The building that burned down while under construction the day after I arrived in Kingston a few years ago has now been re-built and is open for business. It’s huge, an almost New York style apartment block of a building, built specifically to house hundreds of students. It’s just a little outside what many folks here call the ghetto seeing how it’s all the way over at Victoria and Princess, 663 Princess no less. Now, one need only ponder a little bit longer on that street number to realize just what it’s tenants have a view of… across the street. Of course, one might say, it’s actually the old horn rimmed fella himself who gets the advantage of, you know, watching over his flock; I mean if you were to give the street number a bit of an extra ponder.

Calls to 66… 3 are more often than not quite annoying. There’s little room to park n’ wait out front and, we’ve been specifically told, scolded about blocking traffic at this location which, is kind of a chuckle considering how these kids, the entitled ones, The Queen’s own brats do like to keep us inconsiderately, waiting. But waiting is not what this is really all about, nor inconsideration even. Really, quite honestly, perhaps even a little honourably, it’s about a kid, a couple of kids really who like a lot of kids on Sunday morning, really weren’t a couple at all.

I hadn’t noticed as I pulled up to 66… 3 that the destination was an address close by, just over on Earl. This would have me going down on Victoria, just a few blocks into the heart of the aforementioned student ghetto, or the Village if you’d like to be a little more poetic about, the gooey mess this neighbourhood can get to be. Thankfully this couple, a nice looking gal and a confident looking fella didn’t keep me waiting, jumping into my CAR all dressed up for a night of night clubbing in the Hub. Oh, I did mention, it was about 7am on a Sunday morning, indeed… leftovers.

My first thought, well isn’t this kinda nice, this fella ensuring the gal he’d snagged the night before didn’t have to do, what I still refuse to call “the walk of shame” all on her lonesome… especially not in those shoes, in the new fallen snow that had quickly turned to slush after yet another one of these mini-minorly furious flurries we’ve enjoyed so far, most of this winter. A nice enough fella making sure his, eh hem date made it these very few blocks home safely, at least without ruining her quite lovely high heeled shoes… And, for me… hooray, another under five dollar fare! My role in this most instant of adventures would be to drive ‘em to the point were little Mr. Good Dude could flash his daddy-backed plastic and waste even more of my precious time as I ran the under five buck fare… on a card… and did whole extra two whole more strokes of a pen pushing paperwork, sigh.

When we got to Earl, I pulled way up and over a smallish snowbank to ensure the dryness of our little Miss, now noticeably quite wobbly little Princess. Aiding in her shoes not getting all wet n’ ruined (is it just me who has a thing about nice shoes?) I stopped the meter as they jumped out “…keep it running” barked the good dude, hmmm… OK. I could only wonder why? Maybe they were just picking up another, perhaps I was to drive the magic “we ain’t takin’ no perp walks today” bus… on this… a slushy, snow day (all the kiddies cry, hooray)… maybe not.

After a few extra long minutes of what I thought may have been their canoodling at the door, I couldn’t really see ‘em, he jumped back into the Cab. “…you can take me back to Princess” he said, with not as much as a grin as I would have expected. I could only ask what I usually ask my Sunday morning leftovers at 7am… “…the end of a glorious evening?” or, “...the start of a beautiful day?” …”Neither” said this, it was soon to be discovered, fine young fella.

He told me how he’d, in his own way had rescued this young lady when they had become separated from her friend, who’d run off into the crowd at the Hub with yet another, quite likely less wonderfully nice young fella she'd found on her own. How he couldn’t get an address out of her last night so he had hauled her on homeward, to 66... 3. How he’d drop-plopped her into his bed, even though these days that’s a risk all on it’s own. How he’d spent the rest of the night finishing off some homework and a pizza, watching some television. “…well that’s quite honourable”, I mentioned. As the conversation continued, he did agree that his generation, these young guys n’ gals, friends of his do tend towards fucking first, asking questions and cleaning up the messes later, but that… He’d been raised by a grandma who’d smack him upside the head if he didn’t hold the door open for her… I immediately began to wonder, I bet his grandma is as old as me, and… I wonder if she’s, you know… hot… or not... eh hem… back in the CAR.

I kind of ignored this nice fella as he softened his own story, back peddled his own particular brand of man like mettle by oh so boldly claiming that “meh, they come n’ go…” that he didn’t really need the hassles that come with bedding one of the millions of drunken Princesses he’s faced with… offered up daily, or at least nightly at the clubs in the Hub. I ignored this as, you know his kind gesture had not only more than doubled what would have been a pretty measly little fare, it reminded me… the chitter chattering jokes these other cabbies belly laugh over, the stories the night drivers tell of loose girls and loud mouthed little boys aren’t always entirely fair. I’ve mentioned before how much I despise it being called “the Sunday morning walk of shame”, how I prefer “the dreamy walk of infinitely lovely n’ wonderful possibilities”… and after dropping off this one good ol’ boy it nicely striked me; despite this culture of getting what we want as quickly as we can get it, perhaps it is possible, and wonderfully so, that chivalry, at least a mild form of it, isn’t quite as dead, at least not totally in this quite wonderful n’ lovely little Limestone City… on this Sunday morning.

