V is for Volkswagen (Little Green Notebook)
As long as we're time traveling
Please forgive my sort of funny typo in last week’s column, placing one hundred years ago at 1825. For those here on Substack, I corrected it. For those who read the printed paper, it stands forever incorrectly written.
Today, let’s move the time-travel dial back a mere twenty-five years, to an episode that rekindled my love of writing.
One morning around 2000 or so, I opened my email to find an auspicious letter from one of my BFFs, Dana, blinking in my inbox. Dana lives in Spain. We corresponded daily via email then, now via WhatsApp.
“I’m writing my alphabet memoirs,” she wrote. “Do you want to join me?”
Thus began our ABC Memoirs, or “Project One” as we called it.
Our memoirs grew as the day of her visit to the U.S. neared. The very first thing we did upon seeing each other, well, the second thing, the first being to indulge in our signature hug we invented in high school, was to swap books. We devoured each other’s stories.
Perhaps propelled by Project One, we both went on to become famous, bestselling, world-wide-touring authors. Just kidding. But we did continue writing. Dana has written several novels, including Crossing on the Paris, The Woman in the Photograph, and my favorite, The Admiral’s Baths. She is a master storyteller.
Today, my brain exhausted by quantum physics and taking care of grandchildren for a week, I am sharing an essay from my alphabet memoirs. I now present to you, in its original form, “V is for Volkswagen.”
“I see teenagers driving around in cars that cost far more than my annual salary. They are huge, behemoth things, with snarling grills and glowering headlights. The kids inside, usually chatting on their cell phones, look like they feel completely at home in these bastions of showy consumption. Where is the rebel, I ask? Aren’t they scared that they are going to be adults someday? Don’t they want to prolong that horror forever?
“When I was sixteen, I crouched behind the wheel of a 1964 Volkswagen Bug, and I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. It could take me anywhere on six drops of gas. I could start it with a fingernail file and a push. Far from a menace, it rattled a friendly purr as I drove along, the trademark Volkswagen sound. The back floorboard was missing; mud splattered the inside of the windows when I went mud-riding. The loose rear bumper was frequently flung off by saplings when I drove in the woods. No grown-up car for me, thanks.
“Robert, too, drove a Volkswagen. His was all chopped up, the beginning of a Baha-Bug that no one ever finished. We held the lockless hood down with bungee cords. It had no windshields and no rims, but it got him from here to there. It was a dull blackish gray, possibly the ugliest car in town. That car screamed teenager. So unrefined, so far from the adult world of car payments and air-conditioners, it demanded defiance. No adult would even ride around the block in it. Perfect!
“My farmer friend Husky, a Volkswagen aficionado, taught me that you should never drive in any gear higher than second. We’d drive out to his farm after church in one of his Beetles, screaming along at fifty miles an hour in second gear, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” at the tops of our lungs.
“Scattered around the hundreds of acres of Husky’s land are the old, rusting bodies of Volkswagens. He thinks he might need the parts someday.
“Someday. Maybe someday I’ll drive a VW Bug again. Maybe I’ll piece it together with parts from those resting out at Husky’s. I’ll put $5.00 worth of gas in that oddly positioned tank under the hood of the car and drive right back in time. I’ll find my brother, and we’ll take a spin in the mud. Then, under a blanket of night with a smattering of southern stars overhead, we’ll put that car in second gear and drive down a winding, black ribbon of highway, leaving only trails of mud behind us.”
Epilogue: My brother Robert graduated to a beautiful Honda Prelude before heading off to sail the seven seas with the U.S. Navy. Upon his return, he had a diving accident and broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. With cars taking on new importance, he ended up with a pristine BMW. Robert died in 1999 at the tender age of thirty-six. I wrote “V is for Volkswagen” shortly after his death. I miss him every single day.
I currently drive a 2016 Nissan Rouge which I plan to drive “til the wheels fall off and burn,” to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan’s epic rebel song, “Brownsville Girl.” I chose that car, in part, because Husky had one and he recommended it. Husky died in 2019 at the not-so-tender age of ninety-six.
As for my precious Volkswagen Beetle which I bought when I was fourteen, I wrecked it shortly after getting my driver license. It remains my all-time favorite car I’ve ever owned.
Thank you for being here. I hope you enjoyed this week’s column.
-Mary
so much goodness here.
Oh Mary, you’re quickly becoming one of my favorite writers! This entire post pulled me in from the memoirs between two friends on different continents to the loss of your brother that punched me in the gut. My parent’s first car was a VW bug and I dreamed of having one myself for my first car. I love the purr of their little engines that can run on so little. Unfortunately, my first car was a 1982 Dodge Omni hatchback with a busted out rear window that I duct taped a rebel flag in…not because I was racist but because I was a REBEL dammit. The cool thing about my little car was I could only START in 2nd gear—real fun at a red light with a slight incline. The poor gal lost her drive shaft on the way home from school one day and it was back to bus riding for my brother and me.