VW story

“VW –Busted”
(Our VW adventure Easter /Spring vacation 1971 )


In the Fall of 2009 we had just had 4 spectacular days of driving and hiking along Sheanandoah’s Skyline Drive on into the Blue Ridge Parkway and turned southeasterly heading for North Carolina’s Outer Banks. About 5PM on this Saturday of a surprisingly quiet ( compared to Mass) Columbus Day Weekend we pulled into the Greensboro Municipal Campground and spread before us in the campground were all manner and vintage of VW bus campers. The very friendly camp host Denny walked up to us with a greeting ,“Surprise!” and to our request for an available site directed us to the last one. As we registered with him he explained that this was the annual or sometimes semi-annual rally here for Everybus.com – VW bus –o-philes from America and Canada.
There were perhaps 75 in all a few rainbow painted , with peace sign emblazoned and all kinds of extensions for cooking and sleeping. There was a Dead Head HQ flying high the teddy bear flag and the most beat up of the lot with the license plate NOTHIGH …? No thighs? There were two live bands with lit up hula hoopers twirling in time. We strolled around surveying and spoke to one dread- locked free spirit who told us he had done 10,000 miles this past summer and many cross country forays.

And there just across the way was the 1963 model we had owned after a skidding accident put the kaibosh on our first car,the 1960 Dodge with the push button transmission which we had nick-named Fudgey …though we could have called it Smelly as our friend Jim spilled a half gallon of milk in the back seat the first night we went for a ride ….and that car we took to Quebec City in 1970 on bald tires for a weekend with Brad, Bob,Gerry,Jim,Tocci and Cyndy pregnant , enjoying many meals, shared rooms in an Old City guest house, getting stopped in a speed trap at the bottom of a huge grade and paying a cash fine on the spot to Officer “Andre Fartsucker” to avoid having our car impounded…just enough money for gas station fumey subs as we laughed our way home…ah memories!

Well the bill to fix Fudgey was more than the car was worth and somehow we got a line on a VW bus. It appealed to us for its hippie allure and $800 price tag from a fair- seeming seller. We were looking forward to an adventure over the ‘71` spring college break and decide to visit Cyndy’s Central Jr High School friend Bev Roper who lived in the Daytona Florida area. We removed the middle seat and put Joe’s play-pen there and friends Gerry,Bob and Jim would ride with us in the rear seat while Tocci, David and Irene would convoy in Irene’s VW bug. It was after UPS let out on a Friday night, we were packed to the gills inside and on the roof until it sagged, got subs to go at Spukie’s in Lower Mills and around 11:30PM headed southward down I-95 switching drivers through the night, with stops only for gas and food in DC then on down the coast chugging along state by state, taking vivarin caffeine pills, taking turns crawling in the playpen with Joe…til finally we pulled into Bev’s place Sunday afternoon about 4PM feeling quite road rattled. After a bit of rest we recovered and had quite a good time even driving down to Daytonna Beach and plunging in for a swim though the folks walking on the beach were wrapped up in winer clothes chilled in the low 60 degree temp which we refugees from the north thought was tropical.
Friday came quickly and after fond farewells to Bev and boyfriend Will (her husband to be – a rare inter-racial couple in those days even in that University town) The Bug crew took off ahead of us needing to be home sooner. Little did we suspect the misadvanture that lay ahead as the bus folks headed north. Progress was steady hour after hour as we crawled up the coast until Dunn, North Carolina. Without any warning as I was driving the bus started to lose power and I pulled over. We were unable to re-start by popping the clutch , a trick we had learned on the drive down and looking under the rear hatch at the engine gave not a clue of anything obviously loose or disconnected so we stood by the side of the highway out of ideas ready to walk to find a phone to call AAA when a tow truck swooped by with it hook dragging on the pavement. “Hey bub”, the driver drawled from his window , “you need some help?” Feeling wary, something about that tow hook trolling behind made me reply- “No thanks, I’ll call AAA.” “I am AAA around here”, he came back. “Let me look at that engine.” I told him what had happened ; he went around back looked at the engine and said –“Well, it’s either gonna be $40 or $400; I need to tow it back to my garage and check it out.” I was thinking to myself, “We’ll take the $40 fix.” ... Cyndy, Joe, Bob and I crammed into the cab with “Dwayne” while Jim and Gerry hid on the bus floor- not kosher at all if we had been stopped by the Police. At any rate Dwayne’s garage was on a service road right off and paralleling I-95 in Dunn NC. There were 3 buildings in this roadside oasis- his one bay garage, a small restaurant and a small very basic motel. Perhaps not surprisingly Dwayne’s assessment was the $400 fix . Seems without any warning we had “blown the engine out”, meaning all the oil had somehow been pushed out and the valves seized up requiring a new engine which he could get from a nearby salvage/junkyard and install over the next 2 weekend days. We of course did not have that kind of money and no credit cards and the options were: call home and have my folks wire us the money to all take Greyhound home leaving the VW there for scrap or get it repaired and drive it home which we opted for ….we thought. I made the call home to have my folks wire the $400 to be repaid upon return home. There were no credit cards then- at least we did not have one and Dwayne specified no checks, cash only! It was a long and fascinating weekend , 5 adults (3 guys in one bed,one married couple in the other and one 8 month old in his playpen in one motel room … We divided our time between the entire menu at the little restaurant and our limited funds, walks about a mile down the road to watch the pigs do their thing and watching whatever was on TV. It was s long 2 days (but not as long as the 2 to come!)

