before returning to base.
Early in October, the new Dodge taxis finally arrived and I accepted a steady car. My days of shaping up were over. The day driver punctually returned at 3:30pm, leaving me the heart of rush hour. I was committed to working Monday through Friday, with weekends optional.
Management made it emphatically clear that for the next couple of months, anyone who returned to the garage with the slightest damage visible on their new car would be fired and then began making examples out of drivers in total disregard for seniority or past work record. One man was terminated because some kids keyed his taxi while he was having dinner in a restaurant, and another for being side-swiped while stopped at a light. I witnessed grown men, tough guys who’d been pushing a hack for twenty years, standing in front of the garage and crying like babies.
The Taxi Driver’s Union didn’t enforce just cause or have a grievance process. When a driver was terminated for any reason, he reported to the union office and was assigned to another fleet…always one with dilapidated cars struggling through their final six months on the street. My unfortunate coworkers were doomed to endure another half year of increased risks and lower earnings.
Monday was the most frustrating night to work because people stayed home to recover from the weekend rather than seek entertainment. It was not uncommon to find oneself in a cluster of empty cabs cruising down an avenue in search of even one elusive passenger. When I was in the far left lane of a major thoroughfare like Third Avenue, and saw someone hailing a ride from across the street, I’d aggressively turn my wheel and slice through several lanes of traffic, cutting off multiple taxis as I halted in front of the passenger with my new car. Drivers would pull up beside me, open their right window and violently cuss me out, but it was irrelevant since I was the one about to make money.
During an especially unprofitable Monday night, I grew weary of cruising in vain, turned into the New Yorker hotel’s semi-circular entrance at 1 a.m. and stopped near the front door to rest and entertain the unlikely hope that someone wanting a ride would emerge from the lobby. To my surprise, a young man stepped out of the shadows a minute later, knocked on my window and asked if I’d take him to Brooklyn. He clearly wasn’t a guest but I was feeling desperate.
“What part of Brooklyn?” I asked.
“Just on the other side of the tunnel.”
We agreed to do it off-the-meter and my passenger took his seat in the back. As we exited the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, he directed me to Red Hook, a notorious neighborhood near the docks, and then had me turn into the parking lot of a housing project. I tilted the payment cup in his direction but he left the car and then knocked on my right window which I cracked open just enough to communicate.
Unfortunately, there was an idiotic design flaw in the new Dodge taxis, given their intended use. The windows rolled down at a thirty degree angle, leaving a space on their right side. The man reached in with two fingers, lifting the lock button and opened the door waving a newspaper, saying, “Someone left this so I thought I’d return it.”
It was the lamest prelude to a robbery I’d ever heard. I remained calmly seated with my right hand gripping a can of mace in my coat pocket as he entered the car, kneeling on the seat with his face twelve inches from mine and reaching into his jacket.
“Don’t move,” he whispered with an ominous tone in his voice.
Before my assailant realized the instructions had been ignored, his eyes were already doused with mace. He screamed like a banshee from hell, backed out the door and ran. My first impulse was to get out and close the door but then considered he might have friends lurking in the dark. I threw the transmission into reverse, stepped on the gas and ten seconds later the open door hit the trunk of a large car protruding too far out of its space.
I got out, saw the large dents while closing the door and realized this wasn’t going to be simple. I needed to report the incident to the police if there was any chance management would make an exception to their strict policy regarding accidents.
I turned out of the projects and headed toward a main avenue, searching for an officer who could direct me to the precinct. Passing by the tunnel I saw a tall, burly middle-aged police sergeant standing near the entrance, drove up beside him and exited to introduce myself. I provided details of the attempted mugging and explained why I needed to document the incident at the local precinct.
“Show me the can of mace,” he responded and I handed it over.
“Look, if you bring this into the precinct they’re gonna arrest you. This is what you do: throw the mace into your trunk and tell what happened exactly as you did me, only say you threw a cup of hot coffee in his eyes.” He then provided the necessary directions and followed me as I opened the trunk and stashed my weapon. “Damn, I have another half hour before my shift ends,” he said looking at his watch. “If only I was getting off now…we’d ride around together, find this guy, beat the living shit out him and toss him into a dumpster. Damn…”
I thanked him for his advice and good intentions and threw the meter as I headed toward the police station. My earnings would need to correspond with a phony trip sheet entry to cover the off-the-meter ride to Red Hook when I returned to the garage.
The officers graciously welcomed me at the precinct once they learned I’d taken a mugger out of circulation for the night. They wrote a detailed report, directly linking my car damage to the robbery and handed me a copy. I called the garage before departing to explain why I’d be returning late. During the drive back I felt immersed in the ultimate adrenalin rush, the kind of high that speed freaks spend their lives chasing but never quite catch.
An hour later I handed the police document to the dispatcher who stood there reading through it and finally said, “Sounds like you really taught this guy a lesson. Good for you! Go home and get some rest.” That was the last I heard of it. Dispatchers and the foreman were all former drivers who respected that I’d fought back against someone who represented every cabbie’s worst nightmare.
Coming Soon, Part III – The Fine Art of Hustling