Taxi Driver—The Ill Fated Lad: From Heaven to Hell

By Mr. Donny Churchill

This book is a real life story about the beauty of life when you have a wonderful income, which ultimately gave me a glamorous lifestyle. I had a lavished apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I was always entertaining my friends and their friends. Sometimes my friends and I would use limousine just for the night out. At the end of my company contract and after about another six months without income, I sold my condominium at a reasonable price and relocated to Jersey City in New Jersey. I lived in a spacious apartment for another five months without income, then I decided to drive a yellow cab. I went to TLC for my hack license to enable me to drive a taxi. I registered with a taxi company in Brooklyn, and I became a taxi driver. Driving the taxi and continuing my job hunting at the same time was daunting. With too many summonses from police officers and TLC inspectors within a period of about four years taxi driving, my license was revoked. No more taxi driving, no more income. And my life became too miserable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524686574

Mr. Donny Churchill

I am a well educated young man from a reputable college in the heart of New York City, who graduated in Banking and Finance. I had a wonderful job with an Investment Banking Company in Wall St that went out of business because of insider trading allegations. At this period of employment with this wonderful company, I was living a wonderful lifestyle on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in my own condominium. I lived in that apartment for another 6 months without a regular income that exhausted my savings and checking accounts. Because of the condition, I was unable to meet my financial obligations of my apartment which made me to sell off my condominium at a reasonable price. I then moved to Jersey City in New Jersey because of the size of the one bedroom apartment to accommodate my belongings. This was where all hell broke loose.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

My Life before Driving a Taxi

Let me briefly introduce myself. I am a college graduate from a reputable university right here in the Big Apple. I have a BBA in banking and finance and a minor in accounting. I also have a certificate from the American Institute of Banking in New York City. I have been working in the accounting profession for almost thirty years. I have worked for four different major corporations, not because I wanted to jump from one firm to the other but because I was downsized along the way. My first big job was an accounting position at a big brokerage firm on Wall Street that filed for bankruptcy decades ago. When I was hired in 1987, my salary was $30,000 plus huge bonuses and all benefits. In those years that was a lot of money.

When I was interviewed for this position, there was no mention of me needing experience in accounting or experience using McCormack & Dodge software. The company didn’t obtain a credit report, a driving record check, or a background check of any kind on me, and I got the job the same day I interviewed. How wonderful. I was taught how to use the McCormack & Dodge software, and in one week, I was a master at it. Then, after my graduation in 1991, I was informed that I would be transferred to the corporate finance department. Unfortunately, the company filed for bankruptcy in 1991, leaving almost twenty thousand employees jobless. I’d been with the company for four years.

I started job hunting. I registered with employment agencies and dropped off résumés at various corporations. Back then, you could walk into a corporate building, check out the tenants on the lobby board, and then just walk into the offices and leave your résumé with the human resources department. Sometimes they would say, Okay, if we have something, we’ll call you.

But it seemed that the fastest way to get a job would be through the agencies. The same week I went to the agencies, I was getting calls for jobs. In one week alone I might receive four calls asking me if I was available for assignments. I had to choose one at a time, and I took one that was near the World Trade Center. The company I was assigned to was very beautiful. The offices were very decent, and the people were easygoing. After work every Friday, we would go have something to eat and drink at the TGI Fridays on Broadway by Wall Street.

After I’d been with this company about one month, another agency called me with an assignment that would pay me more and could probably turn into a permanent position. That was exciting because my goal was to land a permanent position where I could have a direct salary with all the benefits. With my current position as a temporary employee, my company sent my paycheck to the agency, and then the agency took an almost 20 percent cut out of my check before I got it. As a temp, I also didn’t have any benefits whatsoever. If I didn’t go to work, I didn’t get paid. So I immediately said goodbye to my current agency and moved over to the new one.

This new agency had assigned me to a company one block away from my first brokerage firm, just by the stock exchange. On my very first day at work in 1997 the manager told me that this temp job would now be a permanent, full-time position.

