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Sep. 7th, 2006 02:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twirlgrrlWhoa. It's 2am and I just finished reading my FL from the weekend. Sorry for the late comments on some of your entries, friends. Goodness knows if I didn't have a kid I would still be living on the internet and pouncing on every commenting opportunity as it presented itself. As it is, I am just getting more and more "behind" at life. *sigh*
Anyway, a friend's post inspired me to write for a moment about my dearly departed, long-lost 1966 VW Transporter.
I had dreamed of getting a microbus but it seemed like such a reckless and impossible thing to do. I don't know anything about fixing cars, and it was clear that a car that old would need constant maintenance. Besides, old VWs are so clearly dangerous. They are so bare-bones, you can see through the shell of the car to the road below--in an old bug, you can usually see the road through the floorboards, and in an old microbus, you can see it through the front vents which are just in front of your knees, cut into the single panel of metal that constitutes the front of the car. Thus it's painfully clear what will happen to your legs if you run into anything at more than 2 mph or so.
Anyway, Pete (my boyfriend at the time) was a trained mechanic, working as a parts man at BMW. One of his coworkers/friends had a 1966 bus that he wasn't using; in fact he had never used it much at all. He wanted $900 for it. It worked. It was in good shape. It was fully tricked out inside with a custom cabinetry job--shelves with sliding doors, a couch that folded out into a bed, the second seat, and the ceilings and doors were entirely paneled in wood. It had the groovy split window with individual wipers in front, and even a lone Grateful Dead sticker in the rear window. And Pete swore he would help me if (when) it needed repairs. So, sometime in 1992 or early 1993, I bought it.
And started painting it.
Of course! I'm a Deadhead! :-)
It turned out to be a rolling scrapbook, a treasure chest of memories from some of my dearest friends.
Here it is when only the first couple of paintings on it: Pete started his SF cityscape on the side, and my sister whipped out a quick animalscape with a "Keep Wilderness Wild" slogan in an hour out of housepaint she had lying around when I went to visit her. (She's an artist for real, so this feat, while amazing, was expected.)
Later, it got quite dense with paintings. Here is version #1 of the completely painted bus, before some of these paintings got covered over with other stuff. By then, the interior was looking more homey, with psychedelic posters and scarves all around. The bus is parked at Masonic and Haight for these shots; I lived at Haight and Ashbury at the time, no kidding!
The bus was my only car, so I took it to everything from Dead shows to meetings for work. Luckily, driving to work on a daily basis isn't necessary in San Francisco, so I didn't wear it out too quickly. Although we did end up replacing the engine once, and the transaxle another time. Each of those repairs cost about $1000--much cheaper than on a regular/newer car. It's wonderful that parts for old VWs are still easily had, and that so many old VWs are still on the road. They are amazing cars.
Camping in the bus was fantastic. It had a little pop-up table, a two-person couch, and a third seat in the middle. We'd draw the curtains, light candles, and have a cozy little party, even in the rain. Here we are camping in the redwoods:
Eventually the movie industry came scouting and I was paid for letting my bus "act" in a couple of movies. Here is a picture from one day of shooting for a stupid movie called "Golden Gate" with Matt Dillon and Joan Chen. It took them all day to shoot the bus careening crazily down this dirt road at Point Lobos; of course the bus was in the movie for all of one second, as a transition shot between the 50's and the 60's.
Driving around in that bus was an amazing experience. I was so visible! People waved and honked and flashed peace signs. Parents drove past stiffly clutching their steering wheels and staring pointedly ahead, while their kids bounced around in the back seat, gaping and pointing. Driving through Pacific Heights was hilarious; apparently the bus was completely invisible to rich people walking their designer dogs. But everywhere else, people smiled. Because I lived in the Haight, I can't even count the number of times I came out of my house with keys in hand and found people gathered around my bus, posing and taking pictures. I wonder how many people have pictures of the old gal in their photo albums at home?
A girl from Denmark (or was it Iceland?) left a note on the windshield. She was doing a magazine feature on San Francisco hippies, and wanted to take pictures of me with my bus. Here are the 8x10s she sent me from the magazine office:
It's a bummer that she shot only that side of the bus. The other side looked much better by then. Pete had to add more fog and a rainbow to cover the Transamerica Tower in order to achieve period accuracy for movie shoots (that tower had not been built in the 60's) and it never really looked as good after that. Still, it's nice to have pictures of me with the bus. I have very few pictures of myself from that time period to the present.
