Roger Sweeney was a long-time football coach at RHS, who retired after the 1975 season. He didn't retire from coaching football at the same time as he eventually did from teaching and, I was lucky enough to spend many hours driving around with him and Rob Lane while he taught us the finer points of driving. He was a good instructor and the one lesson he wanted us to always remember about the blind spots in a driver's rear vision is something I practice to this day. It is drilled so deeply in my memory that I always cringe whenever I see people back up their cars by only using their mirrors and, never once checking their blind spots like Mr Sweeney recommended. Mr Sweeney also taught us how to parallel park like professionals in the Graydon Pool parking lot. To this day I can with a quick glance tell if someone trying to park will make it on the first try. I just use the simple formula we were taught of allowing yourself to be 1 1/2 cars lengths in front of the spot you are trying to parallel park into. This correct distance never fails me and usually shows whether or not a driver is from New Jersey. Whenever I see someone make a successful parallel park I am always tempted to ask them if they learned to drive in New Jersey.
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Paul - what became of Mr Sweeney? I would love to know. John Wescott is gonna try and get in touch with as many coaches as possible - Reamer, Leblanc........hopefully we can find a bunch of these guys.
ReplyDeletePaul - anyone can parallel park using 1.5 car lengths of the size of cars they had in the 70's!!! You could land small airplanes on the hood of some of them!
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