What Can You Get for a Nickel?

Not much these days! Until the early 50s you could make a phone call for a nickel. (in some rural areas the five-cent call lasted up to the early 70s). Remember pay phones? They have gone the way of  typewriters and animal sacrifices.

Even a Luddite like me doesn't use a typewriter any more. As for animal sacrifices, sure they are anachronistic, but until the oracle gets one of those swipe machines for my debit card, it's the only option I have.

Back to the nickel - old slang for the nickel was a jitney piece. It took some etymological sleuthing to find out why. Best guess is that the word comes from one of two French sources. Jeton in French means a small metal disk; jeter means to throw or discard.

Today, a jitney is a small passenger bus that takes people around Atlantic City. The AC jitneys are the only privately funded public transportation system in the United States. Their history is a story of entrepreneurship.

In 1915, Atlantic City's trolley system went on strike. Two clever fellows decided to chauffeur people around town in their private cars for a nickel, or to coin a phrase (ooh that one hurt) a jitney piece. The concept caught on as cars required no rails and no public funding. By 1917, AC began issuing jitney licenses, and the system still exists.

Throughout the Depression, jitneys surfaced in cities across the nation. Out of work men who owned cars could make some money shuttling anyone with a nickel around town. Most of these ceased with the end of the depression. A handful kept operating as illegal cabs and the term, jitney is still used to denote illegal taxis in some American cities. Other than Pittsburgh, I'm not sure what cities. I always knew them as gypsy cabs until I came to Baltimore where they call them hacks.

The Hill is a predominantly African-American section of Pittsburgh. Up through the 70s, cabs would not go into that neighborhood. Some denizens filled that void illegally using their cars. Playwright August Wilson wrote a play in his Pittsburgh Cycle entitled  Jitney which centers around one of these illegal taxis.

During the 11 years I lived in Atlantic City, I rode jitneys on a daily basis. They were colorful as well as convenient. Many were owned by Greeks who would decorate the inside and blare Entekhno music. As owner/operators, they make more money the more passengers they take. A ride to work on a Jitney racing to beat out competitors to the next stop would get my heart beating faster than a strong cup of coffee. - as ever BB

"Make a pledge and mischief is nigh" - one of three inscriptions on the temple at Delphi