The school offered a free lottery ticket and eight hours of non-stop fun. : Sex n’ Snax

Buzz Jenkins is a jolly, full-faced guy with pink cheeks, a serene attitude and no desire to be Pope or to lead the Rose Bowl Parade.

He has lived in the same modest Burbank home for 40 years and has worked for the same carpet-cleaning company for almost as long.

His needs are simple. Bowling on Tuesdays and sex on Thursdays are all that Buzz requires to conduct his life in an orderly manner.

A T-bone steak would be nice occasionally, but a macaroni and cheese casserole does just fine when Ethel, his wife, bakes it with a crispy topping.

Buzz is not one to disrupt the scheme of things. The only challenge he ever faces, or wants to face, is trying to squeeze sex in a day early when Bingo falls on a Thursday and the missus stays out past nine.

In short, Jenkins is an amiable, ordinary, no-fuss kind of lug. He loves Christmas, hates sin and would never vote for Gary Hart.

Then why, I hear you ask, would a guy like him call a guy like me and demand I initiate an attack on traffic schools?

I’ll tell you why. Listen carefully and take notes.

To begin with, Buzz Jenkins is not his real name, nor Ethel the name of his missus.

For all his telephonic bluster, the man of whom I write prefers anonymity. He does, however, exist as I have described him.

Recently, Buzz was cited for running a stop sign and was given the choice in court of either paying a $64 fine or paying a lesser amount and attending traffic school.

You don’t make a lot of money cleaning carpets, so Buzz opted for traffic school.

A court clerk handed him a list of schools he could attend. Buzz chose one that offered a free lottery ticket and eight hours of non-stop fun.

“But when I asked for the lottery ticket,” he says, “they told me they’d stopped giving them out because it was undignified.

“Their fun consisted of calling women to the front of the class and making comments like, ‘Tell us how you were violated.’

“In between things, we were shown an out-of-date video tape on drunk driving and excessive horn blowing. It was a total waste of time, and it cost me $19.”

Buzz was so upset about the school, I promised to find out what I could.

There are dozens of them in the Valley.

Lettuce Amuse U-Laff N Learn Traffic School. Comedians Plus Learn From Us Traffic School. Lunch ‘N’ Learn School at Fine Restaurants. The Less Stress Snax/Fun/Films Traffic School. The Lifesavers Entertains U Day & Night More Laffs & Snax Traffic School.

And so ad infinitum.

I called a couple of the schools first. They offer everything from coffee and juice in the morning to gourmet lunches in the afternoon.

Those that serve only snacks, I mean snax, furnish a mixture of pretzels, peanuts and trail mix crackers.

Of the schools that feature entertainment, one said it had 40 or 50 professional comedians who offered a full day of continuous laughs. I mean laffs.

“Are they really funny?” I asked the woman who answered the phone.

“Oh, God, yes,” she said, “they’re a riot.”

Then I telephoned the Department of Motor Vehicles and learned there are 360 traffic schools in California that compete for about 500,000 traffic violators a year.

The schools are licensed by the DMV and cannot be operated by anyone convicted of crimes involving fraud or deceit, according to Gina McGuines, who is a media representative for the department.

I didn’t ask about other felonies, but one must assume that rapists and serial killers are equally unwelcome.

There is no regulation governing how the traffic schools attract customers, Gina said, since they are highly competitive and there is a lot of money to be made.

“We just want the traffic violators to learn what they have to learn,” she added. “How they learn it is up to the school.”

So what we have here, as I see it, isn’t a column attacking traffic schools, but an opportunity for Buzz to make a little money by starting a school of his own.

To begin with, Buzz has never been convicted of anything, much less crimes that involve moral turpitude. The only public instruction he has ever consciously violated was entering a department store improperly by pushing at a door clearly marked “Pull.”

If he is anything at all, Buzz Jenkins is a decent man.

This might seem a little out of character, therefore, but once he gets his license, Buzz ought to go for attracting customers by employing the one element in life more important than food or laffs. Sex.

I see a school called Sex ‘n’ Snax.

It features maybe a singles dance and free multicolored condoms filled with popcorn, and an adult film that ends with a couple entangled in the back seat of a T-Bird that is legally parked in a metered zone with 42 minutes remaining.

The message: See how much fun you can have when you obey the law?

I tell you, Buzz, there’s a fortune in your future if you can put it together, and I don’t mean only on Thursday nights.

Sex ain’t new, but it beats hell out of macaroni and cheese.