Taxicab Tales – Crazy Hope

In the past, I have shared a series of stories from my days publishing small town newspapers, from a job I had selling cars, about my time in the Army, and some tales of the offbeat adventures and misadventures I’ve gotten into in a series called Nick Happens. Now, I thought I would share some stories about a period in my life many years ago when I drove a taxicab in Tucson, Arizona. Oh, some of the things I witnessed back then! I’ve told more than one prospective author that if they really want to learn about human nature, they need to become a cop, a nurse, or a cab driver. You will see the best and worst of people in any of those jobs.

I had only been driving a cab a few weeks when the dispatcher put out a call for anyone near the courthouse in downtown Tucson. I was nearby, and he told me to pick up “Crazy Hope” at the Pima County Courthouse on Church Avenue. Built in 1929, the historic courthouse with its elegant blue dome is one of the city’s most popular landmarks. It was always a busy area during the middle of the day, and when I asked how I would find “Crazy Hope,” the dispatcher laughed and said, “Don’t worry, she’ll find you.”

Sure enough, I pulled up to the curb and a small white-haired woman dressed in blue jeans and a flannel checked shirt, with worn cowboy boots on her feet and a battered Stetson, jumped in the back door and said, “Drive, drive fast, before they get me!”

Not sure who they were, I nevertheless took off as quickly as I could, which wasn’t much in the heavy downtown traffic. I had only gone a block or so before she crawled across the back seat and into the front passenger seat and told me to take her home. When I asked where her home was, she said her ranch on the east side, not the Cliff House. Still confused about where she needed to go, she told me to just drive and she would give me directions.

For the next half hour, she babbled on and on, telling me that she was a rich heiress and everybody thought she was crazy, but she wasn’t. She also told me about dating Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, and Cary Grant when she was a young woman, but that none of those “pretty boys” could measure up to a real cowboy, and that’s why she married Honeycutt Jones, a cowboy and musician. She went on and on about her horse ranch and occasionally had me make a series of right turns while she looked out the back window to make sure nobody was following us. By then I knew why they called her Crazy Hope.

Eventually, we arrived at a patch of desert scrubland on the far east side and went down a rough dirt path to a corral and an old mobile home. Parked on the property were three or four late-model pickups, a battered, worn-out Jeep, and a brand-new Mercedes four-door sedan. A pack of dogs, several horses, and a large bull wandered around the property. When Hope got out of the cab, they all came up to her like puppies waiting for mama to get home. Including the bull.

I told her how much the fare was, which had added up because of all the right turns we made trying to elude her imaginary pursuers, and she told me to wait and went in the trailer. I waited a long time and thought she had snuck out the back door or something and called the dispatcher to tell him so. He told me to just be patient, she would be there eventually. Meanwhile, a sheriff’s deputy pulled in behind me and got out and asked where Hope was. I told him I wasn’t sure, but my dispatcher said she would be back eventually. He laughed and said, “Yeah, she will be.”

Sure enough, Hope came walking out the door of the trailer, and I did a double take when I saw the large, long-barreled single-action Ruger .44 Magnum in her hand. The deputy didn’t seem worried at all and told me we were going to have some fun now. Okay, when does the fun start?

Hope stalked up to us and demanded to know how the Mercedes got there. The deputy told her it was her car. He had checked the registration the last time he was out. She didn’t believe him, and she handed me the massive revolver and said, “Shoot that son of a bitch.” I asked what son of a bitch she was referring to, and she pointed at the Mercedes and said, “Shoot it. They left it here to trap me.”

I looked at the deputy he said, “Do what the lady says.”

“Seriously?”

“Would I lie to you?”

I figured, what the hell, how often do you get a chance to shoot a Mercedes? So I cocked the hammer and put a round through the windshield, the muzzle blast almost deafening me. Hope jumped up and down and clapped her hands with delight and said, “Do it again. Shoot the radiator.” So I did.

Hope might have been happy with the shooting, but the bull seemed to take offense to it and started bawling at us, pawing the ground, and shaking its horns. Being the coward that I am, I got behind the deputy and told him to defend me. Instead, as the bull started walking toward us, we jumped on the hood and then the roof of his patrol car. Hope called us a couple of wimps and smacked it on the rear end and told it to shut up and get out of there, and it did.

At any rate, the meter was over $100 at that point, and Hope gave me $250, and that was the end of my day with Hope. The deputy followed me out to the main road, and we pulled over to the side. I asked him what the hell that was all about. He told me that Hope was really a millionaire, the heiress of a wealthy New England family, and had close personal ties with everybody from the Mayor’s house to the Governor’s mansion to Washington, DC.

He said she had come west as a young woman back in the 1930s, bought a house that someone had made into the side of a cliff in Redfield Canyon in the Galiuro Mountains, and owned property all over southern Arizona. She loved horses and owned a large herd of them, and when she wasn’t acting crazy (which seemed to fill up a lot of her time at that point in her life), she was the sweetest person you could ever know. And yes, those stories about her dating movie stars were probably true. He said that back in her younger days she was a real beauty.

Over the next year or so, I carried Hope around town now and then, and it was always an adventure. She was constantly sure that somebody was following her. Mostly, it was “those bastards from the Bureau of Land Management,” who had forced her to remove her horse herd from Redfield Canyon when they took over the area. I did some research on Hope Iselin Jones, and sure enough, she did come from a very wealthy and socially prominent family. She spoke flawless French, equally good Spanish, and could cuss like a trail herder just in from a long cattle drive.

When I was dispatching, I got a call for Hope needing a cab one time. I sent it out to the closest cab in the area, and the driver said, “No thanks. I don’t want to mess with her.”

Another driver said the last time he gave her a ride he made $300. The first driver came back over the radio and said, “Yeah, I made 400, and it took me $600 worth of Quaaludes to calm down afterwards!”

In her later years, Hope lived in an apartment with 24-hour care and had a full-time driver who took her out to her property every day to spend time with her horses, dogs, and the bull. She passed away in 2001 and her ashes were scattered over her C-Spear Ranch in Redfield Canyon, the land she loved. What an amazing character she was, crazy or not. You can learn more about her at this link https://www.library.pima.gov/content/redfield-cliff-house/

Did you know that you can find all of my books and sign up for my free author’s newsletter on my website at www.nickrussellbooks.com?

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Eccentricity is usually owned by middle-class and upper-class people. If you are working class and eccentric, then you’re just mad – Timothy Spall
Timothy Spall