Seriously? I asked.

Yes, he said. Are you ready for that?

I said, Thank you very much, sir. I will take it.

The best part of this was the position didn’t require an additional interview, a credit report or driving record, or prerequisite experience on QuickBooks software or as a staff accountant.

My supervisor taught me everything I needed to know for that position. After two weeks of training, I was on my own and doing excellent work. I was placed on a salary of $40,000 with all benefits but not many bonuses, because it was a small nonprofit organization. I loved this small company very much. The environment was respectful, and everybody knew everybody.

I loved the fact that this company was on Wall Street and one block away from the TGI Fridays on Broadway that I used to go to. Best of all, I fell in love with a beautiful woman who worked in the company. It happened the same month I got my job. Just like at my previous job, every Friday we would go to TGI Fridays for food and drinks before heading home. There was nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in his hard work. This woman and I kept our relationship secret within the office. I made sure that she was happy. This is what life is all about. You earn an income to make merry for yourself. A paycheck is your livelihood and takes care of all your financial obligations. As a not-for-profit organization, this company relied on donations—from corporations, individual donors, and group donors—and some funds from the government. Just after that ugly 9/11, all the revenue stopped coming, and the company started having some financial problems. There was downsizing, and I was among twenty out of fifty employees who were let go. After three years of service, I became unemployed again.

Sometimes you turn on the morning news and discover your company will be laying off people. Then when you arrive at work, you feel as though you are walking into a morgue. Other times, you walk through the doors and see everyone looking anxious or depressed, whispering in the coffee room about rumors that a major layoff will be announced that day. These scenarios are common in major layoffs. In a minor layoff, you may not see anything coming until your boss calls you into his or her office and gives you the bombshell, as happened in my own case. Higher-ups had privately made decisions about budget cuts, and no one saw it coming.

Whether you are part of a mass layoff or one of just a few, you initially face feelings of anger and depression. You’ll essentially move through all the steps of mourning a loss. When it comes to that awful layoff moment, you’ll find out if you’re receiving a severance package and, if so, how much it is, and you’ll receive a list of things you should take with you as you leave. My severance was maybe one month of pay. I’d received a much-larger severance from my previous investment banking job when the company went bankrupt.

After layoffs, you may wonder how they decided who to lay off. Maybe the company decided to pick the people they considered troublemakers, people who, for one reason or another, were not well liked in the office. So if you like to stand up for your opinions, you could be putting yourself on the chopping block during a future layoff.

Whether or not you’ve received a notice, the actual moment of layoff is traumatic for everyone. It doesn’t matter your position in the company. If you hated your job, your initial reaction may be relief and joy, but quickly reality sets in—you’re out of work and have lost a regular paycheck. Most people feel mixed emotions—anger, depression, relief, joy, anxiety, helplessness, vulnerability, nervousness, revengeful, elation, fear, and more fear. If you are given the chance, you may share a few tears and hugs with your coworkers, but often a company will escort you out of the door immediately after you’re given notice. Or, even worse, you may be escorted to your office or cubicle with a guard who watches your every move as you pack your personal belongings.

This last situation can be particularly demeaning, as it seems as if your employer does not trust you, even after years of excellent service to the company. Companies have gotten into the habit of doing this because many laid-off people will wipe computer files or commit acts of sabotage that make it difficult for others to continue working on the laid-off employees’ projects. Most people tend to want to seek revenge against the person who wronged them by laying them off. But the person who executes the layoff is not always the one who made the decision.

When I was laid off at this job, I went to TGI Fridays on Broadway with ten others who were also laid off. We were drinking beer and eating buffalo wings with tears in our eyes. A guy in the bar asked us what was the matter, and we bluntly told him that we’d lost our jobs. He said, Oh! Sorry, guys.

