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| The olive green VW Transporter van Sarah, Ruth and Paul inside, Dad and Grandma Dora on the running board |
My dad had decided that the way to carry around a big family efficiently was in a VW Transporter van. So sometime close to when Lise and I were born, one was purchased as the family vehicle. It must have been in the family by summer of 1958, which we can glean from the photo: Paul looks to be about a year old, and the shadows of leaves are falling across the roof (therefore not fall or winter). It was olive green [according to Sarah] with a cream colored top. That van was replaced in 1965 by a newer model that was mint green with a white top.
Before getting the second van, my parents had decided that seat belts were a good idea. So the 1965 van came with seat belts custom-installed. (It was 3 more years before seat belts became required equipment in US passenger cars.) Our wearing them was mandatory in-town, but on long cross-country trips, we often unclipped and lay down on the seat or floor for a nap. The heater vent was under the rear seat, sometimes it got too hot lying on the floor right in front of it.
We took innumerable trips between Columbus and Ann Arbor in the van to visit Dad's parents. The memorable moments of such trips were lying down on the back seat or the floor and listening to the drone of the engine and the high-pitched whine of the cooling fan. The drive was usually punctuated by slow traffic in Findlay OH. Sometimes we would stop for lunch in the dining room at the Findlay Hotel [according to Sarah]. There was also a cafeteria with an automat (Horn and Hardart style), which we visited a few times.
Dad loved to go on explorations on the weekend, especially as an amusement after church on Sundays. If we happened to drive past a farm stand when sweet corn or tomatoes were in season, Dad would stop to buy some and that would become a featured dish the same day.
We visited every point of interest within easy driving distance of Columbus, and others right in town. I remember particularly the Rose Park somewhere north of where we lived. We would park in a remote parking lot and reach the rose garden by walking along a stream through a dark forest. Then we would emerge into the manicured gardens full of roses in bloom. The contrast was what was most memorable, going from the oppressive black forest into a bright, open garden filled with color. It seemed just as magical on every visit.
One of the earliest trips I remember was our visit to the Logan Elm. The Logan Elm had succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease some decades earlier, so all that was left of the tree was a stump that was about 6' in diameter and 12' tall. There was a pang of disappointment that we had gotten there too late to see the great tree.
Very often, we drove southeast toward Athens to visit Old Man Cave. The cave was where the river had undercut a bluff and then the lower strata collapsed. Much of the time we were there was spent skipping stones into the nearby pond. The heap of rubble at the bottom of the cave was some kind of shale, so every rock made an excellent skipping stone.
Dad also liked to drive on a particular road through the Hocking Hills at maximum speed. In spite of the terrain, that road was laid out going directly east-west, and the area contained gullies that went generally north-south. We would hit the edge of a gully at full speed and suddenly be accelerating down a steep grade. We all got a kick out of the momentary feeling of weightlessness. The the van would plunge down the grade and across the narrow bridge at the bottom, then chug up the grade on the other side. Back on the flat on the other side, the van would accelerate -- and the process would repeat.
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| The Platt's VW bus |
On another occasion, we went out to the property in November. I spent most of the time trying to get a fire started in the cabin's fireplace with wet wood. That enterprise did not go well. Among Dad's slides are these frames which may record that trip. Rob and Nan Platt had a VW bus with the same color scheme. Rob is cutting kindling with a brush saw while his son looks on. Lise shared a story of when she got into the Platt's van by mistake and was afraid of being left behind. Things would likely have turned out okay, since the Platts were Lise's godparents, and they lived in the same neighborhood in Upper Arlington.
The van also carried us down into a quarry when Andy van Camp was babysitting us all. The sharp rocks in the caused a puncture, so Andy had to change the tire. He didn't know how to use the jack and ended up damaging the lifting point in the frame. Flat tires were not uncommon, because Dad liked to get his money's worth out of them. They were often bald. One game he would play was to let one of us (the kids) call out instructions on where to turn next on the drive back from the State Store in the Lane Shopping Center. It was great fun because Dad would dutifully turn even if it wasn't the shortest path home, and he would turn sharply to make it clear that our orders were being obeyed. The little van went careening around Upper Arlington -- effectively under control of a berserk little kid. On one such trip we picked up a flat and Dad had to change the tire less than a mile from home. The flat was due to the sharp rib-end of a T-shaped pork chop bone from somebody's garbage that had gotten embedded in the tread.
