The Story of an Average Cabbie - Essay Example

You Talking To Me? His claim to fame is that he knows the whole of Phoenix Arizona like the back of his palm. any place and he knows where it is, who am I talking about? None other than José Navarro, a resident Yellow Cab driver Now a lot of you may be wondering who he is, well don’t worry, he’s not anyone famous, he’s just your average cabbie who I met one day while going to work. I always wanted to know more about cabbies, everyday ferrying hundreds of people across Phoenix. I wondered what it was like; who were these people and were they anything like what Martin Scorsese portrayed in his epic Taxi Driver with the famous dialogue “you talking to me?” So I decided to talk to one of them and find out what it is that makes them tick. Jose is part of the 2nd generation Mexican living in Phoenix. His parents came to the USA during the 50s and have been living in Phoenix ever since. He never got to finish school but his daughter Gabriella is now in the 3rd grade and he is very proud of it. “School is important you know, I never got to complete school, but I want my daughter to finish school, get an education.” So was Jose always a cabbie? “No man, this was purely luck, the thing is that we weren’t all that well off in the beginning. We had a small store in the neighborhood but then that wasn’t doing all too well, and since I was the eldest I had to take odd jobs here and there to help out the family. I started by helping my father in the store with small things but then he wasn’t paying me anything and I wanted to make some money.” With that Jose started working in whatever capacity he could to help out his family and soon he dropped out of school so that he could work full time. Why did he drop out of school? “Hey back then I didn’t realize how important an education was for me, I mean after you learn to read and write what difference does it make, what’s the point of learning all that other stuff, and with the money I was bringing in, I could help out with my family and to me that was important.” Any regrets about dropping out back then? “Not really, back then we needed the money so in a way it was justified, but now with our situation better, I’m going to make sure that Gabriella gets nothing but the best.” José worked many jobs, a sort of jack of all trades, he was a handy man for some time, he worked in a shoe shop selling shoes and so on. All small things but it was helping the family and that was all that mattered to him. When he was 20 he landed a job as a docker in a Best Buy store where he had to load and unload trucks and that’s when things began to change for José. Seeing an easy opportunity to make some extra cash he started stealing small items from the boxes, at first he started with small things like a soap bar or a couple of batteries, soon he moved on to taking bigger more costlier items when fate caught up with him. That’s when he met his future wife Martina and something in him just changed. “She changed me completely, I remember when I first went out with her I tried to impress her with a hair dryer I had stolen, man that was one crazy night, when she found out about how I got it, she made me promise never to steal ever again. I was so madly in love with her that I swore in the name of the Holy Father that I wouldn’t ever steal again.” And after that jose tried to sober up and stop his life of crime, he quit his job as a docker and then tried his hand at driving a delivery truck for a milk company. Things were a bit tough for him, driving a delivery truck wasn’t paying enough and he wanted to also propose to Martina, but with no money he had to put those plans on hold. Always on the look out for a better job, jose soon moved to driving a delivery truck for a moving agency. A better paying job than the previous one, he decided to take the plunge and ask Martina to marry him “Oh yeah that was some night, it was forty degrees or something, I had taken Martina out to one of those fancy restaurants and then we were walking back when I asked her to marry me, I didn’t have money to buy her a real diamond ring or anything, so instead I got her one of those glass diamond type rings and gave it to her, man that was one magical night for me.” Jose got married a year later. It seems Martina has always been a lucky charm for jose because it Martina who told him about the taxi business, “Yeah Martina’s friend Catalina, her husband was driving a cab and he was doing quite well for himself, got a good deal on the cab, so I thought maybe I could also do that, and if I worked the night shifts, that way I could take care of Gabriella during the day and Martina could concentrate on her work, so I applied, gave an exam and passed it, it was easy stuff, asked about where some places were and a few other things” With that jose joined the Yellow Cab Taxi Service and has been working there ever since. Has he had any celebrities sit in his cab? “Yeah man, Ryan Avery once sat in my cab, funny guy, tipped well and I think even Kevin Johnson sat but I’m not too sure, though the guy really looked a lot like him.” Well my destination finally came up so it was time to bid goodbye to jose, but before I left I asked one final question had he seen Taxi Driver, he grinned back at me replied “You talkin’ to me?” Read More