Layoffs in the United States are becoming more and more common as companies view employees are disposable and no longer see the value of experienced workers with a long-term company history. Often a company only realizes the value lost by laying off someone with twenty years of experience when it’s too late and that worker is long gone. Occasionally someone with strong institutional knowledge will be called back as a consultant after a layoff, but don’t count on that happening to you. If you’re laid off, it’s time to move on to greener pastures. While it may be tempting to go back if you are recalled, remember that, unless your company undergoes a major shift, it’s likely just a matter of time before it downsizes again, especially in an economic downturn. If you are laid off, it’s probably best to be off that sinking ship and focusing your energy on your next best opportunity.

My nephew’s wife lost her $160,000-a-year job working on Wall Street in 2011 and has not been able to find work since. She and my nephew were about to purchase a $470,000 house when she was laid off. Luckily they had not yet purchased the house, and she had saved enough money for them to sustain their living standards. Fortunately, they have no children. They are still renting a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

My niece, the sister to my nephew, is a social worker and has been out of work for almost three years as of November 2016. Her husband is also a social worker and still has his job, but his salary is not enough to support the two of them and their three children. In light of this, he’s had to take a part-time job to supplement his income. The last time I saw my niece and her family, the husband was not looking good. He kept falling asleep during this family event, so I know that he must really be overworking himself just to survive the hardships of America.

The US Department of Labor announced in 2008 that unemployment was at almost 6 percent, but that didn’t represent true levels of unemployment, as many people had to take jobs at a much-lower salary than they’d earned in previous positions just to put food on the table. Others had to take part-time jobs, and yet others just gave up looking for work completely. Some estimate that the jobless rate in America then was closer to 10 percent if factoring in the underemployed and those who had given up looking for work. If you’ve recently been laid off, I want to assure you that you are not alone. You are part of what is becoming the norm for the US labor market, so don’t think that you’ve done anything wrong. Just take some time to heal from the wound of losing your job and then get back in the saddle and look for a new job.

Throughout all this, I was living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I had been living in the city for just about five years, and life was full of fun. My friends and I would get together and tell stories and grab something to eat and drink. We’d play music and dance. I made music tapes for my friends because I had one of the best stereo systems. We hung out in my apartment the most because I had the most lavish apartment in the entire twenty-story building, so said the superintendent of the building. I had a leather-bound encyclopedia set that was worth almost $30,000. I paid for it in monthly installments over a period of seven years, just like buying a car. Back then, there was no Internet, so encyclopedias were the means of searching for everything you wanted to know. I bought that encyclopedia set because I was always very curious about things and because those books were unbelievably beautiful. So they were part of the decoration of my apartment.

Please, let me describe my apartment just a little bit for you to better understand me. The parlor had a jaw-dropping wall unit with a huge mirror and a majestic wine/champagne display above a huge TV compartment, complete with hanging wineglasses like in a bar. A bookshelf attached to the unit held almost fifty books, just like a school’s library. I had books on economics, finance, accounting, history, banking, mathematics, English, geography, and a whole lot more. There was a space for the most wonderful stereo system ever and a compartment for records and cassettes. Each compartment in the wall unit had its own light, and the lights could be different colors. This wall unit took up an entire wall. The reclining modular sofa was leather and had simply magnificent one-foot cushions. The center table was made of three layers of glass that rotated 360 degrees, and I had a Tiffany lamp in each corner of the living room. The area rug was picturesque, and beautiful artwork hung on the walls.

I had a spacious dining area with a table that sat six. Each wall of the dining room had a set of cupboards that housed all my exclusive china. The kitchen came with all the modern amenities as fixtures of the apartment.

Now, to the bedroom—beauty is not enough to classify it. The bedroom was titanic. The bed was king sized and enough to accommodate four people. The women who slept on it felt so comfortable and satisfied after each round of lovemaking. After precious lovemaking, sleep was the next thing on the menu, and we’d wake up feeling so refreshed. The headboard was lacquer. The wardrobe was an absolute touchdown, with lighting inside. In there, I had a collection of tuxedos and expensive suits and almost sixty Italian ties. I had almost thirty designer gold-and-diamond cuff links of various prices, plus dozens of cigarette lighters all locked up in a glass showcase.

