Passages: Goodbye VW

Murphys, Ca - January 2025 -- I bought my first car in 1962, financed $1,685 based on having a fulltime job in Atlanta.

The brand new foam green Volkswagen bug was perfect for me, living in the city and in a position to get reimbursed handsomely for driving it at work. I had waited about 8 weeks to get the car because in those days you ordered a car and tried to be patient until it arrived. When it came it was $100 or so more than the contract because it had a sun roof -- an extra-- and the dealer said to take it or leave it. Never regretted the decision. The last in a long string of family VWs across 60 years is rolling down the highway with someone else at the wheel today. We sold our much-enjoyed 2002 VW Eurovan Winnebago Camper.

It was time to let someone else enjoy the adventures. That camper carried us from the Mexican border almost to Canada, and all over the Western states. During the peak of the Covid pandemic we drove off to Monument Valley in southern Utah, safely tucked into our little home on wheels. The van carried us to the Pacific Ocean, the desert, the high Sierra Nevada mountains, ghost towns in Nevada and our favorite Sequoia Big Trees Park. Usually we were with family or friends, or met them along the way. We had several VWs in between those early years and today. I traded the first bug for a sports car the year Pat delivered our first child, 1970, and we used her VW bug as our "big" family car for the next few years. It leaked so I caulked the sun roof shut which worked fine. But we towed a boat full of camping gear behind us when we went to the Florida Keys. We had worn that Bug out by 1977 from living too near Florida beaches. The wheel wells had large holes I patched with flattened Budweiser cans, and the floor under the battery disappeared one day and dropped the battery onto the ground. We sold that car for $300 to a former cop/copy boy at the Fort Myers News-Press and he used it, I was told later, to run away from his wife.

When we sold it we invested all $300 into a CB radio to go into our brand new school bus orange VW camper, and traveled all the way to the Rocky Mountains for the first time with two small children and lot of MandMs to keep them happy during the long trip. Eventually that camper made it across the years to Michigan, Ohio and across the country to California tucked inside a moving van. When we finally sold that van we could still smell chocolate whenever the heat was turned on, from the candy dropped by the children. Not too many years later a neighbor put a bright red VW on the market. He assured me it was in prime condition, and in fact he had started his young family in the back seat (his wife vehemently denied this).

We bought it, paid fair amount to restore it to almost new condition, and passed at it along to our children when they became drivers. The older child did well with it through high school, and when she left our younger child found the keys and went for an illegal ride that included jumping a curb and hitting a car or two. It was dented but not ruined, but in the interest of community safety we sold it to a co-worker at The Bee. Last I heard her family had completely restored it, and then it was stolen and disappeared. A sad ending to an adventurous VW saga. We had an extended VW gap after that, but one day after retirement I noticed a neighbor had this nice looking VW Eurovan Camper. Pat told her that if she ever wanted to sell it, just let us know. She did, and that is how we came to own our last VW in the long family line. We named her "Snowflake" as a subtle political statement, and enjoyed her company for almost a decade.

She's now gone off to live with some nice people near Santa Cruz, and we are looking ahead to the next chapter. It might just include some model VW. The electric ones look real attractive. Or maybe we are ready for a golf cart.

Part Four -- end of the trip

We left Monument Vallewy and drove through the Four Corners area touching Arizona, Utah and finally our destination Colorado. Our travel "goal" was a vague idea that we wanted to get back to the Rocky Mountains. We figured out, with encouragement from a friend, that Durango in Southwestern Colorado would be a good destination. And we wanted to see new places. It was a good plan, but things did not quite turn out the way we expected. We were going to drive north through the Rockies from Durango and visit some of the area we had seen briefly decades ago just West of Denver. When we got to Durango we learned three things: 1. Durango was jammed with tourists, and even in paid RV parks we could only find space for one night. 2. The highway we had planned to travel was closed during the day for construction, leaving us with a choice of sitting and waiting for hours, or finding another route. There was no other route that would not add several days of highway travel. 3. We were getting tired after more than a week on the road, and beginning to think of home. So we fought the traffic in Durango long enough to get into a grocery store and replenish our supplies, and then found a commercial RV park just outside of town overlooking the Animas River and the famous Durango-to-Silverton Railroad. Here is the a picture from the RV park, as Pat is sitting and visiting with a very interesting neighbor.

