**PLAY THE GAME OR BECOME THE GAME Part 2**

ATTEN:This blog has been combined with the 1st killacab blog & moved to www.saveacab.blogspot.com

I started A Cab Taxi in the year 2000 as a joke and I have keep it open all these years despite the many difficulties that I have endured at the hands of some very cruel people. Since the first part of 2007 my phones have been so tampered with by law enforcement that it truly is a wonder I'm still in business and the strangest thing that has ever happened in my life was a deal some people tried to make with me not to call the Federal Communications Commission about my phone calls being intentionally blocked. If you have read my first blog www.killacab.blogspot.com then you have a pretty good idea of what a huge mess all this has been and I decided to start from the beginning with this blog to try to fill in some of the many gaps that I left out the first round.

I got the idea to start this company at my fifteenth class reunion and at the time I had been working in the office at Homeland grocery store here in Elk City, Oklahoma for almost five years. I was extremely ready for a job change after that many years at Homeland but I wasn't exactly sure what kind of a job I wanted. At my Merritt Class of 1985 get together several classmates and I played all eighteen holes of golf at our local golf course and most of us consumed a lot of beer while we played the course. By the time we all had finished the last hole I was well above the legal limit to drive and so were many of my other class mates. We stood out in the parking lot of the clubhouse talking for a while and very few of us were brave enough to risk driving home. I made the comment that I should start a taxi service in this town since we didn't have one and several of my classmates started laughing. I told them that I thought a taxi company could do well here and I was really serious about quitting my job at Homeland.

The next day I started thinking of a name for the company and by dark I was printing up cards with the name A Cab Taxi. I thought the name A Cab Taxi sounded kind of catchy and also I think it popped in my head because we didn't have a cab service around here. Several people had opened taxi companies in this town over the years but nobody stayed in business very long and I was determined to make it work. I remember that my wife and I were scared of going into such a venture because we were so unsure about things. Neither one of us knew much about running our own business and I remember telling her that if it fails were going to be up a creek without a paddle.

I already had a mini van and I also decided to use the phone number 580-821-2945 that I had on my cell phone as the main business line. I got the 580-821-2222 number a few weeks after I had started the company and that came about when I was sitting around trying to think of ways to get more business. One day I started calling different phone numbers to see if I could find a number that was out of service that would also be really easy for people to remember. I called a lot of numbers before I discovered that 580-821-2222 was out of service and I realized that it would be perfect because it could also be remembered as 821-ACAB.

I called Dobson Cellular but they told me there was no way to get the number even though it wasn't in service. I was determined to get that number and I went to the local Dobson Cellular office on 3rd Street which is now the AT&T office. I knew one of the service representatives really well because we had been friends for a long time and I told her that I needed the number for my business. She called the main office and somehow was able to talk them into putting the number on one of my phones. In a matter of days my business started doing well and I got new cards handed out with the new number. I also put reflective lettering on the windows of my van that displayed my new number and I bought a magnetic sign that I put on the back end right next to the license plate.

In the first few months of my business I got some much needed help with advertising from a good friend by the name of Dixie that owned the Endzone bar on 2ND and Main Street. Dixie helped me a great deal by advertising my taxi on the radio and newspaper every time she ran an ad for her club. Tragically Dixie died of liver cancer a few years ago and may God rest her soul because she was a really great person that so many people loved. After I started making enough money I bought another van so my wife and I could both pick people up at the same time. By the end of the summer of 2000 my wife quit her job at the Gazebo restaurant [Holiday Inn] where she had worked since 1992 and she started working with me full time.

A guy by the name of Mitch Ore that owned an oilfield business started using us a lot and his money helped me expand my company even further. He would call me to deliver groceries to his house on the north side of Foss Lake and it was a place called the White Eagle Lodge. I would also give him rides around the Elk City area to different bars and to Oklahoma City when he needed to go to meeting at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission etc. I had never made such easy money as the money that came from Mitch and it was instrumental in getting this business on the map. I'm not sure if he was involved in organized crime and I never heard anyone say that they thought he was hooked in with the others that control this county.