My friends told me that I had a lavish lifestyle that was out of this world. Yes, I loved fashion. The first company I worked for gave me a properly designed certificate for being the best-dressed employee of the company. I had many expensive suits, high-priced shoes, dazzling shirts, and elegant ties.

One Saturday night I was entertaining twelve guests. As usual, some of the guests were friends of friends who had never been to my place before. We were drinking all kinds of drinks, eating all kinds of foods, and smoking all kinds of smokes. Those years there were no cell phones, just home phones. After hours of fanfare at my place, one of my guests asked to make a phone call. I said sure and walked her to my bedroom, as the parlor was noisy. When we got to my bedroom, she said, Wow! Oh my God, this is very, very beautiful. I thanked her. Then as I went to hand her the phone, she held me tight and started kissing me so passionately I wouldn’t have even cared if I’d had a girlfriend sitting in the living room. When I finally went to rejoin my guests in the living room, I forgot to wipe away the lipstick on my lips, which was a sure sign of some smooching and kissing in the bedroom. I was kind of embarrassed. Luckily, at that time I did not have what I would call a steady girlfriend. I was what you might call a playboy, always looking for the best woman around with my kind of taste, especially in bed. By the time my guests were all gone around two o’clock in the morning, I had made myself comfortable with the beauty who had kissed me in my bedroom. We exchanged phone numbers before she left with her friends.

On my first date with this beauty, we went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street in the Village that was well known for seafood. She liked seafood so much, and so did I. The waitresses and bartenders at this restaurant were all my friends by now. My date asked me if I had been to this restaurant before, and I said yes. We were sitting together now, one-on-one, at the dinner table. I looked closer into her blue eyes, and she gazed into mine. I was wondering what she was thinking about, because sometimes she dimmed her eyes at me. I pushed my right leg forward under the table until it touched hers. Without contention, she responded with a princess smile. She said to me, What a great apartment you have

I responded, Oh, thank you so much. That’s where you belong.

She smiled with great appreciation. She then asked me a question that I had been expecting. You’ve come to this restaurant before. With who?

I wanted to be honest with her, so I answered, With my ex-girlfriend and also coworkers. I could see slight rage on her face, so I told her that my love for her should be better. We spent just about two hours eating, drinking, and talking. When finally the check came, it was just a hundred dollars plus fifty in tip, which was not bad. I always took care of the servers, as they called me by my name. My new beauty was very happy with me.

Getting a cab on Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street at eleven at night was quite a big challenge. We waited for almost fifteen minutes before we finally got a cab to my place, under her permission. Right in the cab, she gave me a red-faced and dying-eyes kiss that rose my pestle. I tried to make her feel that part as it bulged out of control, but she withdrew her hand. We kissed again, and my mind blurred. Until that moment, I’d never known what it was like to really be kissed. Her kisses cast a spell on me, took off layers of my soul, and split me open. We got to my place and went inside. While still standing by the door, we shared the longest and most sustainable kisses of my life.

We moved to the couch. As she lay faceup, I gently went on top with my mouth dribbling her mouth and my fingers tingling her swollen red nipples until she started to moan. Please don’t stop, she said. I worked my way downstairs and felt her rose garden. I put my fingers right inside, and she raised up her Brazilian butt for me to play with what my fingers were feeling. I knew she was ready for the main event.

Come on, my beauty, I said. I walked her to the bedroom of fantasy where she’d first kissed me the night she’d come with her friends.

She slowly knelt down, keeping her eyes locked on mine. She unzipped me and pulled out what she called my mandingo. She plunged it into her precious mouth, sometimes playing with the head and gently rotating her lips around the tip, which made me scream, and sometimes swallowing my mandingo and balls completely into her throat.

