
DATE: Sunday, April 27, 1997                TAG: 9704250274

SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY DAVE MCCARTER, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: KILL DEVIL HILLS                  LENGTH:  211 lines

HITCHING A RIDE IN CABBNIG - THERE'S A LITTLE LOVE AND A LITTLE WAR - BUT ALL'S JUST FARE.

KELLY RUTHERFORD flashes a pirate's smile, slides easily onto the bench front seat of a shockingly powder-blue Ford Crown Victoria, fishes for a Marlboro Light with one hand and finds the Stone Temple Pilots on the car's factory stereo with the other.

Consider the clock punched.

As he starts his engine, it's just past 9 p.m. For the next nine hours or so of this Friday night/Saturday morning, Rutherford is at your service - carrying on a tradition older than a stagecoach and as romanticized as a ride in a rickshaw. He's spending another evening the way he's spent several hundred during the past few years. He will be criss-crossing the web of highways and side streets that lay like lattice across the Outer Banks, hustling business . . . making a living . . .

Driving a cab.

``I'm clear at 7-Eleven in French Fry Alley,'' he tells the Beach Cab dispatcher. ``We caught up?''

Rutherford, 28, is bright-eyed and thoughtful. He recognizes and gladly assumes his position as a representative of the rarely appreciated and often-reviled profession of taxi driver.

Movies have mythologized cabbies (Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver) and turned them into sad caricatures (Mr. T. in D.C. Cab). The vehicles themselves were the namesake of a classic TV show. And lame taxi jokes from stand-up comics have become cliche. Musicians from Harry Chapin to Lenny Kravitz have used cabs to drive their points home.

And as you might expect, Rutherford has seen everything from the surreal to the sublime to the slightly scary while traversing the Outer Banks.

He'll tell you: In cabbing, there's a little love and a little war - but all's fare.

``It's not an easy way to make a living . . . not the greatest lifestyle for most people,'' Rutherford says, stroking his neatly-trimmed goatee as he makes his way down Barnes Street in Nags Head to the night's first call.

``You get off work at 2, 3, 6 in the morning and you're just amped from the night. But you don't really want to be around anybody 'cause you've been talking the talk all evening. By the time you're ready to sleep, the sun's coming up.

``But it lets me live the way I want to live right now,'' he said. ``And that's the most important thing. I've done the office thing. And life's just too short to not put yourself in a situation where you can do the things that make you happy.''

To be sure, Rutherford is an atypical cabbie. He's the kind of guy who might quote a little Shakespeare to you while you try to remember the way to your house after a night of juicing up at Goombay's or Frisco's, Tortuga's Lie or The Weeping Radish. The son of well-to-do parents in Chesapeake, Rutherford visited the Outer Banks as a teen-ager and fell in love with the area, the surf and the laissez-faire lifestyle. He kept coming back until he took up permanent residence after college. He's been driving full-time (except for the occasional extended vacation - this winter to Costa Rica) for about four years.

Rutherford has both his Dare County cab-driving certifications and a degree in psychology from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.

Don't tell him he's not putting his education to good use.

``You've got to know how to deal with all types of people,'' Rutherford said after dropping his first fare at Hurricane Alley. ``I think I'm pretty good at making most everyone who rides with me feel comfortable.''

And if Rutherford's approach to his job sounds like Zen and the Art of Cabbing, you can be sure there's a chapter on economics included. ``The way I see it, with just my undergrad degree, I could be making 14-grand in a psychiatric facility or a probation office somewhere (he has a criminal justice minor). But if I really want to work it, I can make $20,000 to $30,000 a year cabbing.''

Beach Cab drivers walk with 50 percent of the nightly total rung up on the meter (Beach recently increased its rates for the first time this decade, from $1.20 to $1.50 a mile), plus tips. However, the drivers are technically leasing the vehicles they drive. Drivers pay for gas and oil and basic maintenance.

On this Friday, fares ranged from the $3 minimum to about $11. Rutherford says he rolled $260 on his best shift. And he can clear $80 to $100 or more on an average summer night.

His best tip? A fishing boat mate who'd just been tipped $5,000 himself dropped a C-note on Rutherford for shuttling him around the Banks on his celebration night. ``Yep, $100. The guy said he believed in the trickle-down theory of tipping,'' Rutherford remembers.

Nancy Archibald, who started Beach Cab in 1989 with her husband, Steve, says all drivers have to shell out nearly $60 before they start the job - $40 for a Town of Nags Head taxi permit that comes with a background check for felonies, two photographs and a certificate to be posted in the cab; then $15 more for a permit in Kill Devil Hills, where the extent of the screening process involves calling Nags Head to see if they've already been by there.

Three other cab companies currently operate on the beach - Bayside, Island and Hollywood (the new yellow taxis). Rutherford says competitors occasionally swipe fares from each other by monitoring the same radio frequencies. But there's not a lot of acrimony between the different companies' drivers.

Rutherford runs across a Bayside driver around 10:15 p.m. at the Ocean Veranda Motel, where a guest who called both companies has obviously already found other transportation. ``A lot of jerks will call all four companies and just ride with whoever gets there first,'' Rutherford says. ``When people tell me that when they get in, I just don't wanna even carry them. That's just not right.''

Rutherford doesn't like to focus on the problems - logistical and interpersonal - that crop up in the job. But he says they are always lurking. Rutherford's radio goes on the fritz shortly after ushering a gregarious country boy, replete with gold medallions nesting in his chest hair, from H.A. (Hurricane Alley already has achieved initial status with the cabbies) to Port O' Call and back .

