| Summary: | (5:51) Ethel Schmidlkofer talks about the Florence Cab company in Florence, Alabama. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Ethel Schmidlkofer
July 21, 2009 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Juliann Losey and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 2 of 12
Ethel Schmidlkofer: We also had a free service that a lot of people in town knew about, and if you wanted to be woke up in the morning, you just called and gave us your phone number and what time you wanted to be woke up, and we did it for years and years and years and never charged a fee. The funniest story about that, there was a lady down on Riverview Drive, to my knowledge she never rode a cab, but for years we had woke her up, you know, I mean, we had just done it. And we had a clock that you could set every five minutes, it had little notches. And, well, one morning it snowed, and when it snowed you’re just, you know, you’re just beyond help. And they let the kids get almost to school and then they turned them around. So, here I’ve got all these people calling and I’m not sure what’s happening at school, and so, I was supposed to have called her at like 7: 15, I mean, that’s right in the middle of all this. And I just plain didn’t, I mean I just couldn’t. So she called and oh, she just was blessing me out. And I said, “ Ma’am, I am terribly sorry,” I said, “ I‘ ve called you for years,” but I said, “ I don’t mean to be ugly, but all hell broke loose here this morning, because the city system couldn’t decide whether the kids were going to school or coming home,” and I said, “ We got them half- way there, then they turned them back,” and I said, “ I was just completely, you know, jammed.” She says, “ Well, I want to speak to the manager.” And I said, “ Well ma’am,” I said, “ I’ll be glad to give Mr. Schmidlkofer your number, name and number as soon as he gets back, but he’s also out there running a taxi right now.” And she says, “ Well I doubt you’ll give him my name and number.” And I said, “ Oh no ma’am, I’ll give it to him”, you know. So, she says “ Well, I’m going to have your job over this.” And I said, “ Well, you know that, you can talk to him.” And I never let on that who I was or anything, so when it died down, which about ten o’clock it did, when Dad came in, I said, “ Dad you need to call this woman, because she wants you to fire me.” And so he said, “ Well, what do you deserve being fired for?” And I said, “ Well, we’ve been calling this lady and waking her up for about the last ten years.” And I said, “ You know what it was like this morning, and I just flat turned the alarm off and forgot it.” And he said, “ Oh, and that’s what she wants me to fire you for?” and I said, “ Yep.” And he said, “ Well, does she ride a cab?” and I said, “ I’ve never known her to.” So, he goes in and he calls, and of course, he calls where I can hear. He wants me to hear it, you know. And he said, “ Ma’am, this is Frank Schmidlkofer that owns the Florence Yellow Cab. I understand we, we have a problem?” “ Yes indeed we do,” she said. She said, “ I have been, you have been calling me,” and she told him how, how long, you know, “ and I didn’t get a call today and I was almost late to work!” And so my Daddy said, “ Well, I’m terribly sorry,” said, “ How much have we ever charged you for that service?” “ Oh, you never charged anything. I just think it’s wonderful that y’all are so kind to do that!” And he said, “ Well, we always try to be accommodating,” you know, and he said, so then he said, “ Do you ever ride a cab?” And she said, “ Well, no, we have two cars, so I don’t need to ride a cab. Well, once in a while, I call one for my maid,” like it was good enough for a maid, but it wasn’t good enough for her. So anyway, she says, “ I want to know, are you going to fire that young lady?” And he said, “ Well ma’am, I would have a real hard time doing that.” And then she says, “ What do you mean?” He said, “ Well, I sleep with her mother.” And she said, “ Oh my goodness!” And she slammed the phone down [ laughs]. Now, that was my Daddy. And I mean it didn’t take him that long to say that and of course, I’m sitting there and I just died laughing. And I said, “ Reckon I ought to call her in the morning, since she thinks you’re an adulteress and no telling who I am?” He said, “ Oh no, call her in the morning.”[ laughs] But that was a free service that was given by the Florence Cab for years and years and years.
And there were odd things that happened at odd times, like during the Depression. You know, nobody had jobs, everybody had-- it was really bad. I mean, I wasn’t around, but I’ve heard a lot of stories. And it became a known fact that if you rode a Yellow Cab and you could manage to slam your door, finger in the door, you’d get thirty- five dollars, so my grandfather had to make it a rule that nobody got in a car without the driver opened it-- opened the door and closed the door, because they were just continually, and of course your insurance eventually goes up and everything. So, I mean, you know, there was, that sounds weird that anybody would do that for thirty- five dollars, but during the middle of the Depression thirty- five dollars was a tremendous amount of money. It was more than anybody made in probably two weeks or more. But he literally had to, I mean, he, he made it a- just a law, “ I don’t care how big a hurry they are or if they come running at that car, you jump out and open that door,” you know, because-. Now I have had my finger jammed in a door, and I guarantee you thirty- five dollars will not pay it for me. But I can understand if you had kids at home and no money coming in, I guess thirty- five dollars would be a good, a good bit of groceries. And of course, there was nothing they were doing wrong, and really, I guess I could have forgiven the people that did it, I mean, under the circumstances, but that, there were odd little things that happened and you had to become aware of them pretty quick, you know.
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