My first year driving a cab, I was 22 years old, and I was having the time of my life. Every night was a new adventure.

Before every shift, I would ask what would fall across my path that night. There was no such thing as a normal night, and as a Bukowski/Kerouac-wannabe, I was Augstus Gloop, and the nightlife was my chocolate factory.

But like that overeager nearsighted kid with a black hole for a stomach, I finally bit off more than I could chew.

I picked up a fare just going a couple blocks. When we stopped the fare, he reached over from the backseat and tried to grab me, asking for my money. I got out of the cab still holding onto my first real leather jacket. He ended up ripping my sleeve nearly off.

He got out the cab as well, and before I knew what was happening I was flat on my ass with my face hurting, like it been hit with a brick. The fare hit hit me so hard, he broke my cheek. I thought the next moment the guy was going to finish me. Then I heard, “Hey, what the f*** are you doing?”

It was like I was watching a deleted scene from “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” All of a sudden, a 6-foot drag queen started chasing the guy down, and some other cross-dressers pulled me up. I had never been so grateful.

I went to the hospital, and all they could do for me was give me an icepack and some Vicodin. The guy didn’t end up getting any money, but the hospital charged me $465, so in a sense I still got robbed.

It was then that it struck me: This job is not strictly fun and games.

Cab driving can be a dangerous profession, especially night driving. Only one other occupation deals with the same type of people in the night, and that is the cops. The difference is that cab drivers don’t get nearly the respect, or the gun.

There have been more and more reports lately of cab drivers getting robbed and assaulted. In fact, last year a driver was killed in a notorious apartment complex in North Highlands.

Several factors contribute to the increase in robbery and assault reports. All those factors stem from one source: the economy.

Think of it this way. Cab driving relies on making money by picking up strangers. Remember what your parents used to say about picking up hitchhikers? So in essence, every fare is picking up a hitch, especially when a driver picks up a fare that hails him down.

The Sacramento cab industry is not like those of major cities like San Francisco or New York.   There aren’t throngs of people hailing cabs down in Sacramento, except when bars close or for special occasions like New Year’s Eve or St. Patrick’s Day (when people line up around the corner for an English pub — that subject is up for a later rant).

Cab drivers here depend on people calling them from a location or on charge accounts from governments, hospitals and social services.

There was a time when cab companies had charge accounts with state, county and city governments. Daytime drivers could easily make 40 grand a year on state charges alone. With individual government budgets getting slashed, government-paid cab rides were one of the first things to go.

By law, cab companies cannot discriminate against calls based on where people live, yet it's not a big secret. Drivers still did it and could afford to do it. Why would a driver want to risk his life in “G” Parkway when he could make money in downtown or bring someone from Arden Park?

There is no such thing as guaranteed income anymore. Drivers can sit around for hours until receiving their first job, so they now fight over jobs that no sane cab driver would have gone for 10 years ago.

The average rental fee for a cab is $650, plus gas for vehicles that get 15 miles per gallon. So, basically drivers need to make $120 before they even think about making a profit. Because of the economy, cab driving has become the modern version of crop sharing.

The amount of business has dropped to the level of Dickensian orphans, scrapping it out for a single piece of bread.

Drivers now go into crappy neighborhoods no longer working, but gambling. The driver either makes money, loses money, or, even worse, loses their life.