A Childhood Summed Up In Two Desktop Toys

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VW's when they still said "flower power" and not "overbred car for the wealthy".

Star Trek before it was cool.

I mean, I'm sure there's some sort of perspective thread between the reality of these two things and my current edgy combination of despair and hope that fills my head pretty much all the time, but right now, I'm just enjoying the bittersweet irony of it all.

Olivia In Repose Somewhere In Cully

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No real agenda here, peoples ... just a 1972 VW Beetle livin' her best Cascadian life. Oh, yeah. The world ain't totally broken.

She could use a bath, tho.

Troutdale: A Beetle Trailer, Made Of Two Beetles

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Yesterday, when me and The Brown Eyed Girl were in Troutdale, we had a thought to go down to the old historic Stark Street Bridge. We didn't get there, it was closed for some sort of reconstruction work, but when we were turning around, we did see this:

... it's just what you think it is: a VW trailer made of VWs. Two of them. You weld the backs of two Type I chassis toether and there you have it, and just to make it truly local, you paint an image of Wy'East on it.

This is not only Oregon AF, it's Troutdale as hell.

That it was on a piece of property in the Sandy River dell just east of downtown and out of sight of the mountain is a mere technicality.

The Prodigal VW

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Today, Olivia returned to us.

Seven months ago, more or less, this was the scene in front of Chez ZehnKatzen:

The beloved Olivia, bricked engine and all, being loaded on a flatbed for the transit to repair.

This is about 7 months ago, when Olivia was being transported over to FixUm Haus on North Lombard, about 13 miles away (Portland feels like a small town until one has to get across it). Danny from Team Towing did the work and, as I said on the blog, if there's a more squarely professional driver on this earth I've not met them yet. 

Coming home from FixUm Haus was bliss in a very real way. Lombard turned to Portland Highway to Killingsworth to Sandy Blvd, then south on 122nd to the home ground. As pleasant as all that was, the part of the drive on 122nd was absolutely the best.

But, alas! I had left the exported tool bag (with my car stereo's face place) home. No matter. I sang Al Stewart songs. "Lord Grenville", "Time Passages" and "On the Border".

That last one twice. It's amongst my favorites.

My singing voice ain't half bad. Maybe I should have done that for a living.

And so it goes ... vroom vroom. Fahrvergnuegen, and all that.

[VW] The Very Last Day Of A Very Good VW Beetle

3331.

And so, back in May, two days after my natal day, after the decision to go with the total loss, decision from the insurance company, we went to retrieve things and pay our final respects to Old Red.

We all find out things we didn't know about ourselves at milestones like this. This car, which was my daily driver, served me very well for more than a decade. It was something of an heirloom. My late father raised me to be a Volkswagen lover, it was one of the few gifts he gave me that I still have to this day.

During die Zeit zwischen den Kaefern, I also learned that the mere sight of a classic VW made me smile (nothing is as good as driving and having one, but when you're in the desert, my friends, any glass of water will do). There is a spot that I will always, now, specifically remember, it's the spot where I had that accident. And, across from that corner and only one lot north is a house. This house has several residents who are coming and going to disparate places: there are four cars there, and they're always changing places. And one of them is a yellow '74 (or later) VW Beetle. With a roof rack. Totally adorable. And I would take this route just to see it.

By the way, you know how you tell a post 1974 from a pre-1974 VW Type I? Look for the windshield. If it's bowing out, it's '74 or later; flat windscreens are a feature of '73 and earlier.

File that away.

The other thing I realized is, though I'm a very materialistic person (in the way that things are just things and I tend not to give teleological imperatives to things like cars and computers and such), in things like this, I'm the same sentimental, spirit-imbuing sap that just about everyone I've ever known is. As I approached Old Red one last time, I gave her regrets. I said I of all the ways I figured our relationship would end, this definitely was not what I wanted. I sat in the drivers seat one last time. Looked all around; the German flag sticker that I affixed upside down; the instrument binnacle, remembering all the times during cold, damp weather the moisture would collect behind the glass; the red-velvet upholstery; the gas tank I had to fill by opening the bonnet. All that. All that meant something, and maybe it's the culture I was steeped in or the innate human need to have inanimate objects care about us back, but it was my experience, and for a few moments, it was for real.

When I walked away, I also did not look back. No damned reason other than sentimentality.

Now, I'm one with a very pretty yellow '72 VW and I'm so far very happy. We lucked in finding someone who needed to sell at the time we needed to buy, and the owners who had it before him took near-immaculate condition, at least as much one can reasonably expect. No complaints so far. She's the daily driver. She has a new radio. She has her quirks, of course, but I think that's why us classic VW drivers drive them. We love cars with character.  And, of course, nothing cuts a figure like a classic VW Beetle. It makes adults smile and makes kids hit each other on the bicep.

