The Other Side of Midnight (4 page)

Snow tires are what forced the roads to be better because you couldn't get around as good as when you had chains on. That's when the city started sanding the streets. Salting came in after. I think we were the only ones to have sanders in our cars. When it got too slippery going up over a hill, you pressed a button and she'd squirt out the sand in front of you from two little buckets that were in the trunk. It was the same as the big spreaders today. But they got worn out and clogged up. When the roads got better, we just discontinued using them.

In 1948, the first meter was brought in. It was a Cabbel Meter. I still have one in my ‘38 Nash. When we went into Confederation, the city decided to use a new Canadian-built meter called the Sivec. If you were a taxi driver, that's the one you used. Gordon Butler had the contract for them. He had an old stationery store on Water Street, Pens and Pence. But when he started installing the meters, he opened up a place on Hamilton Avenue. Because they were controlled by a clock, Dick Harris, a jeweller, became the man to do all the repair work on them. He made a dollar at it, too, because he was the only one who knew how to fix them, unless you sent them back to the factory.

Taxis had two-way radios before the police did. The first taxi company to have them in their cars was Mulroney's Cabs on Fleming Street. It helped a lot if you had to pick up a customer on John Street, for instance, but you couldn't find the address. You could always ring back to the stand for directions. It was convenience, more than anything else. Remember, you still had to go back to the stand after every run before you could get another job, but we often picked up those jobs on the sly, anyhow.

When you're an owner, you never had time to drive a cab eight hours a day. You had other things to do. I had a bit of an education and my father didn't. From 1948 right up until we closed in 1982— that's about thirty-five years—I did the bookwork and made up the paychecks.

I had my own business to run, too. I bought Silverlocks, an automotive store, when I was twenty years old. Then I bought out the Radiator Shop. I had an agency for taxi signs. I brought in the orange signs for Burgess Brothers' Cabs. Everyone else had white or yellow signs. The family, which included my uncle, too, had Tilden Rent-A-Car. We were all in it together, we'll say: Dad and his brother, and me and my brother and my sister.

That era was probably the peak of the taxi business in St. John's. I suppose I could name every taxi stand that was on the go then. Georgetown had Rawlins Cross Taxi and Mulroney's Taxi. Rabbittown was—I wouldn't say a slum—but a lower-class part of St. John's. It ran from Bonaventure Avenue where the St. John's Curling Club is today and then west on Empire Avenue. Empire Avenue was the old track; that's where the train came through. All up through Calver Avenue and Summer Street was Rabbittown. They were more or less poorer-type people with small houses. They had Terra Nova Taxi. Super and Ace were there, too. Then they combined and became Super Ace, which is today Co-Op Taxi. There was Blue Taxi by the post office. There was Hub Taxi, Square Taxi and Station Taxi. That was all between the west end of Water Street and the railway station. Then you had ones just off of Water Street on Adelaide: O.K. Taxi, Radio Cabs and Wheeler's Cabs. None of the stands had ten cars. Most of them had four. That was the standard size taxi stand.

One of the most famous taxi stands, I suppose, in those days, was O.K. Taxi. That was down on Waldegrave Street. In 1946, after Frank O'Keefe came back from the Second World War, he opened up O.K. Taxi. George Martin started that up. His father, Jake Martin, worked with us in Burgess Brothers' Cabs. He was a fine driver, too— a real Dapper Dan. He had to have his suit of clothes just so, and his tie was just so. George sold it all after, and he opened up Valley Cabs in Mount Pearl.

When Harry Bugden left Hotel Taxi he had nothing. He had no taxi stand. He got together with Jack Crosbie, who was in with the airport crowd. Bugden said, “Well, I got the experience in the taxi business. My name is popular. If I had the cars, I could operate a stand.”

Crosbie said, “Okay, we'll get ten cars. We'll get ten Chevys— all light blue.”

Then the tender came up for the airport, and he got it.

My father wasn't interested in it. He said, “Why do I have to be dictated to by an airport with ten cars and uniformed men when I got a nice little taxi business of my own? I'm not interested.”

