I am honored to be mentioned w/ these other old volks, but moi, "old &
abused"?

LOL,

Mr. BZ-still alive after Buses in Ruins-spreadsheet to follow

On Oct 17, 2008, at 8:20 PM, joel walker wrote:

>> FWIW if you stay lucky you'll be as old and abused as me, BZ, Unca
>> Joel and
>> the wizard of all thingies electrical the venrable David Bierl some
>> day.
>> Keep on keepin on.
>
> being of those mentioned in this rant,   i feel compelled to warn all
> those young whippersnappers still in training pants that it ain't
> necessarily "staying lucky" that gets you this old and abused. :(
>
> the only thing worse than being in the wrong place at the wrong time
> with the wrong people is being in the right place at the right time
> with the right people.
> both situations can be hazardous to your long-term health. :)
> actually any combination of those things can be dangerous ...
> wrong place right time right people
> right place wrong time right people
> etc.
>
> but we've all got to be somewhere sometime. and no matter where you
> go, there you are! ;) and if you can't be with the one you love, then
> love whoever's handy. or something like that.
>
> and always remember ...
>
> When Confused and When in Doubt,
> Run in Circles, Scream and Shout,
> Lower the Lifeboat, Fire the Gun,
> Salute the Flag ... Well Done!!
> :)
>
> so now i'll leave you all with this little tidbit (by someone other
> than Phineas T. Bluster) ...
>
> O'kane & The People's Truck
> by Dick O'Kane    <Road & Track, July 1971>
>
>  I should be uplifted by the scene today ... made whole in the soul
> while my mind reclines on soft thoughts and nibbles at the little
> peeled grapes of delight that surround me.  For the vista at this
> moment on this day is one many men dream of as they sit starched and
> confined on a cold winter Monday.
>
>  The scene is typical enough ... for here.  The cafe features the
> Mandatory Picture of the king, Optional Suggested Picture of the
> king's
> father, a sooty Moroccan flag, a roaring, hissing coffee machine with
> attendant harrassed attendant, and a flood of blazing, gold-white
> sunshine ... hot and fine and welcome enough to bleach out almost any
> care.  I say ALMOST any care, for I'm beset by a malady, a longing,
> a certain madness that comes in recurring attacks, and needs only a
> reminder to trip off an episode.  Like right now;  I should be
> transported by the veiled ladies in white, and by the roaring towers
> of white spray where the sunlit surf crashes over the ruins of the
> ancient castle, but it's lost on me.  Because THEY are there at the
> curb.
> Six . . . seven . . . ten of them.  Ten Volkswagen vans.  To me at
> this
> moment in history their presence, their being, the whirring,
> clittering
> bumble of their hopeless little engines is an affront, a cruelty, a
> taunt beyond endurance, because dammit, I WANT ONE!  Gone is the low,
> snarling red fantasy, vanished in a cloud of rubber smoke and
> expensive
> fumes, to be replaced by dreams of . . . but you'd laugh.
>
>  Christ, it's like being infatuated with a fat, ugly woman.
>
>  And as with both women and cars, when you want one most, none are
> available.
>
>  I suppose I got into this Volksie van thing about the same way
> everybody else does.  At one point a while back I found myself with
> more than an E-Type could accommodate, i.e., a fallen-down farm and
> a woman possessed of all the best and worst qualities of mistress and
> magpie.  See, Jeffi's a compulsive trash-picker, and many's the time
> I've answered the phone to an excited description of the perfectly
> good
> and excessively groovy 7-foot walnut and velvet couch simply sitting
> there on the sidewalk waiting for the trash man, and could I please
> get
> out the Jaguar and come help pack it on home . . .
>
>  Now, an E Jaguar has many remarkable abilities, but drayage is not
> one of them.  So, typically, when a friend's clapped-out, clattering
> Volksie van came up for sale, we bought it, typically, for $400.  It
> was one of the window vans with seats, about a '64, and we figured it
> would be nice to have around ... you know, something to rumble down to
> the dump with every few days . . . or maybe to drive to town once a
> week to transport a few little sticks of furniture . . .
>
>  Anyway, that was the plan, and it soon got out of hand in
> predictable fashion ... Jeffi and I squabbled daily over the thing
> while the E rusted silently in the barn.  And by the end of the summer
> we were so capivated by that improbable conveyance that we were
> practically living in it.  It may surprise you, but a Volksie van is
> one of the most delightful vehicles on the road ... or off.  And it is
> first, last and always eminently useful and sensible ... a cheap,
> practical trundle-all for the Average Man ... a veritable People's
> Truck, in fact, designed with the same quaint attention to Common
> Sense
> that guided the development of the People's Car.