The van carried us out to Colorado when Dad had a summer appointment with the High-Altitude Observatory in Boulder in the summer of 1967. Dad got used to pulling off onto the shoulder to let other cars pass. Going up the long grades in Colorado required gearing down to 3rd or even 2nd. In place of a tachometer, the speedometer on a VW had one red tick mark at about 15mph, two ticks at about 32mph and three tick marks at 45mph or so. This were to indicate the maximum speed in those respective gears to avoid revving the engine up too high. So that meant ... many mountain passes were approached at something less than 30mph. I don't remember specific trips from our first summer in Colorado, but I'm sure we drove up Boulder Canyon many times, and made several visits to Rocky Mountain National Park and Trail Ridge Road.
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| A cameo shot of the van in St. Louis Paul, Kathy and family (incl. Great Dane) were temporarily in a townhouse |
Driving back from Colorado, my dad had discovered that by drafting off a semi, he could significantly reduce the wind resistance on the front of the van. He crowed that he was able to go from Kansas City to St. Louis at half-gas. Normal cruising required that the gas pedal be held firmly to the floorboards. The speed at which we travelled was limited by wind resistance balancing what the VW power plant could churn out in 4th gear. So it was a real boon to be able to draft behind another vehicle. The 1965 VW van had a 91 cu. in. engine with an advertised output of 40kW (54hp). My rule-of-thumb calculation says that assuming all that power was available, its equilibrium speed was 64.5mph. I think we may once have gotten up to 80mph going downhill with a tailwind. I know for a fact that we never broke 90.
The van also took us down to Florida on our epic drive to visit Mary Kay's parents in Pompano Beach in 1968. We stopped to visit Mary Kay's relatives in Birmingham. They owned part of a hotel chain so were considered rather rich. The house where we stayed had a swimming pool in a screened-in porch, where Paul and I spent a lot of time swamping a little plastic boat and then trying to stand in it. That was also the place where I had knocked over a can of grape soda and then failed to open it completely. The result was a fountain of grape soda that sprayed everywhere, including the ceiling.
There were a number memorable moments from our trip down to Florida. The first was that Dad got pulled over by the Florida State Patrol for tailgating. So that ended his hobby of drafting off of semis.
Even with little more streamlining than the average brick, the VW van got close to 25mpg on the highway. The fuel consumption was so consistent that the gas gauge was almost superfluous. Not to mention that it was 100% mechanical, and the cable that drove it had to run the length of the car before curving up below the dash. That made it more-or-less a necessity for Dad to remember the location of the last refueling and stop again before driving beyond its 250 mile range. Coming into the Miami area, we were already late for dinner, and there was pretty heavy traffic. There had been some discussion between my parents about whether we could make it all the way to Pompano Beach without refueling. But the fuel gauge continued to show 1/4 full, so in spite of reality and the number of miles travelled, Dad somehow convinced himself that we could make it all the way.
A few miles later, the engine lost power and Dad put the clutch down. We were under a long overpass, and Dad didn't want to stop in there for safety reasons. As we neared the end of the overpass, he ordered us to stand up and lean forward to help the van get beyond the end of the tunnel. To this day, I do not understand the physics behind that ploy. But, oh well, we did manage to coast just beyond the end of the darkness. Paul and Dad hiked up the shoulder to the next exit, which wasn't far, and returned with a gallon of gas to get us underway again.
Dad kept a 1.3 gallon can inside the engine compartment of the van, but that had apparently not been kept full. I remember the can because it had a flexible goose-neck as the pour spout. The spout was threaded front and back, so it could be turned around and stored inside the can. I also thought it was very handy to be able to store spare gas, oil and tools right there in the engine compartment. In that model, there was a little shelf on each side of the engine inside the engine compartment door. The luggage compartment was a shelf above the engine compartment; it had its own door that -- like the engine compartment door -- was hinged at the top.
After visiting Mary Kay's parents, it was decided that we would drive down the Florida keys to Key West. About 1/3 of the way there, it was generally agreed to be about the most boring drive imaginable. (Maybe if you scaled up the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel by a factor of 10 you could come close.) So we turned around and headed north.
Our next encounter with the Florida State Patrol was heading north on Highway 1, somewhere north of Miami. It was still a 2-lane road at that point in time. I was dozing in the back when I noticed that Dad had swerved and was driving on the gravel shoulder. I popped up in time to see a car fly past the left side of the van, passing a semi that was also headed south. Moments later, two Florida State Patrol cars when by, in hot pursuit of the other car. Dad had seen the situation unfolding and took evasive action.
