Mobile Meth
a Columbia (MO) cab driver recounted how he has been paid for rides as far as South Carolina. When I asked who could possibly want such a thing, he said, "I don't know, just a man with a suitcase." I then asked "but you spent a long time with this guy...you must have learned something about him. The cab driver said that he was paid $1,700 for the ride, was put up in a motel for about 4 hours one night, then hit the road again until reaching Columbia. "I don't know nothing," he said. The cab driver knew I understood and smiled as he enjoyed his circumlocutions, which I eventually clarified with knowing looks I flashed him through his rear view mirror.
When I told him I was doing research on meth, he said in the form of quiet but dramatic exclamation, "Ooooh! i could tell you stories." I focused now on the side of his face from my position in the back seat, "Well, go on." He didn't hesitate at all: "Well I live in Millersburg, about 10 miles East of Columbia, and the other day I went down to the general store and heard that I live on 'meth alley', that's what they call it, Road 309. Just the other day they done busted 3 meth labs -- 3 -- right on my dead-end street. Two of them were in mobile homes and the third was a fixed structure. The cops busted them all." He told me he lived at the beginning of Rd. 309 and that the labs were found at the dead end. He said that even the old-timer farmers in the area are attuned to the presence of meth -- "one guy, couldn't be younger than eighty says he can smell a meth lab near by -- I don't know, though. Maybe he's just afraid of getting robbed and so is on the lookout a little too hard."
When I told him I was doing research on meth, he said in the form of quiet but dramatic exclamation, "Ooooh! i could tell you stories." I focused now on the side of his face from my position in the back seat, "Well, go on." He didn't hesitate at all: "Well I live in Millersburg, about 10 miles East of Columbia, and the other day I went down to the general store and heard that I live on 'meth alley', that's what they call it, Road 309. Just the other day they done busted 3 meth labs -- 3 -- right on my dead-end street. Two of them were in mobile homes and the third was a fixed structure. The cops busted them all." He told me he lived at the beginning of Rd. 309 and that the labs were found at the dead end. He said that even the old-timer farmers in the area are attuned to the presence of meth -- "one guy, couldn't be younger than eighty says he can smell a meth lab near by -- I don't know, though. Maybe he's just afraid of getting robbed and so is on the lookout a little too hard."
posted by kamrantalaj at
8:40 PM