She's a different car, but I swear I feel the spirit of the old one riding along with me.

Old Red was a very good car for a very long time. I have a feeling Yellow will be a very car for at least as long as Red was.

And so it goes.

[art, design] Forward Into The Past With John Muir's "Idiot's Guide"

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Before there were "Idiot's Guide"s and "For Dummies" books, there was "The Idiot's Guide."

The Idiot's Guide. Classic VW owners know and love this well.

Back in the 60's, see, the VW was more truly lived up to its name "the People's Car", becoming a badge to the hippie culture as much as owning a Subaru strongly suggests one lives in Portland. Being an automobile, of course, the array of end-user maintenance options are more or less like they are today ... take it to a mechanic, take it to the dealer.

You could also fix it yourself, if you knew how. Not so much today; the engine in the modern car is more like a computer center; sometimes you feel if you so much as look at it, you void the warranty. But back then, the shade-tree mechanic was a valid functionality, and if you knew enough about your beast, you too could fix your own prime mover. And nowhere was this more true or accessible than with the classic VWs of the 60s and 70s, before the brand went uptown and yupscale.

The 'hippie' ethic deserves a close, hard look. One side of it was the casual, come-as-you-are-lifestyle, which may or may not have something to teach the individual assayer; the other side was a quick-witted, nimble DIY intelligence that coped with maintenance and repair with a cool, fierce aplomb that MacGyver would value. The properly-enlightened hippie only looked like a generally feckless will'o'the wisp; inside, he or she hid a savvy systems thinker that would slog courageously through lows that would leave most of the rest of us curled up in a foetal ball, crying softly over the wreck of our life.

This brings us to John Muir, who is a legend amongst classic VW lovers. And thence hangs our tale.

The legend of John Muir, 60s counter culture auto mechanic, runs something along these lines; a distant relative of the namesake American naturalist, he worked in the American defense industry during the Fail Safe/Dr. Strangelove days of the Cold War, until he'd had enough of it and decided to drop out. In the late 1960s, he moved to Taos, New Mexico and became a VW mechanic. I don't know if he intended to become the best there ever was, but his legacy certainly suggests that.

In 1969, Muir, Tosh Gregg, and artist Peter Aschwanden collaborated to create a timeless and valuable bit of 60s magic and a book for the ages. Fully titled How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual Of Step by Step Procedures For The Compleat Idiot, and known by lovers of the book and the car as simply The Idiot's Guide, the book is indeed a timeless gem. Right, the reader will find the cover of the copy I own. It is as compleat a manual of how-to-maintain it as the idiot it is intended for, but an idiot, it will not treat you as. As you are not an idiot. It will not treat you. It won't make fun of you, is what I'm saying.

It's so steeped in the 60s self-reliant hippie-esque counterculture, it's surprising it doesn't come tie-dyed and with scratch'n'sniff patchouli. The impression is that of a crunchy friend guiding you through a difficult subject with love. At the top of the section "ENGINE OVERHAUL",  for example, I find this tale of wisdom:

"Back in the Red Dog Saloon era, there was a garage in Carson City run by a sympathetic super mechanic named Muldoon. When you were pushed into Muldoon's, he looked and listened to your sick engine, asked how far you needed to go and how much bread you had, then he nodded and showed you where you could work on your engine out back. When you ran into problems, he left his profitable highway trade to give you a hand. You made it to where you needed to go, but God help you if you tried to go fifty miles further. We tell you about Muldoon because he has the type of genius an indigent VW owner needs when it comes to emergency time - the ability to balance the available bread and labor agains the immediate mileage requirement. 

In an emergency, the Volkswagen reacts well to any scrambling on your part to keep it going, but you really have to keep your promises to it. Muldoon's last words as you drove away where, "Don't forget to get that fixed right when you get there." You're on the road from New York to L.A., seventy-five bucks is all you got, you're near Santa Fe running on three cylinders with an engine that's overheating badly - like that. Don't give up and thumb, but do a compression check. 95 pounds in three cylinders, but No. 3 tests zero? Sounds like a burned valve, so find a place and go to work. Pull the engine, take off the tin, remove the heads and carry them to the machine shop (do both heads even if you go hungry the rest of the trip). Have the valves ground and a new valve put in. Reassemble and install the engine and you can probably make it to L.A. I figure a little over a penny a mile for the Bug and a cent and a helf for the Bus for gas and oil."

Adjusting the costs in the narrative for inflation to the current day is an exercise left to the reader, and I wish you well. But do you see what the above did there? Not only is it a capsule of a time, but it's casual-yet-witty prose both evoke that time, provide you with a single memorable character, and deliver a bit of technical know-how, illustrating what I meant when I said that the core of a hippie is a systems-oriented DIY problem-solver.