Most of the cars in the Beach Cab fleet are retired police cars. And some are in better condition than others. Tonight, I'm riding with Rutherford in Number 6.

Rutherford, who makes a nice chunk of change on the side as a shade-tree mechanic, says by comparison to other cabs he's driven ``it's in pretty good shape.'' But he hasn't been able to complete the necessary morphing from black-and-white to a true blue Beach Cab. The back doors still have no handles on the inside. So we hop out like shorts-and-sandals-wearing valets to free the fares at each destination.

The speedometer lies dormant on 0. And the left-turn signal requires a manual lever-snapping (down-up-down-up) to get the point across to trailing cars. Rutherford turns on a bright interior light and takes a look at the radio wires, which are naked, frayed and badly corroded just below the handset.

On the way to pick up a couple in Nags Head Cove, Rutherford makes a rendezvous to pick up a hand-held radio from another cabbie, Mark, who is having more serious problems. Mark's fare has passed out. And he is having trouble keeping him conscious long enough to find out where he wants to go. When the drivers meet, Mark's rider's glassy eyes are open, if not focused. Rutherford says the whole scenario is a common problem when most of your nighttime riders either have DUIs on their records - or would be prime candidates to pick one up if they weren't in a taxi.

``It's a drag sometimes. But we just do the best we can,'' says Rutherford. ``People are doing the right thing to call for a ride in that situation. But a lot of cabbies carry fares to their front doors. Of course, you're not usually gonna get paid when that happens. Mark had a guy pass out on him with a bunch of people waiting to ride not long ago. And he just found a lighted place and leaned the guy up against a tree and left him.

``One night I had a drunk girl who I ended up leaving on the front porch of a vacant rental house . . . figured that would be safe.''

Archibald says there have been no robberies or other major criminal problems to speak of since Beach Cab started the meters running eight years ago. On our way to drop a kid at the Bayside Amoco then at the Budget Host Inn in Kill Devil Hills, Rutherford recounts the only time he got a little nervous about potential violence: ``These fishermen from Wanchese had run up a pretty good fare - $17 or $18 - and they told me on the way home that they weren't going to pay the fare and they were going to kick my (rear),'' says Rutherford.

``I thought about it for about a half-mile, then just slammed on the brakes and told 'em we weren't going any farther . . . If they were gonna bum-rush me, I wasn't gonna take 'em to their front door to take my beating.'' Rutherford says the three assured him they weren't being serious, and ended up paying in full.

At about 11 p.m., Rutherford deposits a pair of partiers at Lance's Seafood Restaurant and Bar (the can't-miss-it pink building at milepost 14 on the bypass in Nags Head), and picks up a couple who immediately get cuddly in the back and start negotiating accommodations for the night. Rutherford lowers a back window (his doesn't currently open) and turns up the radio.

Later, after dropping the lady off by herself in Nags Head Woods (``I don't know what's up with that . . . Take me back to Lance's,'' the disappointed would-be paramour says from the backseat). Rutherford explains, ``I don't get into anyone's business when it comes to people trying to hook up. The tunes get louder. And I try not to pay any attention to what goes on back there.''

Not that cabbing hasn't given Rutherford the line on where the best parties are on any given night. ``That is one of the perks,'' he laughs. ``You meet the bartenders and the locals. And you always know what's going on. I haven't paid a cover charge on this beach in years.''

But tonight is turning out to be disappointingly slow.

Rutherford stops off in Kill Devil Hills to pick up four beautiful young people, two of whom (the girls) determine they're OK to drive themselves despite some obvious early evening imbibing. Rutherford opens his door and admonishes them. ``You really don't want to do that,'' he says. ``They're out and about you know . . . Just waiting for you.''

The girls don't listen. And later we end up at Mulligans, on the beach road, hoping to score a walkout who needs a ride.

Rutherford talks about the local police, not surprisingly, philosophically. ``Yeah, there are a lot of cops out there. And maybe some of them are a little over-the-top when it comes to DUIs,'' he says. The thumping beat provided by a band called EZ and the Heat punctuating the buzz of the happy revellers who have spilled outside to enjoy the mild evening and the breeze off the ocean. ``But you know, driving when you're messed up isn't right. And we may have a few extra cops. But we also don't have drive-by shootings and drug sales on the corners. Hell, I didn't lock my front door the whole first year I lived here.''

Anderson, a friend of Rutherford's, wanders out of the bar, ready for a ride home. The goateed surfer in baggy shorts polishes off his Budweiser, hops in and stretches out across the backseat. He's had a good time. He has a safe ride home. And he brings word of a possible after-hours party at another house - a hot-tub, maybe some nice-looking babes, brews and friends to talk surfing with (``The water was 62 degrees at Hatteras last weekend,'' Rutherford says. ``That's great. I'm sick of wearing rubber.'')

The warm waves and weather are coming back. The night and the season are still young. Even a cabbie can't help being a little excited.

``This is like no other place you'll find,'' Rutherford says of the Outer Banks as we head south, tow-headed friend in tow.

``Believe me, I wouldn't dream of cabbin' anywhere else.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by DREW C. WILSON

Beach Cab drivers Marcus, left, and Rutherford, talks while waiting

for riders at Hurricane Alley. Before they get the job, all drivers

have to get a Town of Nags Head taxi permit that includes a

background check for felonies.

Cabbie Kelly Rutherford opens the door for rider Rollanda Brotherton

and her daughter Caitlin, 3, at the Jolly Roger in Kill Devil Hills.

Beach Cab driver Kelly Rutherford talks over the radio with the

dispatcher while he waits outside a beach establishment.

Graphic