Note: This is an article I wrote while in my last year as an undergrad at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. It was written for a journalism class (my BA is in Mass Communications/Journalism; class of 2009).
MICHAEL MCGOFF, NATURALIST
By Robin Shwedo
©: Robin Shwedo, 2009
It is one of those rare Florida days when the temperature and humidity are perfect. A slight breeze rustles the leaves of the nearby trees. Just past the final turn in the long driveway to Sawgrass Lake Park, the park’s Anderson Environmental Educational Center comes into view. The airy openness of the building is deceiving: this is a classroom. But this is not any old boring class: this one is fun. The fun stems from several directions: the interesting subject matter, the outdoors, and the teacher.
Naturalist Michael McGoff is passionate about the subject he taught for years: preserving the Florida environment. “I’ve always had an interest in the outdoors,” the recently-retired McGoff told me while at the center. “Since I was a little kid, I either wanted to be a park ranger or a cowboy. Cowboy positions weren’t opening, so it came to be a park naturalist,” he adds, a smile creeping onto his face.
The Tampa Bay native (“I grew up near MacDill Air Force Base”) decided early on that he wanted to work outdoors. He checked several Florida colleges while still in high school and discovered that Lake City Community College in Lake City offered several associates’ degrees that would allow him to follow his dreams. He enrolled in the park ranger program, ready to follow the call of the great outdoors. But he soon discovered that being a park ranger had more to do with logging and lumbering so he switched majors to park management, which would allow him to be more in touch with nature. The irony is that he no longer sees himself as a park manager but as a naturalist.
According to Random House Dictionary, a naturalist is “a person who studies oris an expert in natural history, especially a zoologist or botanist,” while Online Etymology Dictionary defines it as a “student of plants and animals.” Both definitions fit McGoff perfectly. His eyes light up when discussing the plant and animal life around him.
I first met Michael McGoff in the Anderson Environmental Educational Center at Sawgrass Lake Park. The building’s large entrance looks like a breezeway, open at both ends. In reality, it takes the visitor into a large room where live animals are displayed: there are native snakes in large enclosures, slithering up large branches, turtles swimming in a large aquarium filled with native plants. In the far corner of this room is an office; it was here I found Mr. McGoff.
He offered to give me a tour of his office, which housed cabinets and shelves with all manor of interesting finds. The first cabinet he opened was filled with black plastic boxes, white cards on the front to indicate the contents of each container. “These are the aquatic invertebrates,” McGoff said, pointing to the boxes. “When we do a pond-study with the students, usually fourth-graders, they go out and catch stuff with nets and we identify it.” His eyes crinkled as he spoke about the experience. It was easy to imagine the excitement the students must feel, learning through hands-on experience, rather than simply reading about animals.
Another cabinet was filled with jars of vertebrate specimens, many dating back to 1979 when the county was first developing the park. There were various types of fish, several leopard frogs, sea turtle eggs and snakes. “This is rather old-school,” he said, pointing out several of the specimens. “I doubt we would use the same methods (of recording specimens) today. The idea of keeping a dead animal in formaldehyde is passé.” He much prefers digital cameras to keep a record of what is found.
The next stop was an impressive shell collection, held on large sliding trays. Most of these were found at Fort DeSoto, while the rest were brought in from other Pinellas County beaches. There was even a horseshoe crab and a sea urchin test in the collection. (A test is the sea urchin’s exoskeleton and usually all that remains after a sea urchin has died.) “I think they’re very interesting,” McGoff said, pointing to these last two items. A lot of the park’s publication materials are also kept in the shell cabinet, which is somewhat air-tight and filled with moth balls.
Heading for a group of large drawers, McGoff’s voice became animated. “This is one of the fun drawers!” he exclaimed, pulling open a deep drawer to reveal an alligator skull. “This is fun as a hands-on exhibit, taking it to schools.” I was impressed; imagine the oohs and ahhs a group of fourth-graders would make over seeing and touching the skull.
McGoff opened another drawer and pulled out a large bag. He admitted that it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the alligator skull. Is that…? “Yes, this is dirt,” he responded, both of us laughing. “But different types of soils are associated with different kinds of plant communities and different elevations, so it’s important for us to know this.”
There was another drawer with fossilized shells, many from extinct specimens, as well as pottery shards and stone tools. “Archeology is another important part of Sawgrass Lake Park’s educational program,” he said. The park once had an archeologist on staff.
