In the early 1970’s Chris Breeze and Trefina Mitchell were young tots living next door to each other in Fiji. Much later in New Zealand they ended up in the same university chemistry class and even more than that they were lab partners.
When we lived in Richfield, MN I went to St Peter’s Sunday School classes. The ancient head Sister told me that she had once served the tiny town of Bechyn and had taught my relatives living there.
I picked up Titania in Auckland and we drove to Nick’s to get the keys to his Opoutere property. As we pulled up Ttania pointed to a neighboring house and said: “That’s where Stephanie lives”. So we visited her. They two girls knew each other through Renee.
In 1984 I was in San Fran airport. A young woman asked me where to catch the bus. I watched her bags while she looked. It turned out that she (Gulya) was from Turkey and doing a PhD. Her best friend was from LeSeur, MN (where Gail had taught) and working as a programmer in the Twin Cities (which is was I was doing).
 At the pump:
$NZ 2.79/litre
$NZ10.74/gal ($US6.69) |
I thought about it and decided that I should add myself as taxi driver. At the Holiday Inn I would bring people to and from the airport, just as my father did for 40 years or so. Sometimes I would get a tip.
Apparently, New Zealand no longer requires taxis to have meters. I wonder if Uber has brought this change on. Speaking of which, has anyone ever used an Uber? We haven’t.
 We had a dog named “Cabernet Sauvignon” and we called him “Cabbie”. When my father visited, in 1993, he would take him for daily walks and I was able to take a photo of "a cabbie walking a Cabbie".
Our Norwegian friend, Kjell, has a few taxi statements; and I quote:
In “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the Beatles imagined “Newspaper taxis appear on the shore.”
Instead of following English and calling the newfangled, motorised vehicles for hire “taximeter-cab,” Norwegian is still sticking with “drosje,” which came from the Russian “drozhki,” the horse-drawn conveyance Dr Zhivago would have been familiar with.
As a young boy, I visited Oslo. I saw a sign that said, “Taksidermist.” I envisaged old taxis being restored and put on display somewhere.
Ian reports: My first year at QVS was car-less. Taxis were cheap enough for day trips to Suva. Your taxi took you to all your shops, offices and hotels, waited, and drove you back home. The Indian driver that all QVS expats used was called "Boy". He was older than me, and I was uncomfortable with that name, but he told me that was his name, so I did what my peers did. It was a subtle racist culture, where this man found it quite natural to call himself something that clearly showed his subservience.
There have been other songs with taxi in the title or in the lyrics.
“Tijuana Taxi” by Herb Alpert
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell
“Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson: “And in a yellow Taxi”
“Taxi Blues” by Little Richard
“Taxi Grab” by Jethro Tull
“Cab Driver” by The Mills Brothers
“Mr Cab Driver” by Lenny Kravitz
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2024 - No. 2 www.malecek.com 2024 - No 2
