The Kit Kat Club

Greetings all, and a shout out to Norm who just went to the "sandpile" to teach fire fighting techniques to the local folks. Keep it focused and the volume down, and all will be well.

Today we will be taking Mr S. to lunch and shopping and whatever else is necessary to make his day better.

A note to those who care for elders: loneliness and depression is prevalent in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, even though there are lots of people the same age there. They are not family and it takes a long time for friendship to develop. You have to pay close attention to whether or not your relative is coming out for meals or engaging in activities, or just staying in their room, sometimes not even getting out of bed for days. Do whatever you have to do, to break a bad routine like that. 

Friday brings the end to the work week for many, although it was very seldom in my working life that I had a job which followed this plan. I worked rotating shift work which included weekends, holidays, variable hours and a few times the dreaded, "split shift". You waiters and waitresses out there know that term better than most. You work a few hours, go away for a few hours and then return to work more hours, all inside of 12 hours usually. It is the corporate "happy dance". Bosses get 12 hours of coverage but only pay 8 hours of wages. You have to "open" and "close". If you are a commuter you are stuck wherever you work because it costs too much to make the trip twice in one day. Certain evil Postmasters do this to the clerks who work inside the post office. I think that the practice stinks.

The weather prediction for beautiful downtown Fallon is getting damper with each passing hour! A high of 61 fahrenheits has been foretold by the mystic seers, with two bits and a nickel's worth of chance of drops falling on our heads, increasing to four bits by evening and six bits by the morrow. (We are talking old colloquial money terms and not computer bits here children.) Winds from the SW exceeding 20 mph. Summary:Yuck!

This is the last installment in the "Taxicab Trilogy: Joints." For those joined us since last Friday, the first two stories of the trilogy are "Joints" posted 3/02 and "The Classy Drunk" 3/09. I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico and struggling to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads while we were living through the PATCO strike in 1981. I walked the picket line all day and drove a cab from 3:30 pm until 08:00 am seven days a week from August until November. Enjoy!

The Kit-Kat Club

Sometimes you just have to do, what you have to do. Such was the case with a sweet and beautiful young lady that worked as a dancer, or stripper, if you want to get right down to it... and she did, nightly.

I picked her up at the side door every night at 1:00 AM and took her home to her grandmother's house, and she was a natural redhead, and I was there to protect her from the big, bad, two-legged wolves. Isn't that a crack up! Little Red Riding Hood grows up to be a stripper!

She was an intelligent, articulate person and had lost her parents in her teens and came to live with her invalid grandmother. She went to UNM during the day and "danced" at the Kit-Kat Club at night to cover the bills. She told her grandmother that she worked in the ticket booth at the downtown movie theater and had to help with cleaning up and shutting down the theater, which was why she came home so late from work each night. She said Grandma just smiled and said what a good girl she was, always taking such good care of her and everything. This girl said that she felt badly about lying about her job to Grandma, but couldn't bear the thought of bringing shame to her house. Grandma was pretty religious and she didn't think it would go over very well.

The first night that I picked her up at the club, she came out wearing a long coat, carrying a bag, and didn't waste any time getting to and inside of the cab. There were quite often creeps hanging around after closing trying to get the girls to "party" with them. Some of them did, turning a trick here and there for extra cash, most of them did not. They had enough of the drunks grabbing at them all evening and just wanted to get away from there. Such was the case with "Red" as I took to calling her from that first night on.

She got into the cab, gave me the address and we left the club heading for Grandmother's house. After we were well away from the bar, she said, "You're married aren't you?" and I said yes. She says, "You see that bank over there with the lit up parking lot?" Again I said yes, wondering where this was going. She told me to pull in there and stop and put it in park, but to leave the engine and the meter running, we had to get something straight. Right away I started going through what had been said, trying to figure out what I had done wrong, so quickly. I couldn't think of any offending comment or action, so I just did as I was asked.

Red said, "My Grandmother doesn't know that I'm a stripper at the Kit-Kat. That requires me to have to change clothes every night before I get home. Which I will be doing in this cab." I started to say that I wouldn't look, which would have been a big fat lie. But she silenced me before I could say a word, and said, "I want to get this over with now, so you don't have a wreck trying to peek at me while I change and get us both killed." With that she opened up her coat and was completely naked in the light from the streetlights in that parking lot shining into that back seat. She said, "Look as long as you want and get it out of your system, and I'm not offering anything else, so don't even suggest it." To be able to suggest something, I would have had to been able to speak, and that was not possible at the moment. She was too beautiful to believe. All perfect and by her admission, all real in every department.

As we sat there with the meter running, she said, "I don't hook, I don't put out, Hell I don't even go out. Between school, taking care of Grandma, and working, I don't want to. If I have any time left over, I want to sleep!" And we laughed, and I told her of my picketing during the day and driving the cab all night, etc. I have to admit that I could have easily sat there staring at that beautiful naked redheaded woman all night, but the meter was running and Grandma was waiting, so I told her to get changed and headed for her house. I drove her home Tuesday through Saturday nights every week that I drove the cab after that. And yes I did peek, every chance I got, and she would cross her eyes and stick her tongue out at me in the mirror and laugh and say, "You'd better not get in a wreck!" and we would both crack up laughing again. She was a lot of fun, and went on to become a Pediatrician in California somewhere, so take heart kids, that Red Headed Doc may be wilder than you think!

One of the last times that I drove Red home and walked her up to the door to make sure she got in the house all right, Grandma was sitting out on the porch in her wheelchair enjoying the night air and the stars. Red hurried inside, worried about Grandma noticing the bag and asking her questions about why she needed it to sell tickets at a theater. Once she was inside, Grandma whispered to me, "I know she's stripping at the Kit-Kat Club, and it's all right, she's a good girl. She works so hard to take care of us... But don't you let on that I know, she thinks she's protecting me from the awful truth. Let's just keep it that way !" I kissed her on the forehead and said that I wouldn't tell on her. What a pair those two were, each one trying to protect the other.

And there you have it. Three joints and nobody inhaled!