“Shoot, ’bout twenty-five years now. Since ’bout ’sixty-seven, when my last daughter was born. Shit… the money I made! And I put half of it on the horses and made even more.”

He laughed out loud.

“You talkin’ ’bout hundreds of dollars a day. And this was the sixties, seventies. So you didn’t even have to work five days a week. I mean, you could have, but who wanna do that? You couldn’t get no better job than this back then. Not in the factories, not on the roads, not on the buses, the trains, nowhere. Wasn’t no job as good as driving a cab. Maybe drivin’ a truck. But that was it. ’Specially once you bought your own car. If you had your city car you used that for work and your big city car you used for play. I mean, what more you need?”

I thought of change in my pocket as we drifted past a second Kentucky Fried Chicken in a couple of minutes. I hadn’t eaten since school lunch. A couple of oatmeal cookies and a Sweet Valley cream soda at Renelle’s didn’t count. I doubted if I had enough for a KFC two-piece with mashed potatoes and my favorite coleslaw in the whole world. Cabbie kept on talking while my stomach talked back.

“But you see, back then, it was way different you know. Lot more going on. Lot more happening. Chicago was happening more than it is now. You know, these gangs and thangs done changed everything. We had them, hell I was in one myself, but not like now. Not like today ’cause folks wasn’t never scared to go out they house for no reason back then. Maybe for White folks, but that was about it. Even that wasn’t no problem ’cause for the most part they done always left the South Side alone. I didn’t drive nowhere but south in those days. You didn’t have to go downtown or to the airports to make the good money. Sixty-ninth Street all by itself paid my bills for a couple years, back when all the clubs was ’round on Halsted, ’fore they started tearing down the shopping on Sixty-third …”