An Ordinary Life, An Extraordinary Life

At the time we found the house, Suzie’s daughter, Jennifer and her family were living next door to us and Jennifer’s sister, Libby was also very much a part of my family’s life, babysitting and hanging out with them. Libby had married a guy from our church named Mike, who was also a dent tech with Integrity. Mike was pretty good at sales and had opened up a great account about four hours away, which he made into an overnight. Their first anniversary fell on his overnight so he decided to take Libby with him that week to stay with him at the hotel. She was also pregnant. We found the house on a Thursday and they were going to go out of town Sunday evening. That Sunday at church, our daughter, Courtney really wanted to tell Libby about the house. Laura was trying to get home so she was of a mind to just have Courtney wait until the next time she saw Libby. She relented and let her go ahead and run across the church lobby to tell her. She’s so glad she did. That night we were woken in the...

The housing market was really heating up. I still loved our nice little manageable townhome but other people thought that we should buy a house. I didn’t want to get into anything that would give us more financial strain but Laura was getting claustrophobic. A lot of people in our church home schooled their children. At first Laura was dead set against it but she had a change of heart before Alexis got to school age. Now that the children were getting bigger, the townhouse was feeling smaller and smaller as she spent her days home schooling and she was ready to move on. There was a neighborhood nearby that Laura really liked. It was surrounded by the golf course from the local country club, so a number of the houses backed up to the fairways. As the housing market was going crazy with houses going into bidding wars, I wanted to try to find someone who wanted to sell by owner before they signed up with a real estate agent. I decided to go door to door to every house in the neighborhood ...

All of a sudden, Go Tell Mama got accepted to the Hoboken Film Festival in New Jersey right across the river from Manhattan. This was the biggest festival that it had gotten into so far. I started thinking that maybe, after all that had happened, the opportunity had finally arrived. I decided to go to the festival to see what might come of it.  The films were shown one after the other throughout the festival in several local theaters. Mine showed in the afternoon so it wasn’t well attended. I went to some free seminars for those of us whose films were being shown and we also got passes to see all the other films and to the final awards dinner. I also took the opportunity to drive by the World Trade Center Twin Tower remains since I was so close. The final banquet was held in an amazing location on the water, at night, across from the lights of Manhattan. I was very personable and animated with the others at my table. But, once again, I didn’t know how to schmooze the big dogs in th...

One day, soon after, someone got in the cab and said something about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. There is a building in Norfolk called the World Trade Center so I thought maybe a small, private plane had lost control and crashed into it. I asked if it was our local building or the one in New York City. The person wasn’t sure. I had to pick up my next fare at a doctor’s office so I went in to get them and there on the TV was the World Trade Center in New York. At that point they didn’t know it was terrorists so it just looked like a tragic accident, which was stunning enough. I picked up my passenger and we turned on the radio to listen to the live coverage. When the second building got hit, everyone started to realize that this was no accident. It was a slow period of the day so fares were sporadic. I continued to listen to the news and heard when the first building fell. My mind was reeling. Then the second one fell. If I picked up someone who hadn’t heard yet, I told ...

I went out to Los Angeles for the Regent film showings. By this time, the technical issues with my film had been corrected, so at least that wasn’t a distraction. Unfortunately, it still didn’t correct any of the directing  flaws. Regent brought in some second or third-tier industry professionals to the showings and Bill Brown, once again, laughed in all the right spots. I am not good at schmoozing, so I didn’t know how to work the crowd. The female director of the other summer film, however, seemed well at ease. I heard that she later moved to Los Angeles so I hope something came of it for her. Of course, Los Angeles is where it’s at for filmmaking. I did think about just moving there to try find an in. But if you don’t get some notice from a film you’ve made, you pretty much have to try start from the bottom as an assistant and work your way up as you gain experience and connections. The problem with that is that it doesn’t pay much or anything at all in a very expensive city. Th...

