Working the graveyard with the folks who don’t sleep.

*^*The Cabbie and Lavender

Yellow Cab driver Andy Luersen lets me in on one of his secrets to staying awake and working well past midnight. From a bookbag that is crammed between his seat and the front passenger seat, Luersen pulls out a plastic device that is shaped like a marijuana pipe. He takes a small bottle of liquid and pours some of the substance on the ball-shaped top end of the object and then plugs it into his vehicle’s cigarette lighter. Slowly, the interior of his car begins to smell like eucalyptus.

Luersen uses the aromatherapy device—which is called an infuser—for more than helping him keep his eyes open and stay awake. He says that sometimes he pours calming oils like lavender into the infuser when he picks up a group of inebriated bargoers. He says that even though they might enter the cab boisterous and obnoxious, a few moments of being immersed in a cloud of lavender will settle them down.

There’s also another very practical reason for using the infuser. “People bring all matters of funky odors in here,” he says.

I have been riding around town with Luersen for an hour, and I am having no problem staying awake.

Tonight is a slow night, so Luersen, a former New York City cab driver with a ponytail and a goatee, keeps driving a big loop that takes us down Monterey’s Alvarado Street and then along Del Monte Avenue into Seaside.

As his front windshield starts to fog up, a green streetlight on Del Monte Avenue blurs through the glass like an object in an abstract painting. Luersen takes a left turn by the La Quinta on Del Monte and points to the small body of water spread out in front of Seaside’s Home Depot.  “It’s Roberts Lake,” he says. “That’s one of my hobbies—finding out what these things are named after.”

When not unearthing the story behind local place names—he is still excited by his discovery that three New Monterey streets were named after prostitutes—he listens to baseball on the radio, reads books like and writes in his journal. “It can get creative,” he says of his late-night writings. “It can get introspective. It can be venting.”

A couple minutes past 2am, Luersen pulls his cab in front of The Dunes, a bar on Seaside’s Broadway Avenue, and three intoxicated Latinos enter the cab.

“How was your evening?” Luersen asks.

While two mumble back and forth in Spanish about “panocha,” the oldest one answers Luersen’s question.

“The women there are bad, bad, bad,” he says.

The English-speaking passenger tells Luersen that they need to go to an apartment complex on Casa Verde Way, and then he stares out his window at the city’s almost vacant streets. “Where are the Americans?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Luersen replies. “Maybe downtown Monterey? It’s a slow night.”

After Luersen drops the three off, he recalls one of his longest cab rides: an intoxicated man who decided to take the money from his tax return to a casino in Reno. “It wasn’t bad,” he says. “I was paid $800 for that trip, and the guy was passed out for most of the drive.”

While it would be easy to spend the rest of the evening with Luersen, I realize I need some other late night workers’ perspectives and ask to be dropped off at Denny’s. As we drive up to the restaurant, Luersen rubs his goatee as he explains why he chooses to work late nights. “It’s hot and bright during the day,” he says. “I just find it far more interesting, far easier at night.”