Pete Kendall: Driver’s education courses haven’t changed much since 1962

I remember the morning as though it was yesterday — or maybe the day after.

James Cox, a truly merry soul, is perched in the instructor’s half of the front seat of a standard-transmission vehicle equipped with two steering wheels and two sets of brakes.

And he’s telling me, in benevolent tones he might have used to instruct linebackers on his Paschal Panther defense, “Son, you’ll never learn to drive.”

And I have to admit, I had some doubt during those several perilous months of driver’s education, in the fall 1962.

And Coach Cox, a Cleburne native whose friends called him Codge-O, did little to absolve my fears.

“Son, watch that stop sign!”

“Son, what color was that light?”

“Son, I hope you have health insurance!”

“Son, let that clutch out easy!”

“Son, I can’t TAKE it anymore!”

It’s a rite of passage, that driver’s ed, a time to prove to all your friends that you’re manly enough to drive a stick shift to Glen Rose and back without killing the engine more than twice and, even more notably, without running over and killing anybody on the road.

I was a bad driver’s ed student.

No, wait. I may have been the worst driver’s ed student who ever lived, and it frankly had nothing to do with the tutelage of James Cox.

I just could never get the hang of tapping the clutch at the exact instant I desired to manipulate that handle-looking thing on the steering column.

And I wasn’t about to concede my ineptitude and ask to be transferred to a learner’s car with automatic transmission. Though I strongly suspect Codge-O wishes I had, beginning with the first day on the parking lot at Amon G. Carter Stadium when I asked, “How does this car turn on?”

I’m glad to know, almost 50 years later, that I wasn’t the only one who struggled mightily to emulate A.J. Foyt and Johnny Rutherford at the wheel.

Many of my Paschal classmates stumbled and bumbled their way through driver’s ed, too. They were just less willing at the time to admit it.

“I remember driver’s ed, summer of ’61,” said David Graves. “Coach Bray had our group right after lunch. He must have gone through an entire roll of Tums during our session every time. Can’t remember who my fellow ‘drivers’ were, but we’re all lucky to be alive. The final exam was a solo drive to Cleburne, make a U-turn and return to Fort Worth. That was the longest trip of my life. Watched the white line the whole way.”

Carl Hickey was an adolescent driver’s ed student in more ways than one. He began driving at 13.

“Kenny Rogers and I snuck my sister’s Opel out about midnight and drove from TCU to Wedgwood,” he said. “I was going to turn left and pulled right in front of a car.”

This qualified him for actual training.

“I had Durwood Horner as a teacher,” Hickey said. “In order to be a safe driver, you had to remember five things: 1) Always keep your eyes moving, 2) Make sure they see you, 3) Leave yourself an out ... I don’t remember the other two.”

Jane Hawkins MacFarland was another young learner. Many learned to stay out of her way.

“Seems to me I got my driver’s permit at 13 so I could get my license at 14,” she said. “Read that sentence again and tell me if it makes any sense at all. What were they thinking?”

Not much telling.

“I remember driver’s ed with mortification,” Sharon Sass Feather mused. “Our family had an automatic transmission car at the time, but it was ‘cool’ to take ‘stick.’ What a mistake. I stalled on the railroad tracks and on hills. I jack-rabbited forever. And trying to parallel park — fuhgeddaboutit. I took it with Becky Johnson.”

Becky was a better student than some, actually than most. She actually learned something.

“Fast forward to about three years later, when those driving lessons finally kicked in,” she said. “A friend with an MG offered to let me drive it, and suddenly, it all came back to me. Within minutes, I was zipping around like a pro. I got to drive that car a lot, and how easy it was to parallel park. Somehow that sporty little turquoise gem provided the motivation I never got from Coach Ludiker, God rest his soul. I’m sure he was a nice man. I’m also sure we weren’t the only students who called him Coach Ludicrous behind his back.”

Some thought they learned well. Some even thought they had good instructors.

“We watched grainy old black and white films from a driver’s perspective,” said Patrick Crabtree, “where balls rolled out between parked cars into the street followed by small kids — you weren’t supposed to hit them —where cars suddenly backed out of driveways right in front of you — you weren’t supposed to hit them — and where truckers having to stop quickly — trying not to hit someone — became impaled on the load of pipe they were carrying — it wasn’t supposed to hit them).

“The training car was some old Ford stick shift outfitted with a passenger side brake setup in case the instructor felt the need for an emergency stop. I don’t remember who our trainer was, but he must have had the patience of Job and the luck of the Irish. Not to mention a need for extra money to have taken such a miserable job. There must surely be a side room in Heaven set up for driver’s ed instructors.”

James Cox is still with us, by the way, proving I didn’t shorten his lifespan when I walked by his biology classroom the week after driver’s ed ended, greeted him at the door, and proudly showed him my driver’s license.

“Thanks,” I recall him saying, “for the warning.”