My thanks to those who suggested tranny shops and the amount of time 
needed to drop the engine and tranny for negotiating purposes with the 
mechanic that has the van.  After poring over the Bentley guide for 
awhile I located what I thought was the culprit area, the gearshift 
housing at the very end of the tranny.  My thought was that, based on the 
mech's description of a freely turning selector shaft, that the clip that 
holds on the selector finger had come loose, allowing the finger to fall 
off the selector shaft.  This jibed with my wife's description of the 
gearshift jamming and the mech's observation that it felt like something 
came loose when he was wiggling things around.

The mechanic checked my theory by pulling the backup light switch and 
looking at the end of the selector shaft.  Sure enough, no selector 
finger!  He tried to reposition it on the end of the shaft but, due to 
the limited room he had to work in, was unable to get it to seat.

My thinking is that I'll be able to support the tranny, pull the tranny 
mount and have enough room to pull the gearshift housing off the end of 
the tranny so that I can get things back in place.  Then it's a simple 
matter of bolting everything back together and off I go!!!

Compared to the mechanics idea of dropping everything to fix the tranny, 
I like this solution just fine.

Anyone else have this happen to them?  I've seen the clip that holds the 
selector finger in place and it's pretty substantial.  I may have had the 
linkage misadjusted, causing the clip to slam into the end of the backup 
light switch, ergo it's early demise.

Wish me luck, I'll be making the four hour drive to test my theory on 
Saturday and will let the list know what happened when I get back.

BTW, Jerry Long of Salida, CO (719)535-7175 is as honest and helpful a 
mechanic as I've run into in a long time.  He's about the only VW guy in 
that area so if you're cruising through SW Colorado keep him in mind.

Jack