Above the drawers sat several stuffed animals, including an otter and a large owl. As the otter stood sentinel, the owl seemed to stare fiercely at us, challenging us not to cause any more extinctions. We headed to the educational center’s main room or lobby, the owl’s stare following us out the door.
Along one wall were aerial photographs and maps of the park. McGoff pointed to a hand-drawn map from 1845. It showed the lake, labeled as Sawgrass Pond; the map shows it connected to the salt water. “There was a tidal influence and with that salt water influence, most of what was growing in this natural basin was sawgrass, a very salt-tolerant species,” McGoff stated.
A second map, from 1952, showed canals. “These canals have been developed, some as early as the 1920s,” he went on. These canals drain much of the surrounding area into a natural basin. “There’s also a spill-way that tends to separate the fresh water from the salt water. Now we have drainage that allowed relatively dry, moist land open to the sun and that’s when a maple forest grew up here,” he continued, indicating land just west of Sawgrass Lake.
According to McGoff, a person might still find rows of citrus trees just north and east of the lake; these were planted by the O’Berry family, early citrus pioneers in Pinel-las County, who planted groves in the park.
“SWIFTMUD purchased the land for flood control,” McGoff continued. In 1979, SWIFTMUD got together with Pinellas County Park Department with the idea that if the land was going to be used for flood control, it could also be used as a Pinellas County park. “While the land is still mainly used as flood control, it is also used now for educational and recreational opportunities.”
Next on the tour is the aquarium located in the middle of the lobby. “It is a central attraction here,” McGoff stated. Several people were peering into its water at the plants and animals, backing up his statement. “Many of the animals here were found in area canals.” There were peninsula cooters, a type of turtle native to Florida, with dis-tinctive yellow stripes on its head and legs; soft-shelled turtles; several large-mouth bass. But not all the animals that make their way here from canals are native to Florida. “We have a walking catfish, which is native to Southeast Asia.”
The last two exhibits we looked at were several snakes in terrariums, sunning themselves on the grass or slithering up tree limbs, and native Indian artifacts. He also talked about one of his biggest gripes: garbage. “If someone brings sodas in six-pack rings or decides to fish using poles and fishing lines and then leave them, birds, turtles and other wildlife can get caught and not be able to get away. Even if they do get away, the rings and filaments can prevent them from eating. I guess what I’m trying to say is that garbage kills.”
The phone rang; it was for Mr. McGoff. He smiled, took the call, and waved as I headed off to wander through the park with a new appreciation for the local environment. Several hours later, as I was leaving, I found Mr. McGoff to report several areas where I had spotted some garbage. Most of it was beyond reach from the boardwalk.
“It’s amazing,” he sighed. “It seems that garbage is everywhere, even here.” He made note of where I’d spotted the garbage and said he’d have some of the park’s volunteers retrieve it by boat. He thanked me before heading back to his office, where he planned to finish paperwork before calling it a day.
After 37 years of working for the Pinellas County Parks’ Department, he has more than called it a day. As of October 1, 2009, Michael McGoff is officially retired. Many people might choose to kick back and relax, maybe playing a little golf or catching the latest soap operas. Not Michael McGoff. It took several weeks of trying to finally reach him.
While the first two or three calls to various Parks And Recreation numbers weren’t helpful in reaching Michael, they were revealing of his personality and his love of the environment.
“What a fantastic guy! He’s why I went to work for the parks’ department!” one woman told me. “He retired and I don’t have his number. Let me give you another number. They might be able to reach him…”
Finally, a lady named Jean (“Just Jean, please.”) at the Parks And Recreation’s main office told me she had a contact number for him. “Let me give it a try. Call you right back.” Half an hour later, she called me. “He wasn’t home, but that’s not surprising. I finally left a message on his voice mail.”
Thanking her, I hung up. Two days later, when my phone rang, an unfamiliar number on the caller ID, I answered. “Hi, Mike McGoff here,” he said to my hello? “I understand you’ve been trying to reach me.”
When asked what he’d been up to, now that he was retired, he answered without hesitation. “I’ve been doing a little traveling around the state. So far, I’ve visited half a dozen State Parks in the Florida panhandle, maybe a few more. Of course, it’s only been six weeks since I’ve retired,” he laughed. Did he plan to visit more parks? “Definitely. I want to try visiting all the State parks in Florida. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while.”