>
>  Research the matter a little and you'll find that there are four
> kinds of Volksie vans ... hundred-dollar ones, four-hundred-dollar
> ones,
> eight-hundred-dollar ones and new ones.  A four-hundred-dollar one is
> actually a hundred-dollar one for which someone managed to get four
> hundred dollars, and an eight-hundred-dollar one is a four-hundred-
> dollar one with paint.  A new one is any one with a one-piece wind-
> shield.  And whether you get it new or used, you can take your choice
> or your chance and get it with or without windows, with or without
> seats, beds, a kitchen, whatever ... there is a People's Truck and
> stuff
> to go in it for everyone.  (Another fact of economics ... when you
> have
> a Volksie van, everybody wants to buy it, except when you want to sell
> it; then you can't give it away.)
>
>  No matter what kind of body/interior it has, you can call it a bus,
> a truck or a van and no one will care, not even the parts man.  Our
> first one had windows and we called it The Truck, while our second one
> had none and we called it The Bus.  See, it all depends on whether you
> come to regard yourself as the driver of a truck or a bus.  The
> vehicle
> itself will force you into one of these roles because you sit WAY up
> high over all the other traffic, and the way your hands fall on the
> big
> horizontal wheel is . . . well, you just get into being a bus/truck
> driver, that's all.
>
>  Whether you're bussing or trucking, you can carry a prodigious load
> of goods and/or people; in fact, the thing has a bigger capacity than
> the average owner will ever use.  With seats, it's cozy with nine, or
> you can take out the seats in about 2-1/2 minutes and pack in an
> entire
> sub-culture.  Other things you can put in a Volksie bus and take
> places
> include 12 to 18 great big dogs, sound equipment for a rock group,
> nine
> weeks' garbage or four weeks' trash, a winter's worth of firewood, two
> cows, most of your friends, a young elephant, 16 Arab ladies, or a
> big,
> hairy motorcycle.  Though not all at once.  And when you're through,
> you can simply hose the whole thing out.
>
>  Best of all, though, you can throw everyone and everything out and
> move into your truck to live.  That's actually my rationale for
> wanting
> one here on the west coast of Africa.  It'll accommodate a double bed,
> your camping stuff and all the crap you acquire in New Hope, Coney
> Island or Marrakech.  And when you're through acquiring, you don't
> have
> to pay New Hope or Coney Island or Marrakech prices for a room ...
> just
> drive until you find a place with a free view.  And if the roadside
> doesn't suit you, leave it ... the People's Truck stands tall and
> proud
> on its skinny tires, most of its vitals tucked up out of reach of
> those
> big pointy rocks, and it can take you pretty far afield without damage
> or embarrassment to itself or its load.
>
>  And, mind you, it does all this on dainty sips of the gas-station
> man's most humble potion, with an engine that seems to require nothing
> more than privacy.
>
>  This is not to say that People's Trucking is ALL roses and light,
> though.  For all this common sense, economy and space, one pays one's
> dues.  For instance, consider the shape and size of the thing.  It has
> all the aerodynamic purity of a sheet-iron cow shed, and if you like
> the
> sedan in a cross-wind, you'll just LOVE the truck!  It doesn't just
> meander around the road in the wind, either.  It blows helplessly
> around like a big empty box, it can meander clear OFF the road in a
> trice, and sudden bullish charges into the other lane are commonplace
> ... but here, at last, after all these years, YOU get a chance to
> frighten all the oncoming traffic.
>
>  There are other wind hazards.  For instance, there's headwind,
> which
> can turn a 2-hour trip into a 4-hour one, and there's tailwind, which
> can get you arrested for speeding, as it's the only way you can ever
> hope to exceed a turnpike speed limit.  Then there's truck wind, which
> happens every time a truck passes you, which is quite often.  This
> requires a high degree of hard left rudder, as the bow wave of a big
> truck can blow you right off into the ditch.
>
>  Without wind, the performance of the People's Truck will probably
> please Mom more than Dad.  The handbook says the one-, four- and
> eight-
> hundred-dollar series will make a breathless 65, and it will ... on
> the
> flat with no wind and after about fifteen minutes of gritting your
> teeth in a sympathetic effort (sometimes it helps to lean forward in
> the seat and bounce gently up and down, too).  Once underway, you
> drive
> flat out, and you soon learn to conserve headway like diamonds.  You
> find yourself taking all kinds of wild chances, nipping though narrow
> openings, passing when you shouldn't, ANYTHING to save lifting your
> foot.
>
>  If you do any driving through hilly terrain, you'll learn something
> very valuable ... how to enjoy scenery.  This is something you'll HAVE
> to learn to save your sanity, because there is precious little else to
> do ... though on a REALLY hilly road, you can always read.
>
>  Noise is something else you learn to take in stride, but not with
> all models.  Some of them are all fancy and padded inside and are
> therefore pretty silent, but not all of them.  See, the average
> garden-
> variety Volksie van is tastefully trimmmed in booming, clanging sheet
> metal, and fast passage over a bumpy road is like rolling down a
> cobblestone hill in a galvanized garbage can.