Frank O'Keefe: “Nah, I'm not interested.”

Hotel Taxi: “Nah, I'm not interested.”

Harry Bugden was down to the stand one day, and he was talking to Dad about different things. Dad said, “Harry, I don't know if this airport contract is as good as it's supposed to be. I could send in five cars to the airport for when a plane gets in. Each one of them picks up a passenger. But some of them got three and four passengers, and they're only paying a dollar each.”

You see, City Council had made a law that said because it was the airport they could charge by the head and not by the meter, the same as the railway station. But today, the legal way in St. John's is if a passenger gets in a taxi you're supposed to turn on your meter. Say you take a customer up to Topsail, and they ask, “How much, please?”

The driver might say, “$40.”

“Where's that on your meter, sir?”

“Oh, I didn't turn it on.”

“Well, turn your meter on. How much is it now?” It'd be whatever the drop rate is. “$3.25? Well that's all I got to pay you. That's the law.”

Driving around all the old drunks is what took the good out of the business. We didn't cater to that trade at all. We catered to the respectable trade: bringing people to church on Sundays, and all that good business.

That's the way the taxi business was run back then.

A taxi used to be a luxury. For instance, Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Murphy might ring us on Saturday night, and we would book them in to go to church Sunday morning. Or Mrs. Maloney or Mrs. Bowring might ring us up to go for a run around Marine Drive on Sunday afternoon. They would never want to see a sign on top of the car. They wanted to be sitting in the back, as if to say, “This is my car, and this man is driving me around.” That's why it was called chauffeuring. O.K. Taxi had a fleet of Nash cars. One of their cars was white—the wedding car. That's all that car was used for. If you had a wedding tomorrow you had to hire a taxi because there were no cars around.

Ordinary people never used taxis. Everyone went on the streetcars or the buses. In fact, we had a good transportation system here in St. John's. It was called Golden Arrow Coaches. They had ten buses and a plough to clear the streets. The buses ran on Duckworth Street because there wasn't enough space for them to pass the streetcars on Water Street. The streetcars were eventually retired because people started using the buses. Besides, the streetcars were getting old, too, and Light and Power wanted to get rid of them. The buses had four main runs: the west loop, the east loop, the Grace Hospital and the General Hospital. The bus terminal was on Harvey Road. During the war, when the Americans wanted buses going to Pepperell, they got Golden Arrow Coaches to operate them.

Golden Arrow Coaches eventually went out of business and another mainland company came in, Capital Coach Lines. But they couldn't make a go of it, either. The trouble was they didn't have good buses. All they had was old school buses. It's the same as the school buses today. All they got now are leftover buses brought in from the mainland. The taxi business isn't much different. Bugden's Cabs, when they were operating years ago, my God, they had a new fleet of cars on regularly. We all brought in brand new cars. When you were finished with them, anyone could have them. We didn't care who had them. As far as we were concerned, they were worn out. We made enough money on the year or two that we had them to replace them. Now mostly what they got on the streets is old used cars that they buy at auction.

The taxi business is still a good business, but it's not the prestige business it once was. Today, it's a cutthroat boozers and drunks business. I mean, take us, for instance. We had a direct line to the Janeway. We took every call that came out of there. We did the Confederation Building up on Circular Road. In those days, it was called the Canada House. We had a contract with CBC; we brought all their reporters around. They never had their own cars, or anything. That was all daytime work done by us.

We had the contract for the penitentiary. The guards put the prisoners in the car, brought them to the railway station and then sent them home. A lot of them were men from around the bay who got put in jail for the winter because they liked three hot meals a day. Half of them were in there for making moonshine and stuff like that. That's half of the crooks that were in Newfoundland years ago. The crooks weren't bad in those days. I suppose there were murders and all that every now and again, but there was nothing like the crimes you see on the news today. The city was much quieter.

One time, I met an old policeman who was a patient at the Miller Centre. I said, “I can't remember you on the police force.” He told me his name. “Goddamn it! I do remember you. Do you remember Burgess Brothers' Cabs?”

