Stunning!!!!!

PSavage wrote:

> Volks, I found this months ago in the archives & saved it to disc for an
> occassion such as this.  I dug this passionate stream of consciousness
> piece.  It's LOOOOOONG, but worth it!
>
> o.k; so i love my Vanogon. sure, i wish i could get up a hill without
> downshifting to second gear, and i would like to use the passing lane just
> once without holding my breath and putting a death grip on steering wheel
> while we shutter by a semi going 40 on the hwy.,and i mind waiting for the
> kids to yell "all clear!" before we pull ON the hwy. But sitting up there
> over the wheels while the kids and dogs wrestle or sleep or whatever it is
> they DO back there, i am utterly confident, content and happy. it never
> breaksdown. it seems to consciously signal me if something is about to go.
> it does break, but seems to so slowly and with warning.I feel self
> sufficient and the road seems full of possibility.Like maybe we'll just keep
> driving and never go back, or aliens will land on earth and choose us to
> transport them(we have the room,if they aren't TOO large and don't mind the
> hound dogs).Or we will return home and discover my former husband is
> abjectly and pathetically contrite for all the mean things he's done and
> wants to come back. To which I would answer sympethetically that i
> understand, but of course, no.
>
> I could never again drive in his boring cars, including his dodge caravan or
> his brand new mercury sable, and he never let me drive anyway. i've moved
> far beyond him, went out and got myself a good deal on a Vanogon
> ($4000)(with 103,000 mi's - one owner,an old guy that wears suspenders,works
> at Volkswagon, and traded it in on a Eurovan(ugh.!). Possibilities....Maybe
> we'll miss our exit and end up in Texas where we discover Tommy Lee Jonens
> broken down on a dirt road near his ranch and we rescue him and he is so
> grateful and impressed with my ability to change a tire that he falls madly
> in love with me, but agrees to be just friends when i explain i think he's
> wonderful, but i don't want to live in Texas. Or we get home and discover
> gold has been dicovered in the back yard, so i will never have to fix the
> leaky basement or tell the insurance co. i spent the $ they sent to fix the
> wrought iron fence a kid drove into, on new tires for the vanogon.
>
> ANything could happen when i sit up there over the wheels,surveying the
> distant horizen and all the possibilities. I sometimes think about,but do
> not dwell on the fact that only one thin sheet of metal seperates me from
> something big going fast, or all the glass that would pierce my skin if that
> would happen...We still have a drive-in movies here in Dillsburg PA. and if
> i thought it was great in a pick-up, it is heaven on earth in a VANOGON.
> Lying in the back with the hatch up, we are the envy of every poor slob
> stuffed into a carovan with THE WHOLE FAMILY.
>
> I took several people at work out in the parking lot to demonstrate the
> turning ratio. One had a new Honda van, the other woman had wanted a
> vanogon, but her husband made her get a dodge ram. They could not even do a
> U-turn in the parking lot.And i can parrellel(sp!)park in any space that is
> as long as the vanogon.The wheels practically go perpendicular to the frame.
> i particularly enjoy doing this feat downtown during lunch hour when the
> lawyers are apt to be sitting in their bmw'w and mercedes about to go to
> their club or their lunch or their affairs just as i am backing into the
> space in front of them and can watch their faces in the rearveiw mirror the
> whole time.sometimes i do this just for fun when i am not eating lunch or
> anything.
>
> The only BIG repair i had was when the power steering rack went bad. it had
> been making a grinding noise when i turned, stopped when i added power
> steering fluid,then started grinding again the next day. Phil at V.W. said
> it was not a leak,it was a crevice and i needed to replace the power
> sreering rack."Sit down.",he said over the phone. I said i was(I was'nt), he
> said "$800", so I did. I said "No". "I'll use it for a chicken coup or give
> it to the kids for a fort." He said hmm, he could check into an
> aftermarket - $500 -. I said I could use a dog kennel. Phil was silent. "How
> about a used one?",I asked. "Hell", he whined,"as old as that is...."Look",I
> said, "I have something to drive,(an '88 Fox with 150,000 mi's)that's why i
> kept the fox.(anyway Spencer will be driving in 3 yrs. and no one would give
> me any $ for it and it runs great.)"you check around. I'll wait until a used
> one turns up."
>
> An hour later he called back. "Skip's has one",it sounded like a
> confession."they're pretty reliable,we deal with them a lot". "What year is
> it from?", I wanted to know. "Did'nt ask him,does"nt matter. It's not a part
> that breaks regularly, you're lucky I found one. How's $250 sound?" "Parts
> and labor?" "Yeh,o.k.,'parts and labor'". So that was'nt too bad,was it? I
> almost called to tell you that a few months back when you guys told that man
> he'd be better off buying power steering fluid by the case than replacing
> the power steering rack. That's all that's gone wrong except for the tail
> pipe which I could see was going to happen sometime soon when I bought it
> and Meinicke muffler got me an aftermarket. That was about $200 altogether;
> and a fuel filter that I got at WalMart on Easter Sunday and replaced
> myself. I love cars.