She stood up, still looking at me with eyes like Queen Cleopatra’s, I undressed her, pausing to admire the silhouette of her rose garden through her undies. Then I took those off as well. It was her turn to undress me, which she quickly did, and all our clothing was cast on the floor. While still standing, she pressed her warm flesh to mine. My fingers sunk deep into her wet mortar this time, as her legs were spread wide. I fingered her while she rubbed and pulled my Hercules. Then she gently dropped it inside. As I danced in and out, my Hercules grew moisturized, and I knew I was ready to finish up the job. So I drew my pestle from the mortar, and we dived into the bed of thy kingdom come. This was where heaven and earth met to create a moment of eternity. I went on top of her, and she plunged my pestle into her mortar. I banged hard, harder, and hardest until she started to moan and modulate.

After a while, we switched so that she was on top, twerking systematically and synchronously. As she bounced up and down, sweating profusely, she started shivering and twerking harder with tears in her eyes and sweat all over her body. Then she screamed so loudly, I am coming! I am coming!

Now it was my turn to again climb on top of her. Her inside was so wet and slippery, and the blood vessels of my Hercules had swollen, ready to share my milk. Release some inside and some on my bush garden and nipples so we can play with it, she said. I placed my pestle inside her. Sometimes it would slip out, and she’d quickly push it back inside with her fingers. As I dropped my milk, she begged me to come on her nipples. Leaking milk all up her chest, I transported my come to her mouth.

She told me that she never had sex on a first date and that I was very special and had the most lavish apartment she had ever seen. She then initiated a second round, and my Hercules was very ready. This time, following a perfect blow job and some fingering, we did it doggy style. From behind I had a great view of her amazing fatty flesh. She raised one leg to the bed, and I felt for her hole with my fingers before finally pushing in Hercules to get the job done. I had been pushing in and out for about five minutes when I shouted, Yes, here I come! I am coming. She let some of my milk spurt inside, and then she pulled out my Hercules right onto her face, where I dropped the rest of the milky, slippery substance. I ran my lips all over her face, scooping some of the milk from one area to another part of her face. It was the best sex of my life. God bless my beauty. We are masters of our own sexual destiny. Let that end there; it’s not the main story.

Why should I tell you about my education, my wonderful jobs, my luxurious apartment, and my sex life? That was my life then, and the next part of my story is something completely different. It epitomizes the adage No condition is permanent.

I looked for another job, sending out résumés and also searching through the staffing agencies. When I couldn’t find a permanent job, I took on a temporary assignment on Madison Avenue, which was close enough to my apartment that I didn’t need any kind of transportation to and from work. Unfortunately, the assignment was only for two months.

Months later, I received a call from XYZ corporation about my résumé. The woman left a message on my voice mail (again, back then, there were no cell phones). She specifically said that the position was waiting for me and that I had the perfect experience she was looking for. I returned her call, and we set up an interview for the next day. When I went for the interview, the woman was not impressed when she saw me, because she was expecting someone else.

She asked me, Are you the person living at this address, or do you live with someone else?

I live by myself, I replied.

Immediately, she told me that I was overqualified. I could not figure out what that meant.

For almost five months I’d had no steady income, and things had started to go wrong. I hadn’t paid my mortgage or maintenance fees in three months, and I was starting to see red. I could hardly believe what was going on. When you don’t have that paycheck you’re used to, the way you think changes, and you will never be the same again. You become a completely different person than you were.

Suddenly, I came up with the most painful and stupid decision of my life: to sell my beautiful apartment. It was stupid in the sense that I did not think properly before selling it. I listed it for sale in the Daily News, and within weeks, prospective buyers started coming and simply could not believe what a beautiful and lavish apartment it was. One of the buyers asked if I was going to sell my bedroom set, living room set, and dining set, and I said no. To make a long story short, I sold the apartment to the buyer with the best offer, and we closed within the month.

My mortgage then was not a predatory loan. It was a decent, well-prepared loan with no hidden fees and with a straight-line amortization. At least I made a decent return on my equity.