One of the most discouraging things about driving a cab are the runners – people who run off without paying. It seems like a small thing but it takes the wind out of you psychologically. When you get to the destination they usually tell you they need to go inside to get the money…and they don’t come back. You sit there waiting until it gets suspiciously long when you finally start to realize what’s going on.  You have three choices. You can hope against hope and keep waiting. But you’ve already wasted all the time in getting to the customer, driving them where they asked to go and waiting for them to come back out. You don’t want to waste any more time. You can get out and go to the door. But chances are that they either (a) will not answer, (b) they never went into that house in the first place or (c) you will get shot (at least in my imagination). I discovered the first two by experience, thankfully not the third. The best choice is to just move on. As much as it you’ve been coun...

When I first started driving a cab, Laura had told her good friend, Suzie Wratten what I was doing and she had exclaimed,  “With Chris?”  Unbeknownst to us, her husband was part owner in a taxi company in the next town of Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach was more of a taxi-using city so when I saw that I couldn’t make enough in Chesapeake, I looked into moving my taxi driving career over there. I started working at Yellow Cab of Virginia Beach. In Virginia Beach, instead of being employees, you just rented the cab and were self-employed. They provided the fares, which you paid a small amount for but it was a little more competitive. In Virginia Beach, regular airport runs were the best fares. They either came from the oceanfront resort area or a couple of military bases, both of which were at the other end of the city from the airport. But to get those fares, you had to be on the stands at the outer edge of the city where there wasn’t a lot of regular business. It was a toss up ...

One of our non-medical semi-regular customers was an older gentleman who lived by himself. He used to call us to go to and from the grocery store. The others used to complain about him because the fare was small and, as he was older and not in the best shape, he had difficulty carrying his grocery bags. He had to take a number of trips up steps, through a gate and up a walkway to his house. I used to help him and he was always very grateful. Then he stopped calling. As he was so old, we assumed he had passed away. From that customer, I came up with a movie idea. It would follow my story, starting from when I shot the student film to when I got fired at CBN to my efforts to get my film done to my struggles as a cab driver to this customer. I imagined that this unassuming, lonely old man was actually very rich but had no family. But because I was kind to him, when he dies, he leaves me his estate, giving me the means to fulfill my dream. Alas, reality was otherwise. I wasn’t even making ...

Cab drivers have interesting stories to tell. Chesapeake isn’t a big taxi city. Most of our business was for government-sponsored medical transportation for which the company had contracted. The busiest times were during rush hour when people were getting to and from work. It was during those times that you wanted fares to go as quickly as possible so you could get as many in while it was busy. However, the medical transportation customers tended to have medical issues that made them have to take their time. As a Christian, I wanted to have compassion for people in need. At the same time, I needed to provide for my family. It was a constant struggle between the two, even though we didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. Most of the time you just sat in the cab waiting to be called on the CB radio for a fare. There were certain spots or stands where you waited. The main stand was the parking lot of the shopping center where the bank was that had been robbed when Courtney and I ...

I began the search for another job but nothing really presented itself. Meanwhile, my film wasn’t getting edited. Once again, it was a student volunteer position but no one was working out. With filmmaking, one of the ways to get in is to make a film that gets attention and leads to opportunities. I was hoping Go Tell Mama would do that for me. So it was important that the film got finished. I decided that, with my severance pay supporting us for now, I would edit the film myself with the hope of it opening other doors. I had shot Go Tell Mama on 16mm film but non-linear editing was just getting going at the time. Regent had an AVID non-linear editing suite on which I had had some experience and I could learn as I went. The editing suite was actually in the same CBN building in which I had been working.  So CBN was still paying me to go work in the same place on my own stuff. It felt like God was directing my steps after all and working out a plan through all this. Regent hosted a ...

Chapter Seventeen - Changes I’m the kind of person who likes to stay under the radar, especially at work. I don’t like to attract attention from any of the big bosses. The reason is that if they start getting all up in my business and they find something they don’t like, it will probably end up not going so well for me. Well the president of CBN decided that he wanted to get involved in the show I was producing - the International 700 Club. I was told that I needed to start using him as talent. He was a little wooden in his on-camera presence but I did what I needed to do and we worked okay together. But, sure enough, he started looking more closely at what I was doing. He thought that there should be more independent production involved in the show rather than it mostly just being a by-product of the domestic show. Earlier, when there was more money, we had several producers who would travel internationally and produce pieces for the program. But due to budget cuts, that was no longer...