Driving Instructor

In 1967, Gerben and I were living in a house on Mt. Washington, with the rent and utilities paid by the owner.  It was very remote, set above and back from the street by 200 feet.  The owner wanted somebody staying there until they found a buyer for the property.  Other than the mattresses we slept on, the place had no other furniture.  It was a great deal but I still needed to earn some money for food and gas.

I landed a job working the night shift at Van de Kamp's Bakery in Glassell Park.  The building is still there where Fletcher Drive crosses San Fernando Road.  The company that last operated the bakery declared chapter eleven in 1990 and 500 employees lost their jobs.  The place remained abandoned for ten years until it was renovated with $72 million of tax payer money, and was designated for use by the Los Angeles Community College District. 

Years ago, at this same corner, was a Van de Kamp's store and coffee shop with a three-story windmill, the architectural signature for all of their stores and restaurants.  My parents used to take me to dinner at that same coffee shop when we first moved to Eagle Rock.  The coffee shop is long gone, but there is one remaining windmill that sits atop a former Van de Kamp's coffee shop in Arcadia, now a Denny's.  The founders of Van de Kamp Bakery also started Lawry's Prime Rib and The Tam O'Shanter Inn.  The Lawry's product lines soon generated sales that far out paced the bakery goods, and the founder, Walter Van de Kamp, sold the bakery in 1956.  Not surprisingly, he kept the stores and sold them off to become gas stations, as most were strategically located on corner lots on the busiest streets in Southern California. 

The timing couldn't have been better for Mr. Van de Kamp.  With the local population exploding, our city fathers had the wisdom to (1) remove the public transportation system that had been operating since 1901, consisting of 20 transit routes and 1,250 street cars powered by electricity; and (2), permit National City Lines to replace street cars with buses powered by gasoline.  The controlling interest in National City Lines was held by General Motors (who made buses), Firestone Tire and Standard Oil.  They not only ripped out the street cars systems in Los Angeles, they did it in every major city in the U.S.  These companies were all initially convicted by a Federal court of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but in the end only General Motors was required to pay a fine.  The fine was $5,000.

My first job at the bakery was removing freshly baked angel food cakes from their baking molds at a rate of fifty cakes per minute.  The cakes were slid in front of me on trays by a co-worker, with each tray holding six cakes in their molds.  I would grab one mold in each hand, then in a single quick snap of the wrist, lift them, turn them, and then slam them down on the tray.  The angel food cakes would magically pop out of the mold and I would repeat the action over, and over, and over, and over, until it was time for a break.  The empty molds were placed on trays off to the side once I had slammed the cake out of them.  It was an acquired skill that I mastered after destroying about forty cakes and a dozen molds.  It had to done quickly to meet the quota, slamming not too hard, nor too light, but just right, releasing the cake yet not crushing the mold. 

As it turned out, I was a natural at slamming cakes.  People were impressed as I could do fifty a minute with one hand.  The Italians who worked there started calling me "Paisan" once they found out my dad was Italian.  Why is it that every ethnic group claims to be the only people who know what real work is?

I hadn't worked there for even a full month when I suffered muscle spasms in my lower back.  I was sorry to lose the job but the doctor that checked out my back, gave me a letter that kept me out of the army.

I resumed looking for a job, but this time a less strenuous one.  There was an ad for driving instructors in the Pasadena Star News.  The only thing that appealed to me about this was that I could make money while planted on my keister.  Soon I completed the training, passed the DMV test for driving instructors, and was given a car with dual controls and "Cheney Brothers" displayed on both sides.

Cheney Brothers Driving School was on York Blvd in Highland Park and had been in business since 1937.  The Cheney family lived on Hill Drive in Eagle Rock and Connie Cheney was a classmate of mine in high school.

I immediately regretted taking the job and wished I could go back to slamming cakes.  I was paid by the lesson, usually an hour, but not for the time getting to and from the lessons.  Say you live on Mt. Washington and your first lesson is in Long Beach, your second is in Montrose, and your third is in Santa Monica.  This makes for an eight hour day, but you are only paid for the three one-hour lessons.  In addition, Juan Manuel Fangio couldn't  get from Long Beach to Montrose in an hour, even if the streets were roped off.  Never the less, you have to get to the next lesson on time or the whole day can collapse on you.  All of this results in you driving like someone bent on suicide.

The second major drawback to being a driving instructor is that management pressures you into selling your student on as many hours of lessons as is possible, whether needed or not.  The record at the time, belonged to an instructor in Chicago, who had managed to fleece his student for $2,600.  We were told that if a student thought they didn't need more lessons, we were to take them to downtown Los Angeles, at the height of the rush hour, and tell them to make their way home on surface streets.

The third major issue I had with the job was Robert Allen Brown.  He started the same day I did, as he needed something to do while on hiatus from his real job.  He was Jack Lemon's double.  When Jack worked, Robert Allen Brown worked.  Jack was currently between movies.  I have an aversion to people in "the business", but Robert Allen Brown took it to another level.  He never stopped imitating Jack Lemon.  "Good morning", "What no Danish?", "What's the good word today?"  He did Jack Lemon's laugh when he laughed, he did the stuttering, and he even did the thing with the handkerchief.  After a week of this I hated Robert Allen Brown and I never could watch another movie with Jack Lemon.