What was the most enjoyable part of teaching students and adults about parks and the environment, I wondered. “What would really make my day would be is someone said they were here in the fourth grade and were back with their family. Just being able to see people I’d taught come back with their family and say that they were working to help the environment in one form or another was really great.”
Several weeks ago, I spoke with Jason C.... The 35-year-old grew up in Pinellas County and had gone to several public schools in the area. He remembered going to Sawgrass Lake Park on a fourth grade field trip. “There was a man there — I think his last name was McGoff — and he was really excited about the environment.” It was the first time that Jason realized that a person could actually make a living teaching about the environment and making a difference. “I decided then that I wanted to do something to help the environment when I grew up.”
He now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee and is committed to environmental issues. He recently started helping out with the United Mountain Defense, a volunteer group “dedicated to protecting Tennessee’s environment and communities and halting the destructive practices of mountaintop removal.”* “I’ve been busy trying to teach others about the environment and why thinking and acting environmentally so important.” He credited his fourth grade field trip with helping him realize that this was something he’d love to do.
When I relayed this to Mike McGoff, he sounded happy. “I’ve always wanted to impart the love of the outdoors to those I’ve come in contact with.”
Soon it was time to say our good-byes.
So, the next time you’re at a Florida state park, if the tall man next to you begins telling you that that tree is a Bald Cypress and that if you want to see the worlds largest stand, you should check out the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and, by the way, he’s proud that you’re teaching your children not to litter, listen; you just may be in the presence of a Naturalist, environmental teacher and hero.
* Quote about the United Mountain Defense group is from UMD’s website and may be found at http://www.unitedmountaindefense.org/volunteer.html.
Note: This was written in late 2009/early 2010.
Also, check this out for a short video.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
“WAIT’LL YOU HEAR THIS ONE”
Note: This is an article I wrote while in my last year as an undergrad at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. It was written for a journalism class (my BA is in Mass Communications/Journalism; class of 2009).
It should be noted that I worked as a cab driver in Pinellas County, Florida, during the 1990s.
“WAIT’LL YOU HEAR THIS ONE”
by Robin Shwedo; 2009
©: Robin Shwedo, 2009
Think bartenders have heard it all? There’s a good chance that cab drivers have heard and seen even more!
“So I’ve got these two guys in my car, right? The younger one just turned 21, this is the first Friday he can legally drink, so his buddy’s taking him to Carly’s. They’re both talking ‘bout how nothing impresses them anymore, right?”
Kevin Carter slows down for the light up ahead, hitting the brakes hard when someone in the center lane cuts him off on the way to the turn lane. It’s Friday afternoon — “Idiot Friday,” he calls it, but in more colorful language, because, as he puts it, “Everyone on the road turns to idiots (or the more colorful term) on Fridays” — and he misses the car by a good foot.
“So, anyway, we’re sitting in the right-hand through lane on 49th Street, waiting for the light at Park Boulevard. Suddenly, this jet black Mercedes with a moon-roof zooms up in the center lane. Guess who’s driving?” He waits for me to ask who, then answers, “’Macho Man’ Randy Savage. The two guys in the back seat are like all excited, because there’s Macho Man.”
I laugh, and Carter goes on.
“Macho Man yells over, ‘Yo, cabbie, is this Park Boulevard?’ So I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ and he goes, ‘I need to hang a right here. When the light turns, mind if I cut in front of you so I can hang a right?’ And I tell him, ‘Yeah, sure, man.’ Just then, the light changes, and he yells, ‘Yo, thanks, man! You’re cool!’ And he takes off.” Carter laughs, “And here’s these two guys who’ve said that nothing impresses them, totally freaking out because Macho Man Randy Savage and I actually talked!”
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter has driven for Yellow Cab for a little over twelve years. It was supposed to be a stopgap job, something to do between “real jobs.” Like many other drivers, though, it didn’t take long to become hooked — or come up with a million stories.
“If I knew when I first started driving what I know now, I would’ve picked up at least a good tape recorder,” Carter maintains. “Some of the things you hear out here…”
One story involves a former cab driver — a woman — who had picked up the same drunk from the same bar every night for almost three weeks. The last night she picked the man up, he slammed the car door on his leg “at least five or six times.” She finally had to grab the man by the shoulder to stop him. After telling him to put his leg in the cab, then shut the door, the man looked at her through bleary eyes and said, “Honey, if you ever need a good man, I’m it.”