Transportation or Personality?

Camp Connell, CA -- I've always chuckled at people who buy vehicles to reflect, or pretend to reflect, their self image.
Not any more.
I just bought a pickup truck, and I'm going to name it after George W. Bush.
It reflects where I am currently in my life; irritated with the current administration; wearing out slowly; a few chips and dents showing, but with several hundred thousand good miles remaining in the future-- I hope. (Me and my truck - not GW.)

I'll describe this vehicular avatar later. First, the history indicates I did buy cars that said something about me at the time. (Thank goodness I never bought a Hummer, a sexual substitute for mental inadequacy.)

As soon as I had a real full-time job after graduation from college in 1962 I stood in line at the Atlanta dealership and ordered my new foam green VW, with no options. When it came it had a hundred dollars worth of extras I did not want, and I was told to take it or leave it or wait another six to eight weeks. I took it, for around $1,700.
That was my practical transportation-only purchase, and my cheap years, and it worked fine for a few years.
When I got out of the Army and started reporting for the Miami Herald in Florida I bought a brand new 1965 British Racing Green Triumph Spitfire. It sounded great, cost $2,400, and the engine blew on the way home from the dealer. The engine was never quite right, but I loved that car.
The Triumph was the symbol of my bachelorhood. I courted my wife in it, used it for our honeymoon and drove back and forth to Apollo launches.

Even though it had junky engine, I felt really cool in that car until the day our daughter Ruth was born. You don't drive Florida's causeways in a tiny sports car at 65 mph with a cement truck on your bumper and a baby in your lap. At least, not if you want your wife to go along.
So we entered our practical vehicular years: another VW, two plain Chevy Biscaynes, and then at mid-career(not mid-life crisis), a new 1977 bright orange VW Camper to leave Florida and the East, and work our way West. We gave our last Chevy to the Salvation Army.
The camper took us everywhere until we ruined the engine climbing the western mountains.
Fortunately for me, that was during the era when newspaper companies were generous, not cheap, and company-provided cars solved the transportation problems for the next 20 years or so. We had a series of vehicles that fit the dark suits I wore to work, including one four-door Oldsmobile. I finally felt secure and moved through a series of SUVs -- Jeeps and Ford Explorers suited us quite well.
About the time I joined AARP and started having senior moments, we had a Northern California car (1999 Subaru for winter trips), I retired and then sold our last Explorer in Florida and replaced it with a Toyota van -- for traveling, not soccer games.
That was it until this week.
For more than a year I'd been contemplating buying a new truck, focusing primarily on Ford and Toyota 4X4s, generally around $30,000, using proceeds from stocks.
I had never owned a truck.
Every guy needs a truck at some point in his life. My son has had two or three, and my son-in-law has a very nice Tundra even as we speak.
I needed a truck.
Then the economy went into the toilet, thanks to eight years of fiscal conservatism focused on making the rich much richer. (That's why I named it for the President.)
So I bought a truck this week that fits the community, my personal needs, and my pocketbook(about one-tenth the price of new).
It is a 1986 GMC Sierra full-sized pickup truck. The silver paint is peeling, and the left blinker doesn't work right, but it has a new engine and is in reasonably good condition.
I always swore I'd never buy a Chevy, but I consider GMC a cut above.
It will haul wood or brush, get us out to the highway through two feet of fresh snow, make trips to the dump without concern for the polished finish, and give me an excuse to go offroad.
It seems a good fit. Just don't ask about the mileage.
I probably won't take it to San Francisco, or to the yacht club for dinner. But it will work just fine to get to the Camp Connell store for a beer on a Saturday night.
And that's where I am most of the time.