On Monday the mechanic told us the job was done. He had installed a replacement from a wreck , and I told him I needed to pick up our cash payment advance from my folks at the local Western Union office. After a quick ‘jump in we better hurry’, he drove his pick-up about 100mph to town and we returned at a slower pace and he bid us so long with a last, “Hey bub, you have those wheel covers special made?” We had not, but he had done a special job indeed for after packing up our stuff we were not more than 100 miles down the road when the bus started to buck and stall. All we could do was call AAA which we did 3 times in the next 24 hours for tows and we wound up finally late at night in a junk yard adjacent to a VW repair shop in Baltimore . We had a very uncomfortable night’s “sleep” in various crash and cram positions in the van. Joe slept quite well through all of this- he was the only one. In the AM the genuine German mechanics shook their heads in disgust, determined that much more repair would be needed in Boston , They patched us up, gave us lots of containers of oil and a warning “ do not turn this off until you get home; it may not start again!”

So we headed off and into the teeth of a rising gale April snowstorm ! In the middle of the night we crossed the Tappanzee Bridge, I was driving with Jim as co-pilot with the wind blowing so hard it seemed we could be swept off into the abyss- with Jim holding on for dear life to that foolish handle mounted on the dashboard. We drove on through the night, top speed of 40mph and made it in the early AM to Providence where we paused with the engine running to get 3 orders of toast and 2 large orange juices with the remnants of our funds. About 2 hours later we had dropped our pals off- after driving 17 hours straight from Baltimore.
There was lost time from work, exhaustion and road sickness ,and to top it off the bus after evaluation needed another engine and a total transmission! After this was done we decided enough was too much and put it up for sale…but it does not end there. When the first eager buyer appeared to check it out , for the first time it did not start! We had that problem fixed and the next party came down, paid and while driving around the corner it started to choke and sputter….but kept on as we hid behind our house curtains. We sent along a check to cover another tune-up and heard no more. Our brief and costly adventure as VW hippies was over (before I had to drive it off a cliff in desperation!) Soon we were having adventures with Cyndy’s Dad’s old cars (like the day the car left home without me…but that’s another story.

11/16/10- addendum to last Fall’s recollection “VW Busted” on the Rt 95 we passed by Dwayne’s roadside rip-off in Dunn, NC where our VW engine blew out in 1971 coming back from visiting Bev Roper in Daytona on Spring vacation…speeding by at 70 mph in our space-ship like RV with Mercedes Diesel there it was, the exact spot with the little motel and restaurant, but in place of Dwayne’s was the “Risque Café- where we dare to bare”. We did not stop but (I am not making this up) just down the road in the breakdown lane there was a guy who had pulled his pick-up over and was chopping the head off a deer with an axe- really I am not making this up…whether to take it home to mount it on his wall, or to cover up because he had hit it …I don’t know,but it was a combination of the most horrible and hilarious road-side events I have ever seen and one unlikely to be witnessed on Rt 128!