When the woman refused to give her inebriated fare her phone number (“Sorry, Bud, I’m still using it!”), he insisted she write down his number. “So, when do you think you’ll call me?” he asked, to which she responded, “When Bella Abzug becomes Pope!”
“Cool!” the drunk proclaimed.
“The man had no clue that it’d be difficult for a Jewish Congresswoman to be Pope — and when the remark was made, Bella’d been dead for maybe six months already!”
When Carter first started, the cabs were voice dispatched; dispatchers had to drive cab for a while before training for the job. Cabs now get their calls on computers; anyone off the streets can apply to dispatch.
“You wouldn’t believe the message I got on the computer,” Carter laughed one day. “It said, ‘Body in the middle of road, US 19 and Thirty-eighth Avenue. Body still moving. Traffic tied up. Please avoid.’” Another laugh. “Avoid what? The intersecttion? Traffic? The body?” A shrug. “Rookie dispatchers.”
Paul Middleton retired when his eyesight started to fail. One of the dispatchers nick-named him “the Rookie,” as he’d driven Cab “for only 37 years.” He frequently maintained that if anyone wanted to study psychology, it would behoove them to drive cab.
One of Middleton’s favorite stories involved a scruffy-looking gentleman he’d picked up one evening near the end of his shift.
“I’d been hauling him for the better part of a week,” Middleton recalled. “He was staying in a cheap motel off Haines Road, using a cab to go back and forth to a lawyer’s office in St. Pete, sometimes do a little shopping on his way back to the motel.” The man had inherited a tobacco conglomerate several years earlier; Middleton never found out what he was doing in St. Pete, or why the cut-rate accommodations.
At the end of the week, a wad of cash in his pocket, the man called the cab company and requested Middleton to pick him up.
“Could you pop the trunk?” was the first request. In went two double barrel shot-guns. “We need to stop at a convenience store,” was the second request. After buying two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine and several Snickers and Three Musketeers, he stated his destination: Key West. Upon learning that the flat rate was usually cheaper than the meter rate, “The man told me just to turn the meter on. Paid all the tolls along the way, too.”
Just outside Miami, the man insisted on stopping in a J. C. Penny’s so he could pick up a few things for the place he’d bought in Key West. “Do you need anything?” he inquired. “Come on, there must be something you need.”
Middleton conceded that his alarm clock had died the previous day. Half an hour later, the fare came back carrying two large bags. Just before placing them in the trunk next to the shotguns, he pulled out an am/fm radio alarm clock. “Best one they had on the shelf,” he told Middleton.
“You realize it would’ve been cheaper to fly,” Middleton told the man a little later, as they pulled into his driveway.
“Yeah, but this was a lot more fun,” his fare stated, handing him $400. “Keep the change.”
“To this day, if he hadn’t shown me the paperwork, I would’ve sworn he was some day laborer. And here he’d inherited this huge tobacco empire!” He laughed, adding, “Nothing like a hundred-dollar tip.” (1)
Back in Kevin Carter’s cab, heading home from school, I hear another story.
“You know Joan, right?” I nod. Joan is another of Carter’s regulars. “Okay, you know her grandson A. J. lives with her. Well last week, A.J. and one of his friends are playing. The friend’s older brother has an exercise room in the garage. A. J. and the friend are eight years old and they have all this energy, right? So the brother says, ‘Why don’t you two pretend to box? I’ll show you some basic moves. But you have to be careful.’ So they put on the eight-ounce gloves and pretend to box.
“Well, the brother leaves and the friend goes, ‘I got this loose tooth. How ‘bout hitting me and knocking it out? I’ll give you half the money I get for it. It’ll look cool: you hit me and I spit out the tooth!’ So A. J. hits him like three times and the tooth still doesn’t come out, so he grabs the eighteen-ounce gloves and knocks the tooth out with that.
“Now his friend is all mad now because he didn’t realize it was gonna hurt, so he yells, ‘Payback time!’ And he grabs the heavy gloves and goes Wham! upside A. J.’s head!
“’You kidding?’ I ask him, and he goes, ‘See? Look at this!’ Sure enough, he’s got this knot on the side of his head.” Carter quietly chuckles before adding, “Joan said A. J.’s not allowed to play at his friend’s house for a week. A. J. says she’s being mean.”
While most calls are cash calls, many drivers do carry “paper, ”charges that the cab companies extend for various reasons. “I don’t do paper,” Carter maintains. While many charges are metered-paper, others pay much less.