With a nod to all these fresh young kids in all these grand old halls n’ residents… I found myself in dire need of a new schtick, a new ice-breaking conversation starter to get things going with the Queen's kids the other day. My conversations with the little ones was getting kinda stale, especially the really young n' fresh ones. Those feisty first years, minds all full of not much more than enthusiastic mush. I mean how many times can one lean into ‘em with the “…where ya from?” “…how do you like Kingston?” Only to find yet another little still wet behind the ears n' wild one from out yonder upon the windswept plains of the Toronto hinterlands, all those Richmond Hillites, Vaughntoninans and Oakvillians . AND, of course they adore Kingston, I mean, really, why wouldn’t they, it is made of stone after all.

Out of the blue, I begun to tell a tallish tale of how us taxi-cabbiests were actually doing a double duty of a sort. In reality, we were firstly and fore-mostly, simply, just pelt collectors. Fishing our fares for the freshest student… pelts. The ever-freshest being the coveted first year pelt. I mean sure, one could argue, and perhaps it is just a little correlative, but “…have you ever wondered why there are so few of you left after April, so fewer of you returning for that second year?” Indeed, last year was a good year for pelts.

This year? The pelt market is down a bit. We’re not getting that good a dollar for your pelts these days. Some say it's UBER; the older, aging, crinkly n’ wiser drivers, well they put it down to Pierre and Claude laying out far too many trap lines out front of Victoria Hall and along down Albert and Collingwood Streets. Others say, well it just hasn’t been cold n’ wintery enough… yet. You know… the best way to prepare a fresh pelt is to stick it in a snowbank let it get all chill overnight, alive n’ wiggling n' wriggling, letting it turn all blueshly purple, you know, for the Engineer’s market. Those engineers, they do so love the leathery old Queen’s jacket!

The last couple of fresh n’ first yearlings I had in the cab were, well he was all nervously chuckling a bit in the back (little did he know), she was a little non-plussed but I could tell she was giving it some thought as I pulled my now patented stunt of driving right up and onto the the sidewalk of Stirling Hall, the Science Building, to get my fares as close to that door as possible, I will get caught one day… I assured her that she was safe for now. I mean with the pelt market being down as it is. Most of us cabbies, er fare-trade collectors were simply practicing a catch and release modus operandi, "... we're keeping up our skills“…you’ve nothing to worry about sweetie.” I mean, unless it gets much colder. Oh and by the way girls, no I’m not a dirty old man behind the wheel of this large automobile… I’m just eying up that pelt of yours, baby does needs new shoes after all… dontcha know.

The cab company I work for has done a very nice job of securing accounts, businesses offer their customers rides too and from their offices, service centres; schools shuttling around certain kids with special needs; retirement homes and various medical facilities that offer transportation, either themselves or through government programs. One government program we get a lot of is the Ontario Disability Support Program’s service of shuttling whacky "recovering" drug addicts to and from the methadone clinic. I sometimes wonder how many of the people I pick up from the condos on Ontario Street or from the Earl's bottom know just how many people in Kingston have disabled themselves with drugs that require they get their daily dose, the cuppa, a swig of juice. Me? I wasn’t too surprised, I was a bit surprised to find that I'd one day benefit, perhaps not as greatly as some, but quite tidily from our drug addiction industry, at least on the days I was lucky enough to get the call… Compton to Hickson, Patrick to Wellington and what not.

One of these addictive customers is particularly lucrative. He’s a fella up in The Heights who for whatever reason of his own making has been barred from the Methadone clinic closest to where he lives. He requires shuttling clear across town, three exits along the 401… Twenty sum odd dollars goin’, twenty some odd coming back. Not so oddly enough, this represents a nice bump on one’s daily sheet, the take, what we measure our days by. Not odd at all is that the ol’ Meth Head’s come to be known as the Jackpot.

Brian’s fine with this. He takes a takes a taxi often enough, that being every day he remembers he needs his juice. Often enough to know a lot, if not all us day drivers. I’m sure there are those he’d rather not have call him the Jackpot, those drivers so fearful or perhaps those who so despise this program. Me? I think Brian gets a bit of a laugh, a break from his agonizing anxiety when I roll up, he jumps in and I say, “good morning... JACKPOT!” I think Brian and I share a bit of a self effacing humor over our predicaments; I think Brian gets along with me as we kind of do speak a similar language.

