Portsmouth Cab Driver Tales
— A Kid’s Ice Cream Truck, Teenage Guitar Lessons, Lobsters on FB-111 Bombers & Lobster Tail for Generals
[NOTE: This was originally written as a Facebook Note several years ago — edited]
The title presents quite a combination … but it’s all true!
When I was a first and second-grader, some days I was a cowboy; on other days an Indian. But my big daily moment was when ‘Sam The Ice Cream Man’ came to our street in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire working class neighborhood. Perhaps why I grew up to become a reasonably good organizer is I always managed a scheme to get my daily ice cream, I’d help others get theirs too.
Every day we’d hear ice cream truck bell ring, see the truck and race toward it. Eagerly and innocently we’d gather ‘round, waiting our turn at the window. The Ice Cream Man was Sam, a short middle-aged man with a pronounced belly, a Frank Sinatra hat and he always a cigar stub seemingly clipped to his mouth. But it didn’t matter how he looked, Sam was our hero! He always came through, often in bad weather.
Well, my dad eventually worked his way up the ladder and my family moved out of what had been a starter rental unit neighborhood. Our family bought an American Dream home in Hampton, New Hampshire. Yes, there was an ice cream truck in the new neighborhood — but the operator was nothing like Sam. Of course, we were older and playing sports instead of Cowboys & Indians so things had changed on a lot of fronts.
Time moved on. I grew up more interested in baseball than anything. I did the scout thing from cub scouts to boy scouts eventually becoming a Star Scout and the Senior Patrol Leader of Troop 177. I organized my first-ever protest when I staged a walk-out from a scout meeting because the scoutmaster wouldn’t excuse us so we could watch Game 7 of a Celtics Championship.
But music ultimately overwhelmed my interest in sports and my potential career as a shortstop, — I was Luis Aparicio copycat —ended due to rock n’ roll and counter generation politics. My favorite band at the time was The Yardbirds. Yes, the Beatles and Stones were coming on strong — but they were nothing like The Yardbirds! The Yardbirds fit better with Bob Dylan and protesting for civil rights and anti-war movements. So became the destiny of the rest of my life. Sixty years later, nothing has changed!
My dad got me a guitar when I was a young teenager. He set me up with lessons. But, Gus, the guitar teacher — from my then small view of the world — seemed rather strange. Anyway, he taught me to play Little Brown Jug and Yankee Doodle. The third lesson I insisted he teach me how to play Apache by The Ventures.
Sadly, and fatefully, the guitar teacher told me to stick with the two songs he already taught me. Frustrated, I quit my lessons and went through my remaining teenage years with a mostly broken stringed guitar. I had broken ’em from our wild basement teenage pots and pan band sessions — especially when my parents weren’t home.
Out of high school and after hitch-hiking around the nation, I got drafted into the army where I became a conscientious objector against the war and was discharged honorably. I then worked in the peace movement as an active-duty GI and Vietnam Veterans Against the War organizer.
When the war ended and the peace movement faded, I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts and began managing rock n’ roll bands. Ten years later, now in the 1980's, I retreated to my birth town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire where I became a cab driver and started teaching myself how to play guitar.
Cab Driver
Well, the highly competitive taxi business in a small port city — what with oil tankers, freighter ships, a naval yard and an air force base— was indeed a rather cut throat experience. The small cab owners were always at war with one another and each had an extra niche for getting money, always keeping an edge over the other.
Over the years I drove for all of Portsmouth’s cab companies: City Cab, Allied Cab, Val’s Taxi and A-1 Taxi. When I drove for A-1, I discovered it was owned by a man named Sam.
You guessed it! Sam The Ice Cream Man!
He maintained similar characteristics and he still had the cigar. ‘Cept now he was older, balding and what little hair he had had became gray. Although a bit fatter, his hat was the same. Much to my chagrin, as he was the owner of a cut-throat taxi company, I discovered Sam was anything but a hero. He wasn’t even friendly — it was all business to him!
Frankly, he appeared rather mob-like. I could never get the thought out of my mind: This was not the friendly ice cream man I once worshiped as a small child!
But I was in for a big surprise. One day I was waiting for Sam to return so I could get paid. Rather than hanging around waiting with the 400-pound dispatcher, I wandered around aimlessly outside of the house checking out the lawn, the nearby woods, the birds in the trees, etc. In the field of his back yard there were lots of junk cars, mostly old cabs.
Lo and behold, tucked far in the back with fainted paint, broken parts and full of tall weeds, I discovered my favorite childhood ice cream truck! I couldn’t believe my eyes — and I felt every bit as innocent at that moment as when I was a small child. Thinking “no more ice cream,” I went and got paid.
Lobster, FB-111 Bombers and The Pentagon?
So what was Sam’s extra niche to stay ahead in a dog-eats-dog small-time taxi business? Sam had an ‘inside’ connection at Pease AFB. His money-maker was arranging for transport of fresh Maine lobsters with the pilots of the FB-111 bombers who were perfectly capable of swift delivery of lobster to generals and politicians far and wide.
And then, today — yet another 30-year skip — at the time of this writing, came out the news about how The Pentagon maintains a fondness for lobster tails:
So that’s the military side of this story.
Further Cab-Driving Irony
To add further amazement to this short story, while driving the cab I had to pick up a fare at The Dragon Seed, a Chinese bar-restaurant on the Kittery, Maine side of the Piscataqua River. On weekends, live music featured.
So I exit my cab to go in the crowded bar to find my fare. A country-western band was performing on a large stage. Proving the existence of a fickle finger of fate, there, front and center, on the stage, was Gus — the guitar teacher who foolishly told me to stick with Little Brown Jug and Yankee Doodle.
Irony of all ironies? He was performing the song Cab Driver. At the time, I had a ’56 Gibson Les Paul, Jr. in the trunk of my cab — I was teaching myself how to play in between taxi fares.
Now, nearly 70 years old, I’ve got my own rock n’ roll band named Climate Change. To keep irony solid, I’m now living in young memories and not old ones. After all, this is only a story in life with a sad military reality.
Peace!!!
Below is a YouTube Playlist of several of the songs I’ve written over my years in life:
