In an old book culled from San Francisco writer Herb Caen’s columns, he mentions a stunt pulled by a taxicab driver that set me wondering.
The cabbie delivered his passenger to the destination and said, “That’ll be four dollars, buddy.”
The passenger answered, “Oh, no, it won’t. I don’t have any money and you know you can’t get blood out of a turnip!”
The angry cabbuie saaid, “Well, you ain’t no turnip, and your blood is worth four dollars a pint!” So saying, the cabbie got a wrestling hold on the deadbeat passenger and hustled him to the local Red Cross station, and waitied while they extracted a pint of blood from the passenger; then the cabbie collected his money.
I told this to a doctor I know and she said the cabbie would never get away with it.
Would he?
I know a SF hackie who drives with one hand and plays a saxophone with the other. So anything goes, I guess. But the blood story sounds too facile to be real. People who have been stiffed for their services don’t typically resort to acting out the literal meanings of colorful idioms.
If it’s true, then SF has some really goal-oriented- or stoned - Red Cross nurses. How else would they accept blood from an unwilling donor?
I prefer to think that the cabbie would have had his dispatcher send for the police.
I doubt the police would take his blood. They tend toward blunt force trauma.
Ex-cabbie here: Once you get over the initial anger on such occasions, you soon realize that the time you’re about to spend trying to recover the four dollars is going to cost you more than four dollars.
The Red Cross doesn’t pay for blood donations, either. Plasma donation centers would but they’re not the same thing.
Unless the cabbie wanted to be paid in cookies, he would not get shit from the Red Cross, they don’t pay donors for blood.
Herb Caen never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
That would be kidnapping, at least.
And all the guy would have had to say is, “I’m gay!” or “Yes, I’ve had sex with a man since 1977.” and the Red Cross wouldn’t take his fluids.
If I were the cabbie, my first thoughts would be of possibly getting charged with assault or kidnapping.
As for not paying for blood (as opposed to just plasma), has that always been the case? Is it possible that was done when Caen originally posted the tale?
I can’t imagine any type of blood-donor facility being remotely willing to, much less physically able to, extract blood from an unwilling donor. Not to mention the logistical problems involved in transporting the guy (pretty hard to walk or drive while subduing someone) who is no doubt yelling for help and likely to run off at the first opportunity.
No offense, but I can’t see finding this even slightly believable.
IANAL, but I think everyone involved would face numerous criminal charges: Kidnapping, assault, etc.
Another ex-cabie here: It wouldn’t be worth the effort to take a guy to a blood donation place and wait around for them to take his blood, and then convince them to give the money to me.
And why are you reading Herb Caen anyway? The guy was a total hack. A zero. A guy who sat around while other people got his stories. A guy who rested on his non-existant laurels for as long as he could, gathering as much pay as he could.
:Sigh: perhaps the policy on selling blood was different in California in 1952, at the time Caen wrote the book, titled Don’t Call It Frisco.
I found the story; Caen said he himself heard the conversation between the cabbie and the passenger, at Fourth and Mission, somewhat south of downtown San Francisco.
Foyur your information, I picked a book by Herb Caen because I have visited San Francisco several times and enjoyed it. I resent you trying to foist some other writer on me–the other writers I’ve read include Isaac Asimov, Melvin Belli, Art Linkletter and Dave Feldman, he of the Imponderables books. I am not of a mind to attack the character of a deceased writer who can’t fight back. And I could just as easily, and with as much of an idle hand, mindlessly attack any of your writers. How do you like them apples, Edgar?
Be my guest. Even the dead 'uns. Surely you know who they are.
You are missing my point. I do not idly dismiss a writer like that. I remember once seeing a cartoon in a magazine with a skywriter (no less!) spelling out the message in the firmament above, “Joe Freen is a lousy son-of-a-bitch” before some ground unit opens fire on him. Herb Caen was a Pulitzer laureate and lasted some 60 years with San Francisco newspapers, and wrote four or five books, and was quoted by other papers and sources–Cecil himself included. 
The fact that a medical doctor questioned the veracity of the story, however, was what had set me thinking.
On one point I’ll back down, though–Caen NEVER mentioned the Red Cross specifically in his original story. Only I did. Caen merely wrote “Blood Donor station.” Mea culpa. :o