“Yes, sir. Burgess Brothers' Cabs were the main taxi business in St. John's. That's the one we all honoured. If there was a crook missing we were trying to find, we rang Burgess Brothers' Cabs: ‘Have an eye out for such and such.'”

When the nightclubs started up on George Street, all the good taxi stands went out of business.

In my day, there were only a few beer parlours in town. Cottage Gardens was on Merrymeeting Road. It was a beautiful building, an old-fashioned two-story building. No women were allowed in there because women weren't allowed in beer parlours. The nightclubs used to be outside the city limits. There was no nightclubs in St. John's. It wasn't allowed—that was the law. You had the Old Colony Club. You had the Bella Vista. You had the Commodore Club out by the airport. Then you had the Crystal Palace out in the Goulds. Out in Mount Pearl, you had the Old Mill.

The nearest nightclub was the Old Colony Club on Portugal Cove Road. It was the elite club. You had to be a member to go in there. The Goulds and all the rest of them were all regular nightclubs. Club 21 was another one on Topsail Road. It became Dominic's Place. If you took your girlfriend to the Old Colony Club, or the Commodore, or the Bella Vista, my God, you were taking her to the big dance. The nightclub was an elite business. People went into the Old Colony for their supper. There was a dining room just off the bar, or down the stairs was the dance hall. For some dances, you had to go in formal clothes—long dresses and tuxedos.

You never took your girlfriend into the beer parlour. That was never heard of. You took her dancing. You took her to a movie, or you took her parking. Cabot Tower is the famous place. Well, that was the famous place to go parking in those days. It was very romantic to bring your girlfriend up to Cabot Tower overlooking the city to see all the lights.

The Sundance would've been one of the first nightclubs on George Street. It used to be a garage, the old Adelaide Motors building. But George Street was nothing in those days, just a little place with a few taverns.

By that time, a lot of the drivers were terrible. They didn't know how to drive. They were driving too fast and skidding all the time. They were breaking up the cars.

I can remember my Uncle Jim saying down to the office, “I'm so Jesus fed up with this Jesus thing. I'd like to take every Jesus car down there off the road.”

“What's wrong now, Uncle Jim?”

“Johnny such-and-such just broke up one of the cars again.”

You know what I suggested? Sell the cars out to the drivers and let them do what they like. Just become a broker. And so he did. Uncle Jim arranged it all through the Bank of Nova Scotia. They lent the drivers the money, and Uncle Jim backed it. If they fell through on the loan he just took the car back and sold it to somebody else. But Uncle Jim didn't like brokering; he had no use for it. Uncle Jim was a businessman, like my father. He didn't want to see those cars come and go as they pleased. We were putting guys on for the night shift and only half of them would show up. Here's the dispatcher with a list this long, trying to please the customers but with no cars to do it.

Uncle Jim used to say, “I got fifteen cars that are supposed to be down here today, but I only got five. I can't tell the other ten they got to come in. They own their own cars. But I need to have cars on the stand if I'm going to make money”

The last fleet of cars we bought was in 1976—they were Chevy Malibus. We started selling them out as brokers in 1978, and we kept it going until 1982. But it got to the point where I was no longer interested in it. Besides, I had other businesses. Uncle Jim was up in his late ‘80s. It was just time for him to get out. Uncle Jim said, “To hell with it!”

It wasn't a taxi business any more, as far as we were concerned. The bottom had already dropped out of it.

It Was Steady Go—Steady Belt

Gerald, driving for forty-one years

Mr. Burgess witnessed what was, from his perspective, the devolution of the taxi business from a system of neighbourhood-based and family run stands into what would become a public utility dominated by soft monopolies. The career taxicab drivers quoted in the following monologues point out that for as long as they have been behind the wheel they've had to hustle to make a dollar both on and off the meter. Their livelihood has always depended just as much upon the daily routines of their working class customers as they have upon the city's vices.

There is little glamour in the taxi business, only pride. For those drivers who know nothing but being behind the wheel the stories of their early working lives are often humorous and full of youthful optimism. There is none of the cynicism of having been ground down by years of uncertainty and an income that has steadily diminished through increased stand rates, gasoline prices and insurance costs.