John, an ex-driver, carried paper for several years. There was one weekly charge that he always tried to get. “Ethel and her buds,” he called the group coming out of Sun-set Mobile Home Park. Two or three cabs would carry eight to twelve women from the park to the nearest Publix and back.
“It was great,” John admitted. “Eighteen bucks to the store, eighteen back, plus a buck from each lady on the return trip.”
His favorite part was listening to the residents, most of whom were in their seven-ties and eighties, talk about other residents. “Who are we picking up?” the first pick up in the park would ask. “Oh, Betty, Jane, and Ethel?” The women instinctually knew which order the pick-ups went, and would talk accordingly. “Did you hear about Betty? No? Ooh, she kicked her husband out! Caught him flirting with a woman at the pool. He claimed he had something in his eye…” By this time, John would be pulling into Betty’s driveway. Once in, the first woman would relay, “We’re picking up Jane and Ethel.” Immediately, the gossip started.
“The gossip was always better on the way back,” John reminisced. “They were worse than a bunch of teenagers! And funny…I never would’ve guessed old women could be so wild!”
I’ve called for a cab, and Kevin Carter pulls into the driveway. Before we’re even on the road, Carter is shaking his head. “It’s going to be one of those days, I just know it.”
What happened, I ask.
Turns out, he got a call to pick up at a Circle K. “Usually the person’s waiting outside the store, but I don’t see anyone. I stick my head inside and the only person there is the clerk. So I ask if someone called for a cab. ‘Yeah. He’s in the bathroom.’ So I go to the bathroom and knock on the door. I holler, ‘Cab,’ and the guy calls back, ‘Be right out.’
“By now, the clerk is standing next to me, whispering, ‘He ain’t dressed right.’ I just go, ‘Oh?’ ‘Yeah,’ the clerk says. ‘Just wait. You’ll see.’
“Just then, this Sheriff’s Deputy comes into the store and the clerk tells him, ‘Please stick around. I think the guy in the bathroom needs help.’
“So it’s me, the deputy and the clerk all hanging out next to the bathroom, when out comes the guy, dressed in nothing but a hospital gown, a pair of socks and an IV port still hanging out of his arm. He points to me and goes, ‘If you’re the cabbie, I’m ready to go.’ The cop and me, we’re just looking at each other like, ‘We’re not really seeing this, are we?’ and the cop says, ‘Hey, man, I think we need to talk.’
“The guy says that he left the hospital and that his girlfriend left earlier with his clothes and money, which is why he’s dressed this way. So the cop asks for the girl-friend’s phone number, and while he’s trying to call her, the guy bolts. The cop calls for backup and starts chasing the guy. So the guy vaults over this wrought-iron fence around some storage units, giving everyone a show. Finally gets caught on the other end of the units where there’s a boggy area. Course, by now there’s like eight or ten cruisers there.
“Never did find out what his problem was. Never got paid for the fare. But what can you expect on Idiot Friday?”
(1) This story, relayed from Paul Middleton, happened during the late 1960s - early 1970s; the cab fare from Pinellas County, on Florida's west coast, to Key West would now be a whole lot higher.
Kevin Carter, who I rode with while going to USFSP, retired around early 2015, and has since died.
It should be noted that I worked as a cab driver in Pinellas County, Florida, during the 1990s.
“WAIT’LL YOU HEAR THIS ONE”
by Robin Shwedo; 2009
©: Robin Shwedo, 2009
Think bartenders have heard it all? There’s a good chance that cab drivers have heard and seen even more!
“So I’ve got these two guys in my car, right? The younger one just turned 21, this is the first Friday he can legally drink, so his buddy’s taking him to Carly’s. They’re both talking ‘bout how nothing impresses them anymore, right?”
Kevin Carter slows down for the light up ahead, hitting the brakes hard when someone in the center lane cuts him off on the way to the turn lane. It’s Friday afternoon — “Idiot Friday,” he calls it, but in more colorful language, because, as he puts it, “Everyone on the road turns to idiots (or the more colorful term) on Fridays” — and he misses the car by a good foot.
“So, anyway, we’re sitting in the right-hand through lane on 49th Street, waiting for the light at Park Boulevard. Suddenly, this jet black Mercedes with a moon-roof zooms up in the center lane. Guess who’s driving?” He waits for me to ask who, then answers, “’Macho Man’ Randy Savage. The two guys in the back seat are like all excited, because there’s Macho Man.”
I laugh, and Carter goes on.