>
> I"ve always had one, since I was 16.(I lied about my age on the survey, I'm
> 45. But "45-49" is metaphorically so much older than "40-44",it did'nt seem
> like a fair question.}My dad,Milt, bought my sister and I a '63 Corvair in
> '67, and ever since I have had what i think of as vehicles of character.
> There was a'54 Nash Metropolitan, various Fiat hatchbacks and a Lancia
> Estate wagon from the same dealer who cried when I showed up with dogs in
> the front and back seats, a '69 Valient station wagon,'74 Ford pick-up
> (new,with my first real pay check), a '66 Malabu supersport convertible (the
> only automatic, which was why the little country car lot could'nt sell it-No
> self-respecting yahoo country boy would get himself an AUTOMATIC malibu...I
> just wanted a CONVERTIBLE),an '81 dodge ram 4 wheel-drive, shortbed, red &
> cream, 4 clyndr, pick-up with a sunvisor and a little row of cape canaviral
> lights over cab, and a ram hood ornament, named "Loretta".
>
> Bought her in '84 for $3000, and sold her for $2000 six years later to pay
> tuition when I went back to college. I miss her terribly. Then there was the
> '84 GTI, which i aquired in '90 for $3000, and would have yet, except I was
> hit in the rear, sitting still at a red light, by a 40 ton oil tanker on my
> way to take my finel exam in physiology one rainy May evening,( i took the
> exam and got an 'A';I always said it knocked my brain loose; no one was more
> surprised than me)but still got $800 for it when I sold it(NO one who saw
> the accident stopped, and the driver said i pulled in front of him(!)and it
> took 3 months just to get insurance $ for "used" repairs, when they wanted
> to total it) all of which led to the Fox.
>
> But the whole time all I ever really wanted the most was a Vanogon and at
> last i have one and it is so cool. True, i hope someday to have a '91, 5
> cylnr with that fold down table in between the seats that face each other.
> In the mean time, i am a happy american girl who loves her "german
> engieered" car. I have several buddies who are mechanics who tried almost
> desperately to talk me out of buying it. The obvious lack of safety features
> was pointed out. I heard all about the head gasket problem derived from the
> American demand for emissions control thereby taking a perfectly good
> air-cooled engine and turning it into an "engineering fiasco" of a water
> cooled engine (this one had both head gaskets replaced at 90,000 mi's-I
> asked.
>
> The old guy that owned it before me told me to use Volkswagon phosphate free
> coolent/antifreeze like he did "and you won't have no pitting and you vill
> get you anudder 100,000 goot miles from her".-He is Pennsylvania Dutch.) I
> heard how it would be "an oven " in the summer. I said when I test drove it
> on a hot day in May, I opened up all those engineered vents and glorious
> wing windows and felt cool as a opossum come across a dead rabbit in the
> road. Anyway, if it gets hot, I'll just drive the rest of the way on shady
> roads with trees. I heard about it being a death trap everytime you get on
> the highway, you're taking your life in your hands.
>
> Well, I'm not ever in much of a hurry, I don't mind waiting my turn, i
> replyed. I heard about it having 100,000 miles and how they did'nt even make
> them anymore! Then this one mechanic buddy sized up my indifference to his
> argument and said in disgust,"You Volkswagon people are pitiful! The dam
> things are always broken, but they never stop running; that's what sucks you
> in. I've got no use for Volkswagons, they are miseable to work on and the
> rubber on 'em sucks and the parts are expensive,and they are the noisiest
> thing on the road, a body can't hear himself think.(or bickering children, I
> calculated mentally) But you're gonna get that mechanical atrocity no matter
> what I say, I can see it in your eyes and your stiff neck. Well, just don't
> come cry'in to me, it's people like you bought Corvairs and root for Notre
> Dame!!" .....This particular part of his tirade struk paydirt. "Oh magod!",
> I was astounded. "I had a Corvair and I loved it. And if I had all the $ I
> lost betting on Notre Dame, I could go to Stuutgart and buy a Wolfsburg
> Edition!" "AHHAH' YOU SEE!!!"
>
> But for all that, when we jump in the VDUB to go to the grocery, never
> knowing what might happen, perhaps an adventure, and some jovial greyhaired
> dad leans out the window of HIS Vanogon to flash me the peace sign as he
> plods by, I have a deep sense of satisfaction and the rightness of life, not
> to mention my instincts, that no other vehicle has ever given me.
>
>  Maureen McGuire 819 hill St. York , PA 17403