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office where you got to stick inside all day. You could come and go when you pleased. You could go home when you wanted, go pick up a bucket of chicken, or grab a beer if you wanted. Drivers weren’t under as much pressure and stress as they are now, either. At the end of the day, I can’t wait to get out of the car. It gets to you because you know you got to be out and there’s nothing else for you but taxiing.
    There was a television at the stand where you could watch a bit of the news while you waited for a job. You could go in and watch television, relax, and have a cigarette and a coffee. All the drivers got along because there weren’t a lot of cabs on the road, and everyone was getting their fair share of work. There was no Jiffy. There was no Co-Op. ABC was on the go over on Southside Road, but they had maybe only fifteen or twenty cars. Courtesy Taxi only had five cars, and so did Golden Cabs. It was easy to make money because everyone worked a particular area. Golden Cabs had Churchill Square. Bugden’s had the east end. There were only ten cars down to Gulliver’s, whereas now they got close to ninety. You were working with a good bunch of guys who would take the shirt right off their back and give it to you. There was no job robbing, no fussing.
    Johnny Dunn, the little midget, is dead now. But when he was dispatching, if a job was given to you on the stand to pick someone up, but there was already a car in the area, Johnny would say, “What do you want to do?” You would pass the job onto that driver. That was common. There was no robbing jobs on other drivers, and there was a very slim chance of getting a water haul—going to a house and no one comes out. There was none of this calling up two or three different companies on a Friday or Saturday night and taking the first one that got there.
    We really had to work the hours, but that’s never changed. I had to put in ten, twelve, fifteen hours a day, just to stay on top. I ate, slept and breathed in the car. There was none of this airport stuff, hooking jobs to Clarenville, Gander, or Bay Roberts—a big score. You were tickled pink to drive a parcel up over the hill for $3. Right now, the meter starts at $3.25, but gas is more expensive. It used to be $5 for a half-tank of gas, and insurance was dirt cheap. I think I was paying $500 a year when I first put my taxi on the stand—probably less.
    Rather than wait for a job from the dispatcher, I’d cruise. He would write you down on a piece of paper and if you didn’t get a job off Water Street he’d give you a house job. But Water Street was always flat out. Woolworth’s was the busiest department store in the city. Then there was The Arcade and Bon Marche. Those stores were open for years, long before I was born.
    George Street was nothing, a ghost town. There was a supermarket and a scrap metal shop, and that’s about it.
    Water Street was the thing for taxi drivers.
    When I got put on nights, it was like a whole other world. I was used to picking up people at Woolworth’s and The Arcade. When the supermarket was on Parade Street, I would pick up customers with a load of groceries. I had never experienced night driving. I said to myself, This is wicked!
    Fact was, you’re making more money and you’re into the downtown scene.
    I learned pretty quickly that part of driving the night shift was hustling to make a dollar off the meter. I often had prostitutes in the car. Sometimes I’d drive them over to Confederation Building, and they’d take buddy with them and go lie down in the field for fifty bucks. They weren’t up there with those fancy girls, the call girls, or whatever it is you call them. They were at the bottom of the ladder—they were desperate. There was a whole load of them around Bulger’s Lane. The Portuguese and Japanese fishermen would come off the boats and they would give you fifty bucks for lining