My grandparents owned a classic 1960s Volkswagen camper. I don’t know why they ever had it – they didn’t strike me as camping types. The VW camper was a classic hippie road trip vehicle, so it was fitting that when my father and I returned to the US in 1972, my grandfather gave it to him. I guess we drove it from Louisiana to Pittsburgh that year, via my aunt’s place in Texas.
In the summer of 1973 my dad, Nancy, and I set off on a classic hippie road trip in the camper. It had a fold-out mattress in the back that made a double bed for them. For me, Dad drilled holes in two metal pipes to fit over hooks he installed into the car’s frame on either side of the front seat. Nancy stitched a heavy canvas hammock that fit over the poles suspended above the front bench seat, and that’s where I slept while we were on the road. A curtain pulled across behind the seat gave them privacy.
We called the camper Shambala, from the Three-Dog Night song.
After some days on the road, possibly with a stop in Louisiana to see my grandparents, Dad and Nancy dropped me off with my aunt Rosie and cousin Casey in Coupland, Texas, where I was happy to spend the summer among their pets and horses. Dad and Nancy went on to Mexico where they had lots of classic hippie adventures that I later heard lots about. They came back with a Mexican God’s-Eye hanging from the rearview mirror, among other souvenirs. I think they brought me an embroidered Oaxaca blouse.
On the way back from that trip, we had another classic hippie adventure: nearly getting arrested in Tennessee. We had just picked up a pair of hitchhikers along the highway (where it was illegal to pick up anyone). We exited in Cookville, TN, to get gas. Someone made a mistake, and Dad ended up t-boning a car carrying a family with a pregnant woman. Our VW spun around, shaking us all up like beans in a can. I had been sitting on the rear-facing seat behind the driver’s seat, and later realized I was lucky not to have been thrown into the sharp corner of the little fridge next to me.
Nancy had had her head out the window, and severely banged it on the window frame in the crash. But she retained the presence of mind to hastily palm a baggie of dope to the hitchhikers to dispose of before the police showed up, as well as to instruct them to say that we’d picked them up at a previous rest stop. I accompanied Nancy to the hospital in an ambulance while Dad was taken away by the police. The crash was determined to have been Dad’s fault, but no one was seriously hurt and I guess nothing more came of it. Eventually we reconvened where the van had been towed to a nearby gas station. The hitchhikers had stayed with it, and now told us that they’d hidden the stash in a toilet tank in the gas station bathroom in case we wanted it back (we didn’t).
The van got us back to Pittsburgh I think, and survived a while longer. One night Dad had been out and came home to see two men trying to push start a VW camper. He cheerily went to help them until he realized that it was in fact our van, which they had hot-wired. They ran off.
The van was eventually replaced with a classic blue VW Beetle, and then a Volkswagen Thing.
My dad owned the book How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual… for the Compleat Idiot. I didn’t care much about cars, but I liked the way this book explained things, in simple language and rich cartoony illustrations, and made it seem possible for anyone to repair their Volkswagen. Unconsciously, I later adapted this style in writing a student Survival Kit for Woodstock School, and then multiple software manuals, one of which won an award.
photo: This Playmobil version of the VW camper even features dolls that superficially resemble my dad and Nancy at the time! Note that our VW did not have the classic white roof and nose, but was painted a solid rusty red.