>
>  There are a couple of rememdies for this, though.  One is to glue
> old carpeting, jute bags and foam rubber all over the interior, which
> will quiet things down some, and another is to overwhelm the clatter
> with a ruckus of one's own ... like a good, big stereo tape system.
> In
> fact, one of the most impressive sound systems I've ever heard lived
> in
> a Volksie truck, along with an oriental carpet, an overstuffed
> armchair,
> a gigantic brass hookah and a Tiffany lamp.  The truck was loud, but
> the
> tapes were louder, and a twist of the knob would drown out everything
> ...
> the indigenous clatter, the leaky muffler, the hard metallic vibration
> and all that traffic blowing to pass.  That's the thing ... you don't
> dare get too quiet.  I knew another guy who had a panel with a window
> in it right behind the front seats, and it made the cab so quiet that
> one day he got out on the turnpike, couldn't hear the engine screaming
> that it was still in third gear, and didn't even hear it when it
> finally
> blew up.  He thought he was out of gas, and it wasn't until he tried
> the
> starter with the door open that he heard all the broken pieces
> churning
> around.
>
>  Yet another hassle you learn to live with is cops.  You'd think
> that
> a vehicle capable of nothing more dangerous than a brisk trundle would
> be left alone by the fuzz, but it is not so.  Because of its nature
> ...
> cheap practicality with a highly mobile view ... the Volksie van is
> rapidly becoming the Official Vehicle of the International Counter-
> Culture, which means young people with hair, bright clothing, rather
> loose schedules and other such threats to God and Country.  To the
> average cop, then, that big tin box full of hair, gasping up the hill
> is nothing more than the Main Stash ... a thousand-kilo brick of
> Panama Red disguised as a Volksie van, with windows and doors and
> freaks painted on it and WOW, we're all gonna make Sergeant!  It isn't
> "Where's the fire?" anymore, it's "Where's the grass?" and unless you
> look like Mr. Clean going somewhere to scrub a floor, you can plan to
> spend some time by the side of the road explaining your identity,
> destination, political views and whatever's in your pockets with The
> Man.
>
>  A friend of mine gets his lumps in by always offering the cop the
> T-key to the engine compartment, the cop always goes to look, and he
> always gets all smarmy and gresy in the process, but beyond that,
> there's nothing you can do . . . except vote for me and Stan Mott in
> '72.  If elected, we will have all the drivers of port-hole Buicks
> stopped and hassled about income tax evasion.
>
>  But these are mere annoyances.  The real danger ... the Ultimate
> Hazard of People's Trucking is the Sorcerer's Apprentice Syndrome.
> Reducted to simplicity, this is where you say to your woman, "Behold,
> for I have brought thee a truck ... go ye therefore and collect groovy
> things and bring them here to make our house fulsome and glad."
>
>  And she does.
>
>  Giving a truck to a compulsive trash-picker is like giving
> automatic
> weapons to Attila the Hun.  Even with an empty 10-bedroom farmhouse we
> were soon overwhelmed with Stuff.  After we'd owned the truck a month,
> for instance, George gave us a painting for the house ... a small
> 2-ft-
> by-2-ft painting, already, and we couldn't find a place for it!  And
> then there was all that stuff in the barn when we left . . . Lord!
> Your
> only consolation when this sort of thing starts is that you have a
> truck
> with which to cart it all away again ... on days when your wife lefts
> you use it.
>
>  Then there's the heater, and the matter of cold weather . . . but
> enough.  You should have the picture by now.  Still, you can't know
> the
> true, deep-down nature of the beast until you've lived with one for
> awhile ... and then you begin to see that besides all its Teutonic
> sensibility and practicality and usefulness, there's just something
> about the People's truck that's . . . well . . . SILLY.  And fun.
> It's
> like owning a pack elephant that says and does droll things ...
> a cartoon hippopotamus that brings you the paper and reads over your
> shoulder and agrees with you about important things, like where to go
> today, and where to spend the night and when to leave.  I think Lewis
> Carroll would have owned one.  Dammit, they CAPTIVATE, that's all, and
> people respond by painting them colors and naming them things, like
> Fantasia and Moby Truck and Brunhilde.  In fact, last night while
> dreaming over the fire I decided I'd get one without windows next, and
> paint it candy-apple red with a gigantic black Maltese Cross on the
> side, and put a bit helmet spike on top of the cab and call it the
> Iron
> Chancellor . . .
>
>  High on a ridge about two miles up the beach, I can see a silver
> thread of road glistening with last night's rain, and on the thread
> like
> a colorful beads are four . . . six . . . seven little dots.  More
> Volkswagen vans.  One of those dudes has just GOT to be for sale, I
> betcha.
>
>  Does anybody feel like taking a walk up the beach after breakfast?