More Cars From My Childhood: The Bus

I know many people who purchase a new car every couple years. My folks were not like that, hence it’s easier for me to remember the vehicles that I rode around in, and, subsequently drove. The final car I wrote about in my last post was the blue Beetle. My memories of that car end with my dad telling me he had to get rid of it before the seized spark plug needed replacing. I then remember being at the Mezzetti Volkswagen dealership in Fremont, CA and coming home in a brand-new bus (Type II / Transporter). Like the one in the photo above (not the exact vehicle), it was blue with a white roof. The interior, however, was black with black vinyl seats and black rubber floor mats.

Soon after getting the bus home, my dad started to make modifications to accommodate our travelling and camping needs. He transformed the sleeping platform that was used in the aforementioned Beetles into one that replaced the bus’s back (third row) seat and extended the floor over the engine compartment. This made a nice full-size bed for my parents. Then he added a couple thermos-holding straps that were just cut-down bicycle wheel inner-tubes screwed to the inner sheetmetal of the bus near the front passenger’s seat. This kept the water jug and coffee thermos in place while travelling. The piece-de-resistance was the camping box. Dad constructed a long plywood box that replaced the middle seat when we went camping. It was roughly the same height and depth as the stock seat, but it extended across the entire car rather than just the two-thirds the factory seat span. It had four legs that could screw on or off, but I remember that most of the time, when we were camping, it sat on the campsite’s picnic table. The box had a flip-down front door that exposed multiple storage compartments while serving as a kitchen counter.

The trip I remember most in the bus was one into Canada. Part of the trip was passing through Yellowstone and Glacier Nationals Parks, but the portion I remember most vividly was driving on a forestry trunk road in Alberta. I can’t remember the length of this all-gravel road, but I do remember getting a flat tire nearing the halfway point. Fortunately, we then came upon the only service station between the start and the end of the road where they put in a tube so we’d have a good spare tire again.

One time my folks loaned the car to my Uncle Vic to do some sightseeing. Since it was summer and I was out of school, I tagged along with him and his family. I found it amusing that he had a LOT of difficulty getting the car to go into first gear, so most of the starts were made in second with significant clutch slipping.

Once I learned how to drive a stick, I was able to borrow the bus to haul around my group of friends. This was in the days before every family owned a mini-van, so it was something special taking seven to a movie in one vehicle.

Three engines and over three hundred thousand miles later, my dad finally sold the bus back in the early 2000s. I’m sure he only got a few hundred for it. Given it’s rust-free-ness, today that bus would probably fetch five grand or so.

More Memories

I really enjoyed walking down memory lane in my last post sharing some memories of the initial work I did on the LeMans back in the mid-80s. Given that the initial post of this blog glosses over a lot in the interest of space, I figured I’d elaborate in some more posts. Another reason is I want to keep the blog going even though work on the car has stalled (more on that later). Let’s start at the beginning. In my first post I wrote:

When I was a child growing up in California during the late 60's and through the 70s, I would play in the front yard and watch the cars go past. Often I'd see a neighbor, Mr. Hayes, drive by in his convertible, and I would think what a nice looking car he had.

I also remember that the top was always down, and I could easily see the contrasting parchment interior against black exterior. I was struck by how shiny the black paint was except for a large patch on one rear quarter panel where the paint had lost is shine – like something had spilled on it. At this point, all the paint is in pretty rough shape, so I can’t tell which side the dull patch was on.

I’d like to share the cars my parents owned during my childhood. While I can’t remember anything of the first two cars I ever rode in, I’m sure they had an impact on my current car-craziness. The photo to the left is of my mom and dad getting ready to head out in his Triumph TR-3 shortly after they were married in Denver, CO. After my birth in the hospital in Frederick, MD in 1961, my dad drove my mom and I home in that TR-3. I doubt the top was down, but it was early April so it may have been (perhaps my first experience in top-down motoring). Soon after, he traded in the TR-3 for one of the first TR-4s imported into the US. When I was eighteen months old, I rode in the space behind the seats all the way from Maryland to California. There's a photo somewhere of my standing up on the driver's seat and smiling with both hands on the wheel. I need to get my dad to dig it up and send me a scan. My sister’s arrival a couple years later meant it was time for a family car, so the TR-4 was replaced by an early-60s VW Beetle. I don’t hold step down against her anymore.

At some point, before I was five, I do remember riding in the front seat of that Beetle when my mom rear-ended a ’64 Chevrolet (no, it wasn’t a Corvair – it was a Bel Air or Impala). I can still see in my mind’s eye the basically undamaged Chevy pulling away and turning left after the collision. I don’t remember what the front of the Beetle looked like after the incident, but I do know my dad had to come and got us in one of the county’s cars (he worked for the county health department), and that the gray Beetle was replaced with a newer, blue one soon after that event. Another poignant moment from the collision is my mom’s version of child restraint. This early-60s car did not have seat belts like most in that era (and before), and when my mom knew she couldn’t stop in time she flung her right arm out and held me back enough to keep my face from hitting dash board. I’m still impressed by the power of adrenaline.

Another memory of the gray Beetle is my dad building a platform in the back in place of the rear seats. This gave my sister and I a place to sleep when we went camping (which we did a lot) while my parent slept in a pup tent. The platform made a great play area where we could while away the hours as we made our yearly drives to visit relatives in other states or did our weekly summer trips up to the Sierra Nevada mountains for weekend fishing and camping (in that order).

While I don’t remember much else about the gray Beetle, I do recollect more about the blue one. It was a few years newer (I think it was a ’63) and my dad bought it used. The platform fit in place of the backseat just like it did in the gray car. The car had a cream-colored interior and my spot was always sitting behind my dad on the driver’s side of the backseat. I thought the strap hanging from the top of the b-pillar was neat, but to this day I don’t know what purpose it served other than having a small boy hang from it. I remember one night when I was seven or eight my dad opened the rear engine lid and explained how the last mechanic that replaced the spark plugs put one in too tight, and now it wouldn’t come out. It was time, he said, to start looking for a replacement.

Soon, the rest of the cars of my childhood.

I promised I'd talk about why there's been no progress on the LeMans. Well, family life has taken a huge chunk of my spartan spare time, and Mikhaila's Golf is still not road-ready.