By the time I moved to Divisadero Street, the bus had been vandalized a bit and could no longer be locked. A junkie started living in it; I met him a few times and we struck an agreement. He would try to keep the bus from being damaged further and I would allow him to sleep in it. Because I couldn't lock it, and it had already been keyed pretty badly by another guy I'd kicked out of it, it seemed like the best way to go. (Ah, city life!) Eventually, the cabinets got broken and I threw the junkie's stuff out--almost got spiked by a needle in fact. I'm certain he was gone (dead or sick or in jail) by then because I hadn't seen him around in a while anyway. Then, in July 1997, while I was on vacation in a rented car, the bus was stolen from the street in front of my flat. I was devastated. I don't think I've had another thing stolen from me that meant half as much. I filled out the police report with a heavy heart. In the space for "color" I put "multi." Pete was sure it was already dismantled by then; it had a lot of hard-to-find parts including original bumpers, both front and back.
Although the bloom was off the rose, and I'd poured more money into it than I had originally intended, I don't think I ever recovered from the violation of having my lovely bus stolen from me. Sometimes I still dream that I'm driving in a parking lot or a neighborhood and all of a sudden there it is. I hold my breath, check all the little quirks out carefully, make sure it's the same bus, then my mind races as I formulate a plan. Sometimes in my dream, there are people hanging out in the bus and they've made a lot of changes to it. They usually have no idea that it was stolen, so I have to figure out how to get it back from them without provoking them into driving away. Alternately, there is no one around and I still have a key to the bus on my keyring (I actually kept a key with me for several years after it was stolen.) I slip in and drive it away; I have incredibly visceral dreams of the actual driving part. It was a trip to drive, especially for a long tall girl like me; the clutch pedal and dash clearance were clearly designed for a shorter person. Anyway, that's the story of my wonderful microbus. I'm no longer at a time in my life when I would make the sacrifices necessary to own such a vehicle, but I'll always remember her with great fondness and a sense of loss.
Anyway, a friend's post inspired me to write for a moment about my dearly departed, long-lost 1966 VW Transporter.
I had dreamed of getting a microbus but it seemed like such a reckless and impossible thing to do. I don't know anything about fixing cars, and it was clear that a car that old would need constant maintenance. Besides, old VWs are so clearly dangerous. They are so bare-bones, you can see through the shell of the car to the road below--in an old bug, you can usually see the road through the floorboards, and in an old microbus, you can see it through the front vents which are just in front of your knees, cut into the single panel of metal that constitutes the front of the car. Thus it's painfully clear what will happen to your legs if you run into anything at more than 2 mph or so.
Anyway, Pete (my boyfriend at the time) was a trained mechanic, working as a parts man at BMW. One of his coworkers/friends had a 1966 bus that he wasn't using; in fact he had never used it much at all. He wanted $900 for it. It worked. It was in good shape. It was fully tricked out inside with a custom cabinetry job--shelves with sliding doors, a couch that folded out into a bed, the second seat, and the ceilings and doors were entirely paneled in wood. It had the groovy split window with individual wipers in front, and even a lone Grateful Dead sticker in the rear window. And Pete swore he would help me if (when) it needed repairs. So, sometime in 1992 or early 1993, I bought it.
And started painting it.
Of course! I'm a Deadhead! :-)
It turned out to be a rolling scrapbook, a treasure chest of memories from some of my dearest friends.
Here it is when only the first couple of paintings on it: Pete started his SF cityscape on the side, and my sister whipped out a quick animalscape with a "Keep Wilderness Wild" slogan in an hour out of housepaint she had lying around when I went to visit her. (She's an artist for real, so this feat, while amazing, was expected.)
Later, it got quite dense with paintings. Here is version #1 of the completely painted bus, before some of these paintings got covered over with other stuff. By then, the interior was looking more homey, with psychedelic posters and scarves all around. The bus is parked at Masonic and Haight for these shots; I lived at Haight and Ashbury at the time, no kidding!
