"The Cabman's Wife" & What Did Seattle Yellow Cab Drivers Receive From Puget Sound Dispatch This Christmas Season?

Cab Drivers Marry and Have Wives? A Quote from the BBC History Magazine, November 2023 Issue, Taken from the article "Broadcast Views: Radio Times at 100" by David Hendy

"Complaints about a steady dumbing down were, though, exaggerated. Radio Times has always sought a mass-market appeal, with editorial teams of the 1920s and 30s encouraged to personify their target customer as "the cabman's wife."  Staff were told that this fictional every woman would buy Radio Times--but, as long as the writing avoided "being highbrow", she might read the rest of the magazine." 

I love this quote for many reasons other than being very funny.  I like it that United Kingdom cabbies and their wives (and families) in the first half of the 20th C exemplified the typical working-class British laborer.  No Shakespeare for them, only Punch and the sporting news.  Most don't know that I almost started driving cab when I moved back to Seattle in 1982.  Unemployment was 12 percent and I scrambled to find work.  I ended working a bunch of hospital psychiatric shifts and driving Metro buses but if my wife hadn't vetoed my cab driving after hearing about the 12 hour shifts, we would have been set.  

As I have mentioned, within months of my cab beginnings in September 1987, veteran cabbies had nicknamed me "the vacuum cleaner" for my innate ability to scoop up the fares.  As for "lowbrow" taxi  spouses, my now ex-wife spoke fluent French, studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and got her French  Language BA from the University of Washington.  In addition, as a young teenager, she studied ballet in France with Maria Tallchief, one of dance history's most famous dancers. Anyone know the name George Balanchine? 

And that famous (or infamous) personage of these pages, "she-who-can't-be-named", has an official IQ of 150, studied in the UK and graduated from that prestigious private university, Rochester, in New York State.  She entered college at age 16.  As I always say, my IQ is minus 150, or is it minus 300?  Sorry, I can't calculate that low!

Today, at least in London, England, UK, those famous "Black Car" cabbies are part of an exclusive professional class, making 6 figure earnings and living a very comfortable middle-class life, thank you very much.  If I was a London cabbie, I would have long ago petitioned whatever local UK colleges to make the gaining of "the knowledge" into a Bachelor of Arts or Sciences degree in Urban Transportation, making cabbies further eligible for Graduate studies.  I wonder what their wives do read?   I bet it's the Financial Times and not the Daily Mirror or The Sun tabloids. 

By the way, if there is a better magazine than BBC History, I don't know about it.  I subscribe to a number of both print and online magazines and newspapers but its only BBC History that I read cover to cover.  If I keep reading it, someday maybe, just maybe my IQ will finally rise into the plus range.  God, ya never know!  And oh, back in San Francisco, 1979-82, I was a magazine editor, poetry it was.  I like magazines. 

                                                                      My brain is simple

                                                                      As large as a teenager's pimple

                                                                      Dylan Thomas I am not

                                                                      Not interested in that kind of

                                                                      Lyrical rot!

Cheap Pizza

Sorry everyone but I remember the Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts that Yellow Cab (the BYG co-op) used to provide for everyone.  Thanksgiving was always at a local restaurant, Christmas at the lot.  Today though, at PSD's Holiday party, the drivers were provided the worst of cheap pizza, Domino's.   I estimate they spent between $100-150.00 for the pizza.  I have also estimated that the current Yellow fleet paid PSD roughly three million dollars in dispatch fees this year.  And to show their appreciation for everyone's hard work, they got pizza.  Not even good pizza.  Do they know the definition of immorality?  

Somewhat laughable, speaking to a driver later, he said "at least it didn't come from 7-11."  Gallows humor is what that is.  Instead of hanging the drivers, they get to gag on stale pizza.  Saves the cost of buying the rope, building the platform, paying the hangman, etc. 

Drug Run

On the morning of what is now my 70th birthday, I dreamt I was back in a damn cab servicing a RT drug run.  I'm in these folks apartment when I am told, as usual, some kind of delay.  They pay me the exact meter, $8.00.  Then a five dollar tip. That was nice.  Must have known it was my birthday.  How wonderful it wasn't, being back in the cab, sleeping or not!