The van also helped me lose my first gem. We stopped at a rock shop in Franklin KY, and I used my $5 to buy a ruby about the size of a pinhead. While we were driving on, I took it out to admire it and the ruby fell to the rubber floor mat and then bounced off to one side. I picked up the side of the mat and found that I could see the highway spinning away through the floorboards. The ruby had fallen onto the roadway, never to be seen again.
This was also the trip where we stopped at the Cumberland Gap Hotel and Paul and I got lost for a day. That story deserves a page to itself.
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| Another cameo, watching the hot-air balloon experiment (fiasco) |
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| Above the spillway at the Tuttle Creek Dam |
On another occasion, we had stopped at a roadside picnic table for lunch or a snack After everything was packed back in the van, the doors were shut and off it went. I figured my absence would be noticed after a while, so I just started walking along the roadway in that direction. Well, before the van reached the top of the next rise, the brake lights came on, and then it came back to get me.
Other than that, I don't remember much in the way of sightseeing trips from the year we were in Kansas. We spent the weekend in Kansas City one time. The high point of that visit was learning to use chopsticks in the Chinese restaurant we went to.
The green van went back out to Colorado with us when we moved there in 1969, and it figured prominently in many of our early adventures while there. Dad loved to get out in the van and explore -- seeing if this or that road went anywhere interesting. So I very quickly became familiar with the roads around Boulder.
When we visited in 1967, the road up Flagstaff Mountain was all dirt, except for the very bottom portion (possibly as far up as the Flagstaff House). By the time we moved out there, it seems it had been paved as far as the junction with Gross Reservoir Road, but the rest of Gross Reservoir Road was unpaved.
A favorite exploration was to go that way and cross South Boulder Creek below the reservoir, ending up in Coal Creek Canyon. We also often went up Magnolia Road or Sugarloaf Road for an outing. We soon discovered the grades of the Switzerland Trail out of Fourmile Canyon, and explored the grades going into and out of Gold Hill. The road from Gold Hill to Lefthand Canyon cuts across the old railroad grade, but we didn't know that at the time. On one of our explorations, the van came to an impassible jumble of rocks that had been pushed onto the old railroad grade when the new road was built. This meant that Dad had to back the van 1/4 mile along the narrow railroad grade until we got to a place he could turn it around.
Almost every weekend -- especially in summer -- we would go for day-long drives into the mountains on the weekend. Mom and Dad would carry along lawn chairs and books, to sit by an alpine lake while the kids went off exploring. The Peak-to-Peak highway was our portal to adventure, and we would end up in Central City, Brainerd Lake, Middle St. Vrain, Bear Lake, etc. The Moffat Road was also a favorite place to explore.
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| Yankee Doodle Lake |
One of our first picnics after arriving in Colorado involved driving up to Jenny Lake. Jenny Lake is at almost 11,000 ft., so my enduring memory is getting altitude sickness and spending the rest of the trip lying on the floor of the van. After that one episode, I never had trouble with altitude again.
On other trips, we went all the way to the top of Corona Pass. The railroad grade that had been converted to a one-lane jeep track. Mom very much disliked being on the right side of the car as we crossed the Devil's Slide, an almost-sheer drop of 1000' from the grade to the valley below. In a few places, there were trestles to add to the effect.
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| Moffat Tunnel, East Portal |
On one ill-fated venture, we got a flat just a 1/4 mile up the grade from the East Portal. And there we discovered that the spare was also flat. Paul and Dad started to hike the 10 miles back to Rollinsville to get the tire repaired. An hour or so later, they returned with the patched-up tire, having been given a ride by a helpful guy in a pickup. Starting back downgrade, Dad pulled over to give way to another vehicle and hit a cantaloupe-sized rock. After that, the steering in the van felt funny. Dad discovered later that the rock had bent the tie rod so the front wheels were significantly toed-out. The trip home was pretty tense, because steering was a challenge; Dad also had to worry that the remaining tread would be scrubbed off the inside of the tire and produce another flat. But we did make it home without further incident.
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| The big snow (September 1969) The van parked at 2200 Kohler Drive |
A year after we settled in Colorado, it became clear that the VW microbus was not really suited to the task of hauling 7 people plus gear over high mountain passes. So for his birthday in 1970, Dad ordered a Dodge Sportsman van with a 318 cid V-8 engine. The VW van was sold to some "hippies", and that was that.
