A Senior’s Early Years—The Old VW Van

I owned a Volkswagen van once. We needed one for hauling seaweed for our organic garden, and carrying stuff around for our hobby farm. We knew there would be lots of them available—this was 1973, and many of the hippies who owned them were back now, from their travels in Mexico, where they could smoke marijuana without being arrested. So we checked every week in the want ads, and sure enough, we found one at the right price and in the right color, blue. It was a few miles away, in another town, so we packed a lunch, and my husband and I and our two small children took off for the day. If we liked it, we decided, I would drive the Renault back, and he would drive the van.

When we got there, we had to follow the owner to a field, where the van was kept. He didn’t drive it very much anymore, he said, he kept it mostly to store old tractor parts. When we got to the van, we all helped him take the junk out and sweep it, so we could take it for a test drive. We drove it around a bit and it ran really well. The kids got a little scared when it backfired, but the owner said it would stop doing that once it warmed up. Also, the double doors on the side flew open once in a while, but the owner said that wasn’t a problem and could be easily fixed. Until it was, he said, we should be careful to slow down at every corner.

So we said we would take it, and we gave the owner his money, minus some for the backfiring and some for the doors. My daughter came with me and my son went with my husband and we set out in a convoy for home. It was an adventure. The Volkswagen couldn’t go very fast, so I had to pull over and wait quite a few times. The children always waved and made faces at each other every time the van caught up. The owner was right. The backfiring stopped once it got going. Except when we got home, when Spot, our dog, ran out to greet us. It took us a while to coax him out from under the porch.

But the owner was wrong about the doors. My husband tried everything to fix them: he tried new screws, new bolts, even new handles. Nothing worked. So we tied them together with really strong twine, and that worked okay. We didn’t drive the van into town. It was a little rusty in some places, and it tilted a bit to the side. One of the windows was cracked too. But the worst part was the twine on the doors. My husband and I were teachers in town, and we had a reputation to uphold, so I wouldn’t let him take it anywhere but on the side roads. The van was great for carrying seaweed. We went to the beach many times in the spring, and filled it. We drove slowly on the side roads, and were really careful going around corners, so the seaweed always stayed in the centre, instead of sliding toward the doors. It worked really well.

One Saturday morning we decided to pick up some seedling potatoes from a farm several miles away. We left early, so hardly anyone would see us driving the van. We put the children in the very back, and my husband and I sat in front. When we got there, the farmer had the potatoes ready in three big sacks. That was more than we needed, but we took them anyway. We placed them carefully in the middle of the van floor, with a rope to keep them from sliding around.

The ride back took a very long time, because we were travelling slowly, so the sacks would stay in place. We decided to go through town, to save time. But we forgot about the corners. And about driving really slowly. I couldn’t believe how fast those sacks moved. One minute they were in the van, and the next minute they were flying out, through the doors. The rope didn’t help at all, and the twine broke in two. As we were backing up, we could feel the tires bumping over the potatoes—that’s how we knew the sacks had broken open. We got out and looked around. We left the children in the van for safety, and hurried to pick up as many potatoes as we could find, and then drove home.

By the time I got to my grade two class on Monday morning, I forgot all about it. We had Reading first, then “Show and Tell”. That’s when the children hold their treasure behind their backs, then bring it out and talk about it. It went really well. Then it was Jeremy’s turn.

He usually brought snakes and toads, and things I didn’t like. This time it was a seedling potato.