my bus

One of my favorite vehicles was a 1969 Volkswagen bus.

Under powered, noisy, unreliable, hot in summer and freezing in winter, but what a package. I built some cabinets and a bed into the back. Miriam and I happily napped and slept there fairly often.

But it was an absolute bomb.

Most hills were climbed in 3rd gear with the engine screaming with a ground speed of 45 mph. I could live with that, it slowed down my heart beat. On a real good day it got 21 mph. My big dodge pickup will do almost as well and it has AC and a heater.

But the worst thing was that the engines did not work well as hard as we were working them, and they had the bad habit of freezing into one hunk of metal or flying into a whole bucket of parts, and doing that without a bit of notice.

I never seemed to get many miles out of a $600 rebuild.

One day I was in Boise at the best VW garage in town. It was noon and the mechanics were sitting around eating lunch. I asked them what they drove. Most said VW busses. “How often do you rebuild the engine?”

“Every year.”

“Are you aware that there are Toyotas with 250,000 miles that have not had the head off the engine?” The nodded in rueful understanding.

I went home and sold all my VW collection. The bus, a car or two, spare parts, the whole bunch.

Once in a while, when we are going somewhere and I see a VW bus of that vintage I get this romantic dream. But then I turn the radio up, adjust the AC and I get over that nostalgic thing quickly.