Greetings From Price, Utah: A Knife is Pulled & I Like "Old Time" Cabbies

I am writing from Price, Utah, a small coal mining community about two hours southeast of Salt Lake City, now home to my friend Terry.  Earlier we visited the Mormon hot spots in Salt Lake City.  Young Mormon women kept approaching us, seeking verbal engagement upon their favorite metaphysical subject.  I was not encouraging, the Mormon Temple a comic book representation of life and religion.  Tomorrow we go to the famous desert national parks located near Moab to seek our own version of earthly clarity.

Yesterday I had a knife "presented" to me yesterday by a drug-crazed individual who was attempting for no real purpose to intimidate the taxi driver.  He had three companions with him and given that it was a sunny afternoon and perhaps a mile-long ride, clearly I understood I was in no real danger.  He was in the front seat.  No, I did not appreciate him locking the blade.  Lucky for him the conditions were obviously benign or my response would have been entirely of another nature.  These four individuals were remarkably rough and disjointed, barely clinging to affable society.  My only response was to have their telephone number placed on what is termed the "no service list."  Though mostly a symbolic gesture, I can only hope it sends the intended message.  That kind of nonsense can and will get, from a driver legally carrying a gun, a potentially fatal response.  My advise to all petty hoods and malcontents:  behave yourself or simply expect trouble.  That can be the only expectation.

Early Saturday morning I picked up two guys at the Penske  Truck Center, First South & South Spokane heading for the train station.  Currently they are transporting trucks from Los Angeles to Seattle for the wage of 23 cents per mile.  They immediately identified themselves as past and current (one drives part-time in Phoenix) taxi drivers.  The guy originally from Chicago showed the scar on his lip, placed there by a well-dressed passenger attempting to rob him.  Somehow he got hold of the guy's tie and literally pulled him along for three blocks to a police station, his out-stretched hand holding fast as he made the criminal trot along his taxi.  Ah yes, nothing like the joys of taxi driving, knives and split lips!