Scott Makufka gets a call. There are two young men at a drugstore in Bellefonte who need a taxi. He quickly drives to the store and picks up the men. Makufka soon notices the men are acting suspicious — whispering to each other and answering all of his questions in one-word responses. They want to be dropped off at an elementary school because one of the boys claims to be going to visit his mother.
It doesn't take Makufka long to come to the conclusion that the two men aren't planning on paying mother dearest a visit — he imagines that they are up to something suspicious, possibly drug dealing.
"Anyone you don't pick up at a real address, you get nervous because you don't know where they really came from," Makufka explains.
They pull up to the school. The men tell Makufka they are short on cash and need to go get their mother to pay the fare of $20. Instead, they start sprinting. Makufka jumps out of the car and chases after them, just as the bell rings and school lets out.
Running erratically, he trips and falls in a mud puddle, but Makufka doesn't care — he continues after the men who have run into a nearby apartment building.
"I'm running across the schoolyard and kids are laughing at me because I am splattered with mud," he remembers.
The chase goes on. Up and down the apartment stairs, a tired Makufka tries to catch up with the men. The pair then begins to tear off clothing as they dash away from the school — finally escaping the driver's sight.
Disappointed that he hadn't caught the men, Makufka decides that he may be able to sell the leather coat and Yankees jersey the men had dropped to cover the fare. In the end, he actually had to turn them in to the police as evidence against the men — who through their own stupidity were located.
When the men called for the cab, they first told the dispatcher to pick them up at their home address, but then, realizing their error, quickly changed the location to the drug store. They didn't realize the dispatcher had already taken down the first address and the police were able to track them down.
Just another day on the job for Makufka? Not really. The eight-year driver for Handy Delivery, 2197 High Tech Rd., said that most days are more ordinary. As a day driver, Makufka gets more fares going to appointments or running errands rather than coming from bars or parties. However, he said he gets his fair share of interesting passengers.
Recently, Makufka picked up a fairly regular customer — a middle-aged woman going to a doctor's appointment. She filled the driver in on her latest sightings of Diana Ross and the not-so-dead Elvis in between belting out lyrics from a song by The Shirelles which was playing, according to her orders, at full blast on the radio.
Makufka began singing along as the woman danced in her seat. "I was having a great time," he said. "I almost took out a fence at the hospital because we were having so much fun."
Dan Reed, a day driver of three years, also gets the occasional character amongst his fares. One day he picked up a student dressed in a suit, heading to a job interview. The man opened up the front passenger door of the cab and climbed in.
Much to Reed's surprise, the student continued to climb over the front seat before sitting down in the back. Reed instantly lost it.
"I was laughing so hard that I almost had to go to the ER," Reed said. "I asked him if he knew that it was a four-door car and he said 'Oh, I hope I'm not that stupid at my interview.' "
Reed said this student was not the only confused passenger he encountered. One afternoon he was helping a family who spoke little English load luggage into the trunk.
When Reed walked around to get back into the driver's seat, he found the family's grandmother sitting in his seat with her hands on the wheel, ready to drive. The woman was very surprised when she found out she would not be the one driving.
"I asked if she wanted to drive but she didn't speak any English at all," Reed said.
The cabdrivers who drive during the day get their fair share of intoxicated passengers. Football weekends often equal the craziness that usually occurs during night shifts.
Makufka said he once picked up a group of blue and white painted men who had more than likely started their tailgating ceremonies in the early morning. The men mentioned that one of their friends wasn't feeling too well and Makufka noticed the man was very intoxicated.
"He was so drunk I don't even think he knew what town he was in, " he said.
The driver told the sick passenger to let him know if he should pull the cab over. The request didn't take long and Makufka quickly slammed on his brakes in the middle of Allen Street. The man got out and threw up all over the street.
Dave Fay, who's been driving cabs for seven years, said night drivers get a lot more of these passengers-turned-patients. Last spring, Fay picked up a group of students at an off-campus apartment. A woman jumped in the seat next to him and two men got in the back.
"The girl had obviously just been skinny-dipping. She just had on a wet shirt and nothing else," Fay remembered with a laugh. "The guy behind me kept screaming in my ear while the other one was barfing out of the window."
Fay said, however, that passengers like these are very common on a weekend night.
"A lot of people ask me what's the craziest thing that's happened to you," Fay said. "There is no one thing, everything's crazy."
Fay, who runs about 60 trips on a busy weekend night, said the majority of his fares are drunk, loud and a lot of fun.
A few passengers, however, weren't as good-spirited as the rest. One weekend Fay was whistled down by a man on a bike. The man wanted to put the bike into the cab, but there was no way it could fit.
Fay tried to reason with the furious man. "All he wanted to do was put the bike in the cab," Fay said. "After bickering about it for about 15 minutes, he picks up the bike, throws it about 15 feet and screams 'oh well, I stole it anyway.' "
Although the man was angry, he didn't scare Fay. In fact, Fay was only scared once by a passenger — on Halloween, of all nights. He picked up a man downtown that was dressed in all black and had even painted his face. The man's destination was out in the middle of nowhere. Fay, however, wasn't scared yet -- after all, it was Halloween. He quickly changed his mind though as the man gave nothing but mumbled one word answers to Fay's attempt to make conversation. This and the fact that they traveled out of radio range were beginning to make Fay very nervous.
"The worst fear for any human is the unknown. And that was it — I knew nothing about him," Fay said. "He took me down all these back roads and I started sweating it. Then all of a sudden, we went around a turn and there was a clearing and a huge house there." And what was the price for his fear? The mysterious man kindly tipped the driver $10 and went on his way.
Fay said, however, that the passengers aren't the only ones who make the stories. Sometimes drivers add to the excitement. He said a lot of drivers make up stories to liven up the evening for their fares.
"One driver told people that they had a 60 percent chance of making it where they were going," Fay said. "And the people believed him." He also said drivers love to tell passengers the brakes aren't working to get a quick gasp followed by a long laugh.
Meghan Conaghan (junior-speech communication) thinks she might have been a victim to one of these pranks, but she's not completely sure. Late one night, she and a few friends decided to call a cab to get home since the busses had stopped running. One of her friends rolled down the window and stuck his head and then his arms out. The driver soon told them a very grim story of a girl who had done the same thing and gotten both arms cut off.
"My friends and I were sitting there completely mortified," Conaghan remembered. "This guy had said this completely seriously. It was as weird as all get out and we all shut up the rest of the way home."
Has Fay ever tried any of these tricks? He said no. "I usually just let them make the conversation," he said. "Just let it roll. It's more fun that way."
