The Van in All of Us

VW van story: thinking of Arthur’s Days

I finally got a VW van of my own in 1968. Red and white. The perfect vehicle for—what? Obviously, carrying drums and vibes. But also, “just looking the part”—ready for the road trip, which I was soon to make, off to Detroit and my first teaching job—at Wayne State University, the last place a Berkeley hippie wanna-be with a VW van would fit in. (And, in the long run, I didn’t.)

But there I was, and I continued to drive that van during throughout my years at WSU, and into my years at Center for Creative Studies. This was a van from California—no rust, perfect exterior. But the years in Detroit began to take their toll. My first big snowstorm, which I learned from a gas station attendant was an honest-to-gosh blizzard, and the car ploughed right through it, no problems, carrying me to my destination, my apartment off East Jefferson, two bedrooms, one converted into a darkroom, the other painted dark maroon, a block away from a genuinely dilapidated and perhaps dangerous neighborhood. (I had scavenged my kitchen table from the apartment building basement, where someone else had abandoned it. My bed, from a thrift store, sat on the floor and doubled as a couch. This was my first time really on my own, and I brought with me the mindset of the penurious grad student who had spent his last three months living in a frat house bedroom with books and lps piled on the floor awaiting transport to their next destination.)

But six years or so later, my classic VW van was showing signs of wear: rust, a rebuilt engine (there’s another story—throwing a rod in Canada, on the way to Toronto, leaving it at the repairman’s shop in a small Canadian town), heater working best during the summer, air conditioning not working at all. In fact, the car was a virtual sauna during the hot and humid summers—I don’t remember being able to turn the heater off.

I was going to have to do something, replace the van eventually, but I drove it and drove it, not wanting to give it up any more than I could give up my beard and long hair.

Finally, one dark, cold, stormy, sleety January night, Mother Nature forced my hand. I was on my way to teach a WSU extension course at the Canfield Center—not far from WSU, but through a pretty dicey neighborhood. The rain was icy, gathering in large puddles in the potholes that made the streets like minefields. I went through an intersection. I slowed, but not enough: dirty water splashed up through the rusted floor into the cab, drenching my pants and shoes. I was chilled in class.

At that point, I knew I had to give up the car. I went out and bought my first Toyota Tercel—I didn’t see the point of a van any longer—and wound up selling the van for $300 to a girl taking off for University of Colorado. Her dad and brother came over to check it out, since they were going to have to fix it up for her, and they wound up driving it away. I bade it sadly good-bye, but she was thrilled and told me, as she drove out, “You’ve made me really happy.”

So, the tradition continued—I had made my first road trip coming east in that car. She made her first road trip in the opposite direction. Just like Kerouac, back and forth across the country--only he was usually hitchhiking.