Expressway: Adventures of a novice driving instructor
Mal Cooper of Lido Beach, as a teacher in younger days. Credit: Cooper family photo
It was 1954 and I was looking forward to a summer off after my first full year as a schoolteacher.
My father worried about his son's limited income and flagged down a driving-school instructor.
"My son is a wonderful teacher," he pronounced, "and would be a great instructor."
Nu-Way Auto School in Long Beach promptly interviewed and hired me. My training was a day of watching and learning while riding in the backseat of an instructor's car. A major perk was being issued my own car for the summer. It had a reassuring dual brake to allow for emergency stops. During many a lesson my right foot was poised above the brake pedal.
I remembered how I had been taught to drive a few years earlier by my Uncle Bernie, who was on furlough from the Army Air Corps at the tail end of World War II. He instructed bomber navigators, turning out newly commissioned officers every three months.
"I will teach you in one week," he told me.
His third lesson was to drive down busy Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and over a toll bridge.
"Remember," he cautioned, "slow down, shift into first, pay the quarter, shift back to second, give a little gas, shift to high and give it the gun."
Sounds simple, but shift cars were much more difficult than automatics. I was 16 or 17 and had two days of lessons to fall back on.
A trifle frightened, I gunned the car at the toll booth and tossed a quarter out the window. Fortunately, it landed in the toll taker's window. He shouted, shook his fist, but didn't order me to stop.
On the job for Nu-Way, I was determined to be calm, reassuring and low key. It was not necessary to produce drivers at a breakneck pace. My dance card was quickly filled. I was gratified that my students were learning and had confidence in me.
The toughest part was teaching how to calmly and smoothly coordinate the clutch and accelerator -- shifting, stepping off the clutch, feeding the gas. The students carefully learned their hand signals. Parallel parking was a slow, difficult procedure. U-turns were stressed. Wide turns at corners were important.
One of my first prospective graduates was a teenage girl. She was a star pupil, a quick learner. I brought her to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles test site in Freeport. She got behind the wheel and the examiner sat in the passenger seat. Unfortunately, she wore clunky, platform shoes that day. Her footwear hindered her and she applied the gas with a loud roar.
She failed -- and I realized that a good teacher must anticipate every possible eventuality.
My heart went out to another student, a determined woman in her early 20s who had stubby fingers. She explained that they were a birth defect, the result of a drug her mother had taken during pregnancy. Her disability made it challenging, but not impossible, for her to handle the wheel. We worked all summer, and I gave her constant encouragement. I was as thrilled as she when she passed and won her license.
That same summer, my mother decided her son could certainly teach her how to drive. I practiced with her in the evenings at the empty motor-vehicles site in Freeport.
She became proficient at navigating that square block, making U-turns and parallel parking.
Sadly, my triumph was shortlived. After passing the test, she never drove again. I could not give her the confidence to drive elsewhere and Dad was too tense to convince her. Mom was more realistic. She had met the challenge and that was sufficient.
Reader Mal Cooper lives in Lido Beach.