I hadn’t had Brian for a few weeks longer than I would have expected. Long enough that I had started asking other drivers whether they’d had him in their car recently. I wouldn’t say I worry, but after even a couple of trips with the same folks a few times... OK I do start to worry a bit about my favourite little drug addicts. My favourite? It’s not Brian, I’ll likely get around to telling’ a story about her, some day. Let’s just say, it was a nice relief to see Brian today. I mean after all, who’d want the opportunity for a Jackpot to dry up?

Perhaps it was on account it being the first day of the year, but Brian was especially reflective today, “…I have to make some changes”. Indeed… “You certainly do Brian.” Maybe it was the fact that he had a disgustingly pusy, agonizingly sore and growing abscess on his arm where he'd poked himself over and over again with a makeshift syringe fashioned from a broken then sharpened Bic pen; you know, to ease his pain and suffering. Maybe it was just, as he said, after a while ya just do so much Meth you get absolutely sick… Who knows, maybe that pusy abscess and today's sick feelings will save Brian… one day.

These trips with Brian have started to follow a clear bit of of programming, a familiar script. On the trips out we tend to talk of old glory n’ gory days. Stories told boldly, to get a chuckle out of “…oh the troubles we’ve seen”, got up to, created and waded through; the trips back, I guess we’re meant to discuss the results. Today it was the messes we’ve made with, my kid, his kids, his grandkids, our families. Tis the season after all. I asked Brian of the state of his relationship with his kids, as of say, today. Not good. They keep trying and he keeps failing, often appearing to them as a still flailing just banged-up the minute before they arrive incoherently babbling dick-head. Daddy’s at it again, won’t ever stop, he mustn't love us, why bother… we don’t need this shit any longer. I reminded Brian, he’s got a monkey on his back that’s strong than life itself, that he’d happily go as far as kill himself to get smacked up, so, fucking up his relationship with his kids… ain’t nothing. It was a good trip.

As we got close to the turnoff to his place Brain raised a particularly sticky problem he’d been having, guilt. It’s quite often that drug addicts do have one of those “duh moments”. He whined on about how he’s trapped in the typical circle… banging to relieve his guilt, guilty over having banged. He asked me, “…what do you do? How’d you get over the guilt? What can I do…?” I scratched my head over this one and said the only honest answer I could come up with… “Brian, I haven’t gotten over the guilt, and haven’t a fucking clue how one could…”

I dropped off a good kid at one of the big building block apartments over on Leroy Grant. He was getting off an early shift from an OK job he’d just done well, he thought, on little over an hour’s sleep, you know Happy New Year. At the door was an anxious mom and her little girl, sniffling in tears, Cassy. They’d called another cab company, I told ‘em to hop on in, I’d take them to… Kingston General. “What’s your name?” Cassy… “…does someone have a little pain?” Distracted, her mom explained that Cassy was just finishing up another round of Kemo. She’d done great and was in remission, but had a fever which required yet another, after so many other visits to the hospital. I wasn’t sure if Cassy was hurting or sad that this visit had interrupted a visit she was having with a buddy upstairs… “...maybe we’ll go to Sharon’s place after the hospital…”

“What you get for Christmas Cassy?” I promised her I’d channel all my powerful New York City drivin’ skilz to get her to the doctor's quick as a bunny, a crazed bunny... then proceed, like the dork I am, we proceeded to hit every damned red light. “I got an underwater camera.” “Have you tested it in the bathtub by taking a picture of your toes?” …got a little chuckle, tossed at me from behind; a nice feeling chuckle from a scared little girl in my backseat who… is being put through just too damned much than …a little girl might like. Cassy wished me a little whispered Happy New Year as her mother paid the fare and herded her wee little thing in a familiar fashion, out of CAR 29 and into the Emergency Room Entrance... again.

Brian and I sat in the cab while I waited for my next fare. He was thinking that maybe moving from an apartment where six of the thirteen tenants are users might be a good idea for the new year. He told me how happy he was that just last night he’d turned down his girl friends offer to smoke a rock ‘cause he just needed to do some healing, needed to find out if he was really sick, or just “hung over” from banging day after day after day… I finally gave Brian a non-answer, “…you know Brian, you’re not ever going to get over that guilt. That monkey is never going to stop crawlin’ and clawing all over you.” At the risk of skirting along side some kind of, or gettin' all up n' religious, I suggested, maybe you're going to have to find a bigger monkey, one that can maim it, or maybe tame it, train it to do something more useful than handing him the sharpened Bic pen again. Maybe ya just gotta suck it the fuck up Brian. Or, maybe you’ll hit your own damned Jackpot one day… I mean, who knows… I just did... twice.