Word: yordan
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Anna Lucasta (by Philip Yordan; adapted by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Abram Hill; produced by the American Negro Theater). The night was sweltering. The "theater" was an oven of a public-library basement. The seats were hard camp chairs. The company was a small, experimental, rehearse-after-work group. The play itself was billed as the one about the prostitute who attempts to go straight. It looked as if the audience and actors alike were in for an awful beating...
...glittering new Pontiac smoothed to a halt a few feet from the Vagabond's not-glittering shoe-tips. Emblazoned all over its simonized flanks were painted signs proclaiming it a dual-control driver-training car. A. Mr. Yordan, from the Bureau for Street Traffic Reseach, stuck his head out from one of the driving sides--it didn't seem to matter which one--and invited the Vagabond to come for a ride to Newton High School where juvenile drivers were to be given the latest pointers on how to play wrinkle-fender. "Four boys," said Mr. Yordan, "and four girls...
...they zipped toward Newton, he eyed the road nervously. Lot of gadgets in this car, must be complicated to handle. Look out! A car in front of them had stopped abruptly. Instinctively he pressed his feet hard on the floorboards and to his and Mr. Yordan's surprise, the Pontiac jerked to a stop. "Funny," mused Mr. Yordan, "I thought I stepped on the gas to go around him." Then he laughed and pointed to the Vagabond's hoofs on the floorboards. "Dual controls," he said softly. "Don't freeze on them again." The Vagabond looked down, and sure enough...
...school, four fresh young lassies were taken aboard. One got in front and three got in back-yes, with the Vagabond. It was delightfully crowded back there, and he found it difficult to keep up any real interest in driving instruction. But soon Mr. Yordan brought the car to a stop within the practice area on Commonwealth Avenue and suggested that Bernice, with whom the Vagabond was just becoming acquainted, take the helm--or one of them. There was a major reshuffling as Bernice disengaged herself from the heap of girlhood, hooked her heel in the Vagabond's cuff...
...after another the girls put the uncomplaining Pontiac through tests more fiendish than any proving grounds ever devised. The one who always shifted without touching the clutch quite stole the show. On the way back to Cambridge after the ordeal, Mr. Yordan spouted elements of safe driving and made a pronounced full stop at every "stop" street, which touched the Vagabond's conscience. He resolved to reform. The Bureau for Street Traffic Research and the Newton girls had shown him the light...