“Macho Man yells over, ‘Yo, cabbie, is this Park Boulevard?’ So I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ and he goes, ‘I need to hang a right here. When the light turns, mind if I cut in front of you so I can hang a right?’ And I tell him, ‘Yeah, sure, man.’ Just then, the light changes, and he yells, ‘Yo, thanks, man! You’re cool!’ And he takes off.” Carter laughs, “And here’s these two guys who’ve said that nothing impresses them, totally freaking out because Macho Man Randy Savage and I actually talked!”
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter has driven for Yellow Cab for a little over twelve years. It was supposed to be a stopgap job, something to do between “real jobs.” Like many other drivers, though, it didn’t take long to become hooked — or come up with a million stories.
“If I knew when I first started driving what I know now, I would’ve picked up at least a good tape recorder,” Carter maintains. “Some of the things you hear out here…”
One story involves a former cab driver — a woman — who had picked up the same drunk from the same bar every night for almost three weeks. The last night she picked the man up, he slammed the car door on his leg “at least five or six times.” She finally had to grab the man by the shoulder to stop him. After telling him to put his leg in the cab, then shut the door, the man looked at her through bleary eyes and said, “Honey, if you ever need a good man, I’m it.”
When the woman refused to give her inebriated fare her phone number (“Sorry, Bud, I’m still using it!”), he insisted she write down his number. “So, when do you think you’ll call me?” he asked, to which she responded, “When Bella Abzug becomes Pope!”
“Cool!” the drunk proclaimed.
“The man had no clue that it’d be difficult for a Jewish Congresswoman to be Pope — and when the remark was made, Bella’d been dead for maybe six months already!”
When Carter first started, the cabs were voice dispatched; dispatchers had to drive cab for a while before training for the job. Cabs now get their calls on computers; anyone off the streets can apply to dispatch.
“You wouldn’t believe the message I got on the computer,” Carter laughed one day. “It said, ‘Body in the middle of road, US 19 and Thirty-eighth Avenue. Body still moving. Traffic tied up. Please avoid.’” Another laugh. “Avoid what? The intersecttion? Traffic? The body?” A shrug. “Rookie dispatchers.”
Paul Middleton retired when his eyesight started to fail. One of the dispatchers nick-named him “the Rookie,” as he’d driven Cab “for only 37 years.” He frequently maintained that if anyone wanted to study psychology, it would behoove them to drive cab.
One of Middleton’s favorite stories involved a scruffy-looking gentleman he’d picked up one evening near the end of his shift.
“I’d been hauling him for the better part of a week,” Middleton recalled. “He was staying in a cheap motel off Haines Road, using a cab to go back and forth to a lawyer’s office in St. Pete, sometimes do a little shopping on his way back to the motel.” The man had inherited a tobacco conglomerate several years earlier; Middleton never found out what he was doing in St. Pete, or why the cut-rate accommodations.
At the end of the week, a wad of cash in his pocket, the man called the cab company and requested Middleton to pick him up.
“Could you pop the trunk?” was the first request. In went two double barrel shot-guns. “We need to stop at a convenience store,” was the second request. After buying two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine and several Snickers and Three Musketeers, he stated his destination: Key West. Upon learning that the flat rate was usually cheaper than the meter rate, “The man told me just to turn the meter on. Paid all the tolls along the way, too.”
Just outside Miami, the man insisted on stopping in a J. C. Penny’s so he could pick up a few things for the place he’d bought in Key West. “Do you need anything?” he inquired. “Come on, there must be something you need.”
Middleton conceded that his alarm clock had died the previous day. Half an hour later, the fare came back carrying two large bags. Just before placing them in the trunk next to the shotguns, he pulled out an am/fm radio alarm clock. “Best one they had on the shelf,” he told Middleton.
“You realize it would’ve been cheaper to fly,” Middleton told the man a little later, as they pulled into his driveway.
“Yeah, but this was a lot more fun,” his fare stated, handing him $400. “Keep the change.”
“To this day, if he hadn’t shown me the paperwork, I would’ve sworn he was some day laborer. And here he’d inherited this huge tobacco empire!” He laughed, adding, “Nothing like a hundred-dollar tip.” (1)
Back in Kevin Carter’s cab, heading home from school, I hear another story.
