For Mike Gillen, a night in his cab is like a night at the movies. Every night has a different plotline. Every character has a different story. Every scene has it’s own twists, turns, shocks and surprises.
Gillen, 51, has been behind the wheel of a cab in Fredericton for the past eight years. From Wednesday to Saturday, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the seasoned driver is picking fares up and dropping them off, everywhere from Oromocto to Fredericton’s north side.
“I love [driving a cab.] I love it. I look forward to it. When I’m away from it for a while, I start wondering what’s going on. It gets in your blood, it really does,” he said, as he turned onto York Street and headed toward Fredericton’s downtown core.
Gillen drives a dark van, topped with a hot pink “GEORGES SKYCAB” light. Outside, the first snow storm of the season swirled like white smoke. Inside, the cab was warm and classic rock drifted quietly from the speakers. It smelled the way cabs usually smell, of warmth, coffee, faint traces of cigarette smoke and traffic. The traffic of strange, new bodies coming and going. The traffic of the streets rushing by.
Gillen said it is the people he meets that keep him in the cab business night after night.
“Meeting people. It’s never the same. I mean, sure, you go through the same motions. Pick up people, take ‘em where they need to be, but every person has a story. That’s what I like about it,” he said.
Gillen quickly proved his point after picking up the first of a handful of characters that evening. Frank, an older man and a familiar face in Unit 23, got in at an uptown pool hall and was headed to his home downtown. Frank called cabs his “limousines” and chatted amicably with Gillen about the weather, the taxi service in Fredericton and their ex-wives.
“See what I mean,” he asked, as Frank ambled up his walkway and the cab pulled away. “Everybody’s got a story.”
Everybody that gets into Gillen’s cab may have a story, but he has a story about everybody who has taken a ride in his cab. This driver has seen it all. People throwing up. People making up. People making out. People getting undressed. People getting dressed. People throwing punches. People pulling knives. Gillen has driven everyone from Mayor Brad Woodside to the homeless.
Gillen’s most memorable passenger was not a stranger. A painter and crack-filler by trade, Gillen once worked with a man who turned to a life of drugs and lost his family. Gillen saw him from time to time and one night, picked the man up in his cab. Almost instantly upon seeing who was behind the wheel, the passenger began to cry. He revealed to Gillen that he had called a cab with the intention of robbing the driver.
“I bought him a coffee and took him to his sister’s because he was so down and out, so destitute and desperate. Every time I see him now, he thanks me for that,” he said, adding that the last time he saw the man he had been sober for six months and looking for a job.
This story is one of hundreds that Gillen shares with the world on his blog, Freddy Beach Cabby. The blog went online in 2005 after Gillen was prompted by a therapist to begin keeping a journal. He was suffering from depression following the death of his sixteen-year old daughter, Lyndsay. She died in 1999, killed by a drunk driver at a downtown intersection. Just visible beneath his sleeve was a tattoo of Lindsay, palm-sized, detailing her face perfectly.
“One day I woke up and I couldn’t remember what she looked like and it fuckin’ near killed me, so my fiancée paid for a tattoo,” he recalled.
Parked in the Tannery Court lot on King Street, a favourite waiting spot for Gillen, he explained that he found it difficult to keep a journal and started his blog at the suggestion of a friend.
Gillen posts several times a week and includes photos taken from a point-and-shoot digital camera he carries with him. He captures things he sees on the street, things that are left behind in his cab and interesting people he drives in the run of a shift.
One of his funniest stories involved a young man who entered the cab wearing only shoes and boxer shorts after jumping from a bedroom window into a snow bank.
“I pulled into this driveway and he come out from behind the house, wearing nothing but boxers and his shoes, carrying his clothes. He jumps in the cab, says ‘Get the fuck outta’ here!’ I say, ‘Well, what’s going on?’ And he says, ‘Her husband came home early,’” Gillen said, laughing at the memory.
Not all of Gillen’s stories are pure drama or comedy. There is also a bit of romance.
One evening, Gillen said, a young woman exited his cab to pick something up from a house. She made eye contact with a man outside as she was returning to the cab and he approached the car to engage her in conversation.
“They introduced themselves and started chatting and next thing I knew, he was getting out at her place,” he said with a smile in his voice.
Gillen works a party shift of sorts. His week includes: Wednesday night, Student Party Night; Thursday night, Ladies Night and Friday and Saturday night, the two biggest party nights of the week.
Much of his time is taken up by ferrying drinking, drunk and drunker students back and forth to bars.
“I get people, taking them down to the bars and I get them, taking them home and they’re totally different people,” he said.
“You have people in a good mood goin’ down to the bars and once they get to a certain point they turn into obnoxious assholes.”
Gillen’s years of experience taking people to and from bars and pubs have given him the ability to tell when someone is about to cause trouble or lose their lunch. In his eight years of driving, he has only had three people vomit in his cab.
“I tell them that if you throw up in my cab it’s an automatic 50 bucks. I said I don’t mind stopping for you so you can lean out the door and puke or whatever, but if you puke in my cab, it’s an automatic 50 bucks. If any of it gets on me, it’s an automatic 100 bucks,” he said, adding that this usually sobers his passengers up a little.
Most often, people do not start fights or refuse to pay fare, but Gillen said it has happened on occasion. If Gillen or any of his fellow cabbies run into trouble with a passenger, he said they radio other cabs for help, in addition to calling police.
“Within minutes, there were four or five cabs parked around us because they knew I was in trouble. We have to [back each other up] because it takes so long for the police to respond,” he said, recalling a time when passengers tried to get their money back and would have become violent had he not pressed the microphone on the dispatch radio.
Despite the ups and downs of the cab driving business, Gillen believes it has changed him for the better.
“When I first started driving a cab I was the most introverted person you’d ever want to meet. I was one of those guys that would stand in a corner at a party and look at the houseplants. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
Now the cab driver is outgoing. He had a friendly “Hello” for everyone who entered his cab that evening and followed up with a “What’s going on tonight?” or “How’s it going tonight?” He engaged everyone in conversation, whether it was about the snow pouring down outside, the condition of the roads, or their day job.
Gillen truly believes that driving a cab is an important job in society.
“The job itself doesn’t always seem very glamorous. I’ve had people say ‘Oh, you’re just a cab driver, What do you know?’
“But, try to imagine, after the bars are closed, it’s minus thirty, no buses. The cabs decide to pull off the road. There are a thousand people downtown who have to get to Southwood Park or across the bridge to the north side or to Oromocto or whatever. Imagine what that would be like,” he said.
Gillen said he doesn’t plan on retiring any time soon. To read some of Gillen’s stories visit http://www.frederictoncabby.blogspot.com.
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