Regardless of the pressure from management, I just couldn't bring myself to rip off the students.  For most of them it was all they could do to cover the $12 an hour for the lesson.  Many of the people needing their first driver's license were single mothers, unemployed, or recently immigrated to the U.S.  I set about to train people in the minimum amount of time possible.  I structured the lessons to establish basic moves that they would first master by repetition; later combining moves for more complex tasks.  I prepared diagrams for them to study between lessons, and I had them practice driving the same route that the DMV would use for their driving test.  My students were passing their driving tests with four to six hours of instruction.

Management went apoplectic, claiming I was being irresponsible by putting people behind the wheel before they were ready.  I countered by challenging my boss to take one of my students out, and evaluate her ability.  She did well enough that he dropped the safety concern and went back to explaining that milking people for their money was good for the company.  

He then took me on a lesson that he was scheduled to give to one of his students.  The student was a lady in her sixties, who had never driven, but her husband had just passed away and she needed to be able to get around.  She lived in Glendale and prior to picking her up, my boss told me the reason he brought me along, was because he knew she thought this was going to be her last lesson, and he wanted to show me how to handle this.

The lady drove for almost the full hour and was totally proficient behind the wheel.  She turned to my boss and told him that she felt she was ready to take her driving test at the DMV.  My boss told her he wanted to show her something, that she would not be charged for the time, and to please follow his directions.  A few minutes later we turned onto a residential street and he asked her to pull to the curb and park,

He asked, "Do you know where we are?'

She said, "Yes, I am very familiar with Glendale, I've lived here for twenty years."

He asked, "You're sure you have a good idea where this street is?"

She said, "Sure, I know right where this is."

He said, "I don't think you're ready for your license, but that's going to have to be your decision.  If you do get your license, I am going to ask a favor of you."

She said, "What's that?"

He said, "That's my house right over there.  Sometimes my kids play ball in the street with the neighbor's kids.  The favor I am asking is that you won't ever drive on this street."

She said, "You're serious aren't you."

He said, "Serious as the day is long."

Although the right thing to do was to slam his cake out of its mold, I remained quiet, sitting in the back seat.  I have no excuse and regret it to this day.  She agreed to another lesson.  I needed out of this.

A couple of days later, I was in the middle of the intersection at Pico and Union, waiting to make a left turn, running late to my next lesson.  There was a truck right in front of me, facing me, as he was also waiting to make a left turn, but in the opposite direction.  The truck made it impossible for me to see if there was any oncoming traffic.  I was late, I thought, "screw it', and I floored it.  Half way through the turn I was t-boned by an oncoming car that was doing about 35 miles an hour.  I pulled over to the curb and the other car did the same.  Soon a policeman was dealing with the situation.  I discovered that the driver who rammed me had neither a license nor any insurance.  I shared this with the cop, angling for some leniency since the entire thing was obviously my fault.  The cop was leaning my way when the owner of the car, a Donald Lone Wolf, was helped by his unlicensed driver, out of the back seat and into his wheelchair, and wheeled into the shade as it was a hot day.  The cop, having taken all of this in, looked back at me and said, "If this goes to court, and Geronimo over there shows up in his wheelchair, you're dead meat".

I drove to the office the next morning, put all of my training materials on my boss's desk, shook his hand, and said sorry for everything, and headed for the door.

He said, "Where are you going?"

I said, "I screwed up.  I know you have to let me go and I understand."

He said, "Do you realize that it was your fault?"

I said, "One hundred percent, no excuse for it, just stupid."

He said, "That's all I need to hear.  Pick up your stuff and we'll get you another car."

This came as quite a shock.  I had been ecstatic once the accident scene was cleared, knowing that the torture would finally end, since they would certainly fire me.  Now, I needed a new plan.

I don't remember how long it was after the accident that I quit.  I drove to the office at 3:30 am.  I had loaded up the car with all of the training materials and left the car locked and parked in front of the office.  I shoved the car keys and a note through the mail slot in the front door, and heard them land on the carpet inside.  The note said:

Sorry for the short notice.  The Alameda unit of the National Guard has openings and will begin interviewing applicants this morning.  This is a chance for me to avoid Viet Nam and I can't pass it up.  I am driving up tonight and have to haul ass to get there in time. 

I walked home and went to bed, certain that I would never have to deal with anything to do with the driving school as long as I lived.

Eighteen months later, I was working as an air courier, sitting on a PSA flight, escorting a couple of hundred pounds of cancelled checks, tucked away in the plane's belly.  I was on my way from San Francisco to the Burbank Airport.  I saw someone in the aisle walking toward me, and realized it was my former boss from Cheney Brother's Driving School.  He said hello, we shook hands, and he took the seat across the aisle from me.

He asked, "Did you have any luck in Alameda getting into the Guard."

I said, "Yeah it all worked out.  I'm just now coming home from my annual two-week drill."