Cab Tales...Honesty Pays

Some of the more fun times were with the bartenders around town. We had a policy that if a bartender worked in a bar that used our service, they went to and from work free.

We also had our regular patrons, many of them older folks that didn't drive anymore. One such customer was a sight impaired lady that lived up on Miles in Hayden. Once a month she would take a cab to town and cash her Social Security check. She got to know us by our voices. That will be part of another story.

On an evening after taking this lady to town and returning her home, I had occasion to pick up an off duty bartender from the now defunct Gibbs Tavern, on Northwest Blvd. This lady was kind of drunk. Actually she was knee walking pee in the corner drunk.

I got her to her apartment, and half carried her and her purse in, flopped her on her bed and left. The next day I got a call from our office wondering if I had seen a purse belonging to the blind lady. Bingo. I raced down to Gibbs and asked them if they had an unidentified purse.

They did. I and the bartender, not the same one, opened it and ascertained that one, it did belong to the lady in question, and two, that an envelope containing several hundred dollars was still there. The drunk bartender, waking up and finding a purse that didn't belong to her had without looking in it, brought it back to the bar, figuing she had grabbed someone elses when she left.

I counted the money in front of the duty bartender, then drove it up to her house and returned it. After assuring her all the money was intact, I left.

Three days later, my boss, (Jerry Anderson) handed me $100.00 as a reward. I was uncomfortable about accepting money for just being honest, but he said that the customer insisted on it. So I took half of it down to Gibbs and shared it with the honest bartender. It turns out that there are more honest people out there than many would imagine...