The bus was my only car, so I took it to everything from Dead shows to meetings for work. Luckily, driving to work on a daily basis isn't necessary in San Francisco, so I didn't wear it out too quickly. Although we did end up replacing the engine once, and the transaxle another time. Each of those repairs cost about $1000--much cheaper than on a regular/newer car. It's wonderful that parts for old VWs are still easily had, and that so many old VWs are still on the road. They are amazing cars.
Camping in the bus was fantastic. It had a little pop-up table, a two-person couch, and a third seat in the middle. We'd draw the curtains, light candles, and have a cozy little party, even in the rain. Here we are camping in the redwoods:
Eventually the movie industry came scouting and I was paid for letting my bus "act" in a couple of movies. Here is a picture from one day of shooting for a stupid movie called "Golden Gate" with Matt Dillon and Joan Chen. It took them all day to shoot the bus careening crazily down this dirt road at Point Lobos; of course the bus was in the movie for all of one second, as a transition shot between the 50's and the 60's.
Driving around in that bus was an amazing experience. I was so visible! People waved and honked and flashed peace signs. Parents drove past stiffly clutching their steering wheels and staring pointedly ahead, while their kids bounced around in the back seat, gaping and pointing. Driving through Pacific Heights was hilarious; apparently the bus was completely invisible to rich people walking their designer dogs. But everywhere else, people smiled. Because I lived in the Haight, I can't even count the number of times I came out of my house with keys in hand and found people gathered around my bus, posing and taking pictures. I wonder how many people have pictures of the old gal in their photo albums at home?
A girl from Denmark (or was it Iceland?) left a note on the windshield. She was doing a magazine feature on San Francisco hippies, and wanted to take pictures of me with my bus. Here are the 8x10s she sent me from the magazine office:
It's a bummer that she shot only that side of the bus. The other side looked much better by then. Pete had to add more fog and a rainbow to cover the Transamerica Tower in order to achieve period accuracy for movie shoots (that tower had not been built in the 60's) and it never really looked as good after that. Still, it's nice to have pictures of me with the bus. I have very few pictures of myself from that time period to the present.
By the time I moved to Divisadero Street, the bus had been vandalized a bit and could no longer be locked. A junkie started living in it; I met him a few times and we struck an agreement. He would try to keep the bus from being damaged further and I would allow him to sleep in it. Because I couldn't lock it, and it had already been keyed pretty badly by another guy I'd kicked out of it, it seemed like the best way to go. (Ah, city life!) Eventually, the cabinets got broken and I threw the junkie's stuff out--almost got spiked by a needle in fact. I'm certain he was gone (dead or sick or in jail) by then because I hadn't seen him around in a while anyway. Then, in July 1997, while I was on vacation in a rented car, the bus was stolen from the street in front of my flat. I was devastated. I don't think I've had another thing stolen from me that meant half as much. I filled out the police report with a heavy heart. In the space for "color" I put "multi." Pete was sure it was already dismantled by then; it had a lot of hard-to-find parts including original bumpers, both front and back.
Although the bloom was off the rose, and I'd poured more money into it than I had originally intended, I don't think I ever recovered from the violation of having my lovely bus stolen from me. Sometimes I still dream that I'm driving in a parking lot or a neighborhood and all of a sudden there it is. I hold my breath, check all the little quirks out carefully, make sure it's the same bus, then my mind races as I formulate a plan. Sometimes in my dream, there are people hanging out in the bus and they've made a lot of changes to it. They usually have no idea that it was stolen, so I have to figure out how to get it back from them without provoking them into driving away. Alternately, there is no one around and I still have a key to the bus on my keyring (I actually kept a key with me for several years after it was stolen.) I slip in and drive it away; I have incredibly visceral dreams of the actual driving part. It was a trip to drive, especially for a long tall girl like me; the clutch pedal and dash clearance were clearly designed for a shorter person. Anyway, that's the story of my wonderful microbus. I'm no longer at a time in my life when I would make the sacrifices necessary to own such a vehicle, but I'll always remember her with great fondness and a sense of loss.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Grandma Warnberger (sp?)
Date: 2006-09-08 05:55 pm (UTC)I miss her.
I miss you.
Re: Grandma Warnberger (sp?)
Date: 2006-09-13 09:16 am (UTC)Speaking of which... remember that Justin named her... well, his wife is due in about a week! They are having a girl and naming her Iris. Isn't that awesome? :-) :-)
Grandma Wormburger!!
Date: 2006-09-13 05:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for the chuckle....