The day to move came, and I had tears in my eyes. I asked myself, Is this really happening? I am moving out of this beautiful palace, the place I called the Junction. Life will never be the same again unless a miracle happens. Relocating from Manhattan to Jersey City was like downsizing to me. Why Jersey City? I had looked for apartments to rent all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, but none had been big enough to accommodate my stuff. This place in Jersey City was huge, and it was in a doorman building, which was fantastic. I was beginning a new lifestyle. I wasn’t sure of the direction of that lifestyle; all I knew now was that my lifestyle would change.

I was lucky that in those years there wasn’t much investigating of this or that before someone could get an apartment. Even though I had a sizable bank account, it couldn’t last long without income. Every expense must be replenished by income. My rent was about $800 every month, and I was not ready to dispose of my furniture in order to live in one small room without furniture. My possessions were part of my life and represented years of hard work. After moving to Jersey City, I went another five months without an income. My savings were diminishing fast, and something had to be done quick. I could not figure out what to do to get a paycheck again. The longer I remained unemployed, the harder it would be to get a job.

CHAPTER 2

My Start as a Taxi Driver

One night I was taking a taxi out in Manhattan, and I was having a friendly conversation with the cabby. I asked him, Can you make money driving a taxi?

He said, Yes, but you have to put in a lot of hours every day to make decent money.

I asked further, About how much can you make in ten hours of driving every day?

He said that on Fridays and Saturdays you could make about $200 each day, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. I thought, Hey, I will be a taxi driver. Is that possible? Is that the best job available for me? Has corporate America closed its doors on me?

I was cautiously optimistic about being a taxi driver and starting a new chapter in my life. Should I tell my friends that this flamboyant Upper East Sider was now going to be a taxi driver? I was not fully convinced that taxi driving should be my next profession, but that cabby did tell me how to get started if I would like to be a taxi driver. I now hadn’t had a deposit into my account for seven months since relocating to Jersey City, and my account was much reduced.

Finally, I decided to give being a taxi driver a shot, and I started the process of obtaining a hack license from TLC. I went to the TLC office in Long Island City around nine in the morning. Almost fifty people were waiting in line to be the first inside. That day I was just picking up the application form, and then I’d have to go back once I’d fulfilled all the requirements, which included fingerprinting, a drug test, application fees, disposition of all felony records, a DMV abstract, and a taxi-driving class (three eight-hour days), just to name a few. The class was very important because it taught me to not pursue any passenger who refused to pay, as that person might be dangerous. As far as I was concerned, my life came first, and I ended up seeing too many instances like that. After the three-day class, there was a test, and if you failed, you had to start all over. If you passed and met all the other requirements, then in two to three weeks, your hack license should be in the mail for you. The whole process from the beginning to the end took almost one month.

Now that I had my hack license to drive a cab, I had to choose between driving for an individual taxi owner or a fleet—a taxi company with a lot of yellow cabs. I decided to go for a fleet, where liabilities would be at a minimum. If you have an accident while driving for a fleet, the garage will fix your car, and you’ll be dispatched with another car. If you drive for an individual and have an accident, you might be in trouble with the owner while the car is at the repair shop, and you might not know when the car will be ready again. Working for a fleet, you have a choice of working the evening shift from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. or the day shift from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Also, you can choose to lease a car weekly or pay when you drive.

I went to register with a fleet in Brooklyn that had almost 150 yellow cabs. I put up the paperwork and submitted all documents as requested. Like the other nearly two hundred drivers in that garage, I was an independent contractor. I chose the evening shift even though the lease amount for the evening shift was higher than for the day shift. Evening drivers supposedly make more money than day drivers. You must understand that taxi drivers have no health insurance, no dental benefits, no unemployment compensation, and no paychecks. They’re on their own.

