Taxi driving experience

I remember seeing the new taxi company start with one old purple Oldsmobile with a home made top light. The owner used a pager which his wife would answer the taxi phone at their house. 672-9897 was the taxi phone line. Now, for those of you who do not know what a pager is please let me explain.

A pager was a small device which allowed someone to phone this device and to leave a short message. The dispatcher would leave the message of 123 Mount Pleasant Drive. This was before the two way was placed inside of these taxis.

I watched the owner of this new taxi company sit for hours outside of the Old Cinema bar waiting for people to come out hoping they would jump into his taxi. He also had a pizza delivery contract to deliver pizza for Pizza Hut for $3.00 per delivery. Now, to put things into perspective, the cost of fuel was really low compared to fuel prices today.

It was in September of 1999 when I asked if I could drive for this company. I phoned the dispatcher from this company and asked if they were looking for any drivers. David who was one of this company's taxi driver answered the phone. Back in those days, the company had their drivers answer the dispatch phone. This was one of the first companies who used a cell phone instead of the interpatch system which was used for many years. The interpatch system was a device which each company had in their dispatch office which would tie the phone into the two-way radio system. In order to answer the phone out of the car, you would have to be in the car or in the office.

I remember the day when I first went to go drive my first shift. The office was out of a house which address was 4911-56 street in the basement of that house. The owner rented out the first floor and the dispatch office was in the basement. The four taxis were kept in the garage at the back of the house. Two of the taxis were kept inside the garage while the other two were parked outside of the garage.

The amount of money which I made was not a lot of money. Our basic bills were under $1,000.00 per month. We paid $450.00 per month for a two bedroom apartment. This included everything except for power. We were in that apartment from January 1998-May 2002. A few years later. the company moved from that house to 4511-52 a ave which was a shop and parking area which Blue J storage owned. The neighborhood was complaining about the fact that the taxis were coming and going all night long.

I do have one memory of a barbeque which the company had for the employees. All of the families of the employees were all invited. The owner made hamburgers grilled on the barbeque. There was pop and hamburgers along with fruit for dessert. This was in the Summer of 2000. One year, the Victory Harvest Fellowship had a Christmas banquet. After the banquet. I did a shift for the company which went until the early morning.

Back in those days, driving taxi did not pay a lot of money. My wife worked at babysitting for different families. There was this one shift when I could not find my keys after I drove a shift. My wife was not at home at the time so the landlord let me in our apartment suite. The next day, I was so relieved to find my keys in the smoke tray of the taxi which I normally drove.

There are a number of funny stories which I can remember. There was this one driver who was known as Ambrose from Camrose while he was driving me home just about hit the competition when he just about went through a four way stop. I must say that my life flashed before my eyes.

One memory which I always will remember was the day I received a phone call from my sister January of 2004 while I was at work driving a day shift for the taxi. I phoned my sister back and I was informed that my mother was palliative and was dying in the Daysland hospital. I told my sister that I was at work that I could not come. My boss said on the background that I should go and spend some time with my mother before she passed away. I phoned my wife who was babysitting a little boy. She brought him along and we went to Daysland. We're able to spend time with my mother which was so important to me. Two weeks later on January 22, she passed away at 8 that morning.

This was a very hard time in my life. In 2004, I attracted Cellulitis which was very serious. A Dutch doctor advised me to get a job which got me off of my but and to exercise. This was when I began looking for another job. I found an ad for a Security Guard job at Augustana University for full time. May, a friend of ny wife and I took me up to Edmonton where I was hired as a security guard. I put my two weeks notice into this taxi cab company. February 14 of 2005, I did my first security shift with Suzanne who was a student security guard. I worked Monday -Friday and Suzanne worked Saturday and Sunday.

My health improved when I got the right amount of exercise. I was able to make more money than I did as a taxi driver. I was already bankrupt because I could not afford the taxes. This part of my life of driving taxi ended and my security career had begun. The hardship of losing my mother really was difficult to go through. However.this change of careers was what I needed at that time in my life. What happened to me three months later changed my life. It was something which I did not see coming. However, it changed the course of my career.