Excerpts
To get an idea of the content of Friendly Fred's Taxi Tales, here are a few excepts from some of the stories. If you like what you see and want to read more, click on the "read more" link, which will take you to the Order a Copy page.
Why is the Earth Changing?
It was about one thirty on a Thursday morning. I had a bell for a pick-up at a gas station at University Boulevard and Arapahoe Road. When I pulled into the gas station, a lady was waiting in the parking lot for me. She got into the cab and said, “I’m so glad you came when you did. They kicked me out of the gas station.”
That’s not the best way to inspire confidence in the cab driver: stating that you have been kicked out of a store. I didn’t ask why she had been kicked out. For all I know, they were closing. Gas stations do close early in the southern areas. She asked me to take her to I-25 and Arapahoe. She said she was getting a motel near there. We were already on Arapahoe Road, so all I had to do was to drive east to I-25, which is close to seventy blocks.
Somewhere along the way, she asked, “Why are we going downhill?”
“Because the road is going downhill. We’ll be going downhill for a little bit, and then we’ll be going uphill for a little bit.”
I thought it was an odd question, and I guess I answered it as logically as I could. A little later, she baffled me again: “Don’t you think it’s strange that there are hills in areas that used to be flat? Why is the earth changing?”
I didn’t have a response for that one. Of course I didn’t realize she was crazy at this point, but this should have been my first clue.
Into the River
I was driving southbound on Santa Fe Drive between Alameda Avenue and Mississippi Avenue. It was just after 2:00 a.m., and I had three passengers: two guys and a girl. They were going to The Breakfast King, which was just up ahead at the corner of Mississippi and Santa Fe. I was in the left lane of the southbound lanes, so I could turn left at Mississippi Avenue. When I glanced in the rear-view mirror, I noticed a vehicle in back of me veer off to the left, as if taking an exit, but there was no exit there. It was an SUV, maybe a Ford Explorer or a Jeep Cherokee. The next thing I noticed, the SUV was rolling over. I could tell that it rolled completely over more than once. There was an embankment to the left, and it was rolling down the embankment.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed to the passengers. “The car in back of us just rolled over.”
I hit the brakes and grabbed my cell phone. I came to a complete stop on the left shoulder. The passengers got out of the cab and ran toward the place where the vehicle had rolled. We couldn’t see it from there.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I am southbound on Santa Fe between Alameda and Mississippi. The car in back of me just rolled over. It went off the road and started rolling. There is an embankment to my left.” As I mentioned the embankment, I looked to my left as if I could describe it better if I were looking at it. I saw the water, and I remembered that the Platte River was between the northbound and southbound lanes of Santa Fe Drive for this stretch. “It’s the river. The car is in the Platte River.” She asked me for my name and for more details about the exact location.