“You know Joan, right?” I nod. Joan is another of Carter’s regulars. “Okay, you know her grandson A. J. lives with her. Well last week, A.J. and one of his friends are playing. The friend’s older brother has an exercise room in the garage. A. J. and the friend are eight years old and they have all this energy, right? So the brother says, ‘Why don’t you two pretend to box? I’ll show you some basic moves. But you have to be careful.’ So they put on the eight-ounce gloves and pretend to box.
“Well, the brother leaves and the friend goes, ‘I got this loose tooth. How ‘bout hitting me and knocking it out? I’ll give you half the money I get for it. It’ll look cool: you hit me and I spit out the tooth!’ So A. J. hits him like three times and the tooth still doesn’t come out, so he grabs the eighteen-ounce gloves and knocks the tooth out with that.
“Now his friend is all mad now because he didn’t realize it was gonna hurt, so he yells, ‘Payback time!’ And he grabs the heavy gloves and goes Wham! upside A. J.’s head!
“’You kidding?’ I ask him, and he goes, ‘See? Look at this!’ Sure enough, he’s got this knot on the side of his head.” Carter quietly chuckles before adding, “Joan said A. J.’s not allowed to play at his friend’s house for a week. A. J. says she’s being mean.”
While most calls are cash calls, many drivers do carry “paper, ”charges that the cab companies extend for various reasons. “I don’t do paper,” Carter maintains. While many charges are metered-paper, others pay much less.
John, an ex-driver, carried paper for several years. There was one weekly charge that he always tried to get. “Ethel and her buds,” he called the group coming out of Sun-set Mobile Home Park. Two or three cabs would carry eight to twelve women from the park to the nearest Publix and back.
“It was great,” John admitted. “Eighteen bucks to the store, eighteen back, plus a buck from each lady on the return trip.”
His favorite part was listening to the residents, most of whom were in their seven-ties and eighties, talk about other residents. “Who are we picking up?” the first pick up in the park would ask. “Oh, Betty, Jane, and Ethel?” The women instinctually knew which order the pick-ups went, and would talk accordingly. “Did you hear about Betty? No? Ooh, she kicked her husband out! Caught him flirting with a woman at the pool. He claimed he had something in his eye…” By this time, John would be pulling into Betty’s driveway. Once in, the first woman would relay, “We’re picking up Jane and Ethel.” Immediately, the gossip started.
“The gossip was always better on the way back,” John reminisced. “They were worse than a bunch of teenagers! And funny…I never would’ve guessed old women could be so wild!”
I’ve called for a cab, and Kevin Carter pulls into the driveway. Before we’re even on the road, Carter is shaking his head. “It’s going to be one of those days, I just know it.”
What happened, I ask.
Turns out, he got a call to pick up at a Circle K. “Usually the person’s waiting outside the store, but I don’t see anyone. I stick my head inside and the only person there is the clerk. So I ask if someone called for a cab. ‘Yeah. He’s in the bathroom.’ So I go to the bathroom and knock on the door. I holler, ‘Cab,’ and the guy calls back, ‘Be right out.’
“By now, the clerk is standing next to me, whispering, ‘He ain’t dressed right.’ I just go, ‘Oh?’ ‘Yeah,’ the clerk says. ‘Just wait. You’ll see.’
“Just then, this Sheriff’s Deputy comes into the store and the clerk tells him, ‘Please stick around. I think the guy in the bathroom needs help.’
“So it’s me, the deputy and the clerk all hanging out next to the bathroom, when out comes the guy, dressed in nothing but a hospital gown, a pair of socks and an IV port still hanging out of his arm. He points to me and goes, ‘If you’re the cabbie, I’m ready to go.’ The cop and me, we’re just looking at each other like, ‘We’re not really seeing this, are we?’ and the cop says, ‘Hey, man, I think we need to talk.’
“The guy says that he left the hospital and that his girlfriend left earlier with his clothes and money, which is why he’s dressed this way. So the cop asks for the girl-friend’s phone number, and while he’s trying to call her, the guy bolts. The cop calls for backup and starts chasing the guy. So the guy vaults over this wrought-iron fence around some storage units, giving everyone a show. Finally gets caught on the other end of the units where there’s a boggy area. Course, by now there’s like eight or ten cruisers there.
“Never did find out what his problem was. Never got paid for the fare. But what can you expect on Idiot Friday?”
(1) This story, relayed from Paul Middleton, happened during the late 1960s - early 1970s; the cab fare from Pinellas County, on Florida's west coast, to Key West would now be a whole lot higher.
Kevin Carter, who I rode with while going to USFSP, retired around early 2015, and has since died.
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