It's hard not to kind of fall in love with this book, whether or not you actually have or hope to have a classic VW, it's fun to read, and enlightens as it takes you under its kindly wing.

That's not to say it's all laid back tale-reeling. Muir was trained as an engineer, and the procedures, while warmly worded, are actually quite precise and methodical. Reading this book will teach you many of the fundamentals of how works a VW, but it focuses on two essential functions that every mechanic must fulfill: diagnosis and cure. The book is organized into sections simply titled by manifest symptom (RED LIGHT ON! (Generator or alternator), GREEN LIGHT ON! (Oil Red light), VOLKSWAGEN DOESN'T STOP (Brakes), and SLIPS AND JERKS (Clutch) are just a few), and each procedure identifies itself to you in language that is accessible to the tyro.

What really pops in this book is art, though. Peter Aschwanden illustrated technical details with whimsy and seems straight out of the Underground Comix school; he's what R. Crumb would have been if he did illos for auto manuals. The art (excerpted here and there in this article) are gorgeous, witty things, clearly drawn. I've used this book to diagnose electrical problems in the late Red Beetle, and I'm, if anything, mechancially declined. There's clarity and humor there, and the satisfaction that is naturally derived from seeing the work of an artist who was in solid command of his medium and his tools, and who loved his work and his subject. If Muir and Tosh got the 60s DIY ideal of owning a VW, Aschwanden (credited at one point in the book with his nom-de-guerre, Amanda B. Reckonedwith) similarly got the gestalt idea of the serious whimsy which comes with the ownership of the classic VW (which wasn't actually a classic in the full sense, yet).

You can still come by this book; sadly, both Aschwanden and Muir are no longer with us (Muir died of a brain tumor in 1977 at age 58, Aschwanden made it to 2005, and died aged 63. Even John Muir Publications is a thing of the past, his works still being published but The Idiot's Guide now belonging to Avalon Travel Publishers and The Velvet Monkeywrench, his socio-political manifesto and proposal, being published by Oceantree Books.

My particular copy is the 1981 edition, and was given to my by the legendary east Portland VW mechanic, Bill Trafton. If you knew Trafton and his generosity and his gift with VWs, you'd know that he was the equal of Muldoon, and why I consider the book such a treasure.

Even in a 35-year-old copy, it's as current as it needs to be.

It's a love letter to the best car every made, a book that everyone who loves a classic VW should have - even if you don't plan on touching the insides. It'll make you an enlightened owner, and is just damned good fun to read.

[liff] The '72 VW Beetle Has Landed

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So far, 2016 has held many unexpected things in store, and when I say unexpected, I mean unexpected.

On 20 April, for example? I was involved in an auto accident. My quick reflexes prevented me from catapulting through the window. I was unharmed, physically at least (auto accidents have this way of messing with your head).

My beloved 1972 red VW Beetle was, as it turned out, a total loss. But difficulties sometimes have this wily way of working out for you. This one did. The amount from the insurance company has enabled us a replacement ... and here she is:

Isn't she adorable? She's another 1972 VW, Type I, 1600 cc's and all. But instead of a dusky red-orange which we couldn't really tell the color bias of, she's a pure, unmistakable and rather adorable yellow.

... and that's her starboard side. The roof line of a classic VW Beetle is visual poetry to me. I'm pretty sure the Beetle is the best car ever made.

Moreover, this one is actually in better shape than the old one! So it's like the lottery, in a way. There are some flaws (fuel gauge sending unit, tires, needs a brake job), but that's to be expected for a car that's 44 years old. There are some 44 year-old people I know that could be doing as good.

But she fills a definintively-Beetle-shaped hole in a heart that was broken massively when the old red one was similarly broken. Sometimes, things work out though. This is one of those 'when one door closes another opens' sorts of things, and I'm grateful.

I love the VW Beetle to death, and I'm looking for many satsifying miles on the road with her.

Hertzlich willkommen, little Beetle.

Volkswagen does it ... again.

And so it goes (putt putt putt ...)

[pdx] Classic VW Beetle (Type I), NW 9th and Flanders, Portland

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Driving across Northwest Portland, in the Pearl District, on the way to our weekly bout with Powell's City of Books, we come up to NW 9th and Flanders and we see this sweetie parked at the corner, in front of the Ann Sacks store:

I'm not sure what year this one is, but that rear bumper indicates it's 1967 or before. The rear-window is one of the larger ones, so it's probably a mid-sixties Beetle.

Judging by the condition of the car, it's a daily driver. Judging by the parking ticket under the windshield wiper, someone should have been paying more attention to the meter.

Ouchie.

Lovely car, though. Of course.