Weird times, brothers and sisters. They poured trillions of dollars into a hole and nothing happened. We’re still burning the rain forests. Planetary alignments are getting downright spooky. Everybody knows it can’t go on, yet here we are and this we do. Why trust anything except your heart?
Something led me to unearth a half-finished book, a true tale from 1971 I maybe ought to finish. It’s full of sex and drugs and crazy hope, much more of the latter than the former, to tell the truth, but I’d try it all over again anyway. Why not? Nobody tries anything any more, they just send emails. But this isn’t about Yellowhammer Farm. It could be, but not yet. I sat down here to write about old VW buses, and this is where I ended up, because I have a whole chapter devoted to the subject in the book. Which you can’t read because I have to make it fiction. Half the principals are on Facebook or Twitter now — you’d think they’d just be flattered, but one never knows.
So we will revisit that at some point. Buried deep within, however, is this fine description of what it’s like to drive a ’66 Volkswagen bus, which for some reason wants attention now:
The cockpit of the early model split windshield buses (up to around 1967) was a marvelous place that always made me think I was piloting a B-17. The aircraft analogy was supported by a painted steel dashboard; sliding windows; ridiculously thin, tinny doors; and a view, if you hunched low over the flat steering wheel with your head up close to the windshield, that wasn’t much different from what a bombardier would see from his Plexiglas nose position — assuming the bomber was driving down the highway, that is. The engine throbbing away in the rear reminded me of a pusher prop, and the floating, bouncing motion experienced as a result of sitting directly over the front wheels added considerably to the illusion of flight. Bouncing up and down in the lightly-loaded front end of a Volkswagen bus, weaving in the crosswinds and barely connected to the road, was probably as close to actual flight as one could hope to achieve without an airplane.
Talk about following your heart… There was more soul in that machine than in anything I’ve driven since. Of course, what we drive today mostly works. I could never drive a VW bus cross-country without at least a minor disaster or an engine swap, and that is why you should never own one. On the other hand, what about this?
It was the late ’70s. My future wife and I were living in Maryland behind a real estate office, and I owned a dark green ’66 model. One fateful winter (!), we drove it to Iowa and back, so we could load up a couple items of furniture her grandmother wanted to give us. It was seven degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of Illinois, and I had a single-burner propane camp cooker rigged inside an oversized coffee can hanging from the dashboard for heat. That’s right, open flames inside the cab, but inside the can, you see. It worked rather well, so long as you didn’t bump it with your knee. My sweetie did burn a bit of her antique raccoon coat, which until we hit the Freezing Slush of Death on the Pennsyvania Turnpike coming home was pretty much the main primal experience of the trip. That bus had a cruise control, too: a hand throttle I’d wired up beside the steering wheel. You had to manually disengage it in order to brake, so of course you tried to never have to.
The spirit of invention and risk from all those years ago is notable and useful to recall. Wherever the hell it went, I’d like to get it back.
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You really captured a spirit of adventure with your outstanding description of the VW bus in all of its wabi-sabi splendor. There was something about the times of this tale that were flush with excitement and peril, making them entirely unforgettable. I look forward to more of your writing like this, John. It’s excellent!
Why thank you, sir! From a writer of your caliber, this is high praise indeed. Yes, I shall. There is so much to tell.