by John Bear
Daily Lobo
I love Albuquerque.
And I can't stand it. And everything in between.
I exhibit this vast spectrum of emotion because I know this town, the good and the bad.
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Robert Leonard knows Albuquerque too, much better than anyone I have ever met, choosing to focus mainly on the seedier side of the Duke City.
And that is what makes Yellow Cab such a face-punching good read - the attention to details that one will not find on a Department of Tourism press release.
Leonard, a former UNM anthropology professor, began moonlighting as a cab driver in 2001, perhaps to satisfy some base desire to people-watch, which is probably a personality trait common among anthropology professors. That and he was an anthropology professor and needed to get the lights turned back on.
In either case, he wrote Yellow Cab, a collection of short stories and poetry about all the funny if not mildly disturbing ins and outs of the cabbie universe. And it's all so Albuquerque, you'll be spraying carne adovada out of both nostrils by the end.
Leonard manages to maintain a lighthearted tone even when writing about shady happenings. He has skills, keeping the same voice the entire way through, never wavering. The first story, "Dead Man's Curve," finds Leonard driving an exuberantly intoxicated Navajo woman dragging a slightly terrified Easterner down to the South Valley in the dead of night. This may or may not be a jack move. And it doesn't matter either way. He captures the dialogue of the woman deftly, making her sound straight out of Shiprock. Nice.
He seems to possess a certain disdain for New Yorkers. The brief but hilarious "Just Leave," disses on people who come here and hate on all of our strange culinary habits and lack of anything hip to do. I agree. Get out.
For the college crowd, many stories speak of bright young minds transformed into stumbling idiots at 2 a.m. on the meat market that is the few blocks surrounding Fourth Street and Central Avenue. He mentions driving recklessly on purpose near Cornell Drive and Central Avenue - very funny, Mr. Leonard.
All this is fun, but the best material comes from the stuff that keeps Mayor Martin Chavez up at night. It reads like an episode of "COPS" in Albuquerque. A man rides home from Los Lunas when his wife accidentally pocket calls him while she is in the throes of passion with another dude.
Another guy uses a cab to make crack deliveries three blocks from my old house. Various other crack whores, malevolent bus depot loafers, Mexican clowns selling junk in the parking lot and drunks show up to bust the balls of the lowly cab driver.
The poetry possesses a certain Charles Bukowski-like charm. It's kind of like the Buk staying sober and merely watching the debauchery as opposed to causing it. Some of the more chilling tales occur in the short and loosely written verse.
All in all, this is a great book. It captures the heart and soul of this crazy little city. Leonard is a writer with one hand on the pulse and the other on his gun - yes, cabbies are a heavily armed lot. Be polite and pick up this book.