My first day driving a taxi was like my first day as a bank teller in the eighties. I was confronted with many different characters. The big difference between being a teller and a taxi driver was that as a teller I had all the benefits and was protected, while as a taxi driver I had no benefits and no protection. I also had to choose a partner, somebody who would share a car with me. That person would drive day shift, and I’d drive evening shift. This person had to meet my own standards; we had to sit down together and introduce ourselves and discuss how to treat the car, how to contact one another, how to make accommodations for emergencies, and how to be friendly with one another. Luckily, I found a lovely guy, a perfect gentleman. He agreed with all my recommendations. When we met, he was wearing a beautiful suit, an Italian tie, and well-polished shoes. We shook hands and wished each other the best of luck.

The Wall Street and Upper East Side references on my résumé indicated I was a decent person, so the company agreed to assign a brand-new car to me and my partner. Normally, if you are a freshman in the taxi-driving industry, you get a beat-up car until you graduate with a good driving record. My day partner was unbelievable, simply the best. We each had our own keys to the car, and he called me every day to let me know when the car would be at the garage, sometimes between three thirty and four in the afternoon. When I got to the garage, the brand-new Chevy Crown Victoria was there waiting for me to take it out for the evening shift. While the rest of the taxi drivers looked at me like a stranger, I would drive off. Some of these evening-shift drivers got to the garage around eleven in the morning in order to have a car by five o’clock. Sometimes they ended up not dispatched and went home empty-handed.

Driving along Flatbush Avenue, around Fulton Street, I picked up a passenger, an attorney, going to the West End in Manhattan. I told her that she was my very first passenger on my very first day driving a cab. She asked me why I was driving a cab for the first time. I told her that I had lost my job many months ago and that the bills had to be paid. She felt sympathetic toward me, and once we got to the West End, she gave me a substantial tip and wished me good luck. In one week of driving a taxi for nine to ten hours a day, I made almost $800. If I kept that up, I would make $3,200 a month, which was good enough to keep life going. This amount probably would have even been sufficient to take care of my mortgage, my maintenance fees, my social life, and all the other expenses I had on the Upper East Side. I really wished I had started driving a taxi when I was still living on the Upper East Side. How had I made that mistake of moving? Taxi driving had never occurred to me at all while I was still living on the Upper East Side. I never, never would have believed back then that taxi driving would be on the menu for me anytime in my life.

I drove that taxi for over seven months without any setbacks, except for one incident with a police officer. I was cruising along East End Avenue, driving south from Ninety-Second Street. I turned right on Eighty-Sixth Street and passed York Avenue and then First Avenue. Then, before Second Avenue, a police car appeared behind me with sirens wailing. I pulled over, and the officer came to my window and asked for my license. I asked him what I’d done wrong, and he said that I hadn’t stopped at the stop sign on East End Avenue. I told the officer that he was lying; there was no stop sign on that avenue, and he was not even coming from East End but from First Avenue. I gave him my license, and he issued me a summons and drove off.

I went back and retraced exactly the way I had gone: First Avenue to Ninety-Second Street, a right turn on East End, and then down to Eighty-Sixth Street. There were no stop signs at all on East End. I made a right turn on Eighty-Sixth toward York Avenue. I did not see any stop sign at the intersection as the police officer had alleged. I pleaded not guilty, signed the back of the summons, and mailed it to the DMV.

I went to court on the appointed day, and the police officer was there too. Our case was called, and we stood before the judge. Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Yes, I do, I said.

The officer presented his reason for writing me that summons, and the judge asked me to respond. I told the judge exactly what had happened, presenting my explanation with visual cues to convince the judge that I had done nothing wrong. I really thought that the judge would agree with my presentation. Boy, was I wrong. I was found guilty, and the police officer laughed at me. The officer had lied under oath. The whole idea of summons to taxi drivers boils down to racial profiling, making quotas, and intimidating the underdogs. If I had been driving a Mercedes or another powerful car, that police officer would not have taken advantage of me. Guilty meant three points on my DMV license and a fine of $175.

As an evening driver, Fridays and Saturdays were the best days for