Date:         Thu, 21 Mar 1996 23:05:55 -0600 (CST)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Richard Kurtz <rmk@sky.net>
Subject:      Found a Bus Driver in the Local Newspaper

This column appeared in the March 21, 1996 edition of the Kansas City
Star, Southland Star Edition.  It is reprinted here with the permission
of the author.

		Miles to go before it sleeps

Every so often someone asks me about my van, which I call my time
machine.

They ask me because the letters that told it's make and model fell off
years ago.  That pretty much describes my life the last 11 years with my
Volkswagen Vanagon and the time before that with my '69 VW Bus.

My wife Valerie, and I bought the van new in March 1985.  I call it my
time machine partly because in it are toys, barrettes, combs and even
diapers that our daughters, Leslie , 9, and Adrianne, 12, left behind on
the way to growing up.

But I also call it my time machine because I've vowed that it will carry
me to the year 2000.  Like an old farm pickup truck, it's our work-horse.

We use it for cheap family transportation and heavy hauling.  That's why
I rolled right past a 1991 invitation from Volkswagen to check out it's
fourth generation VW van.

The factories stop making rear drive vans like mine four years ago,
ending a tradition that had held since 1949.  I also got a laugh last
year when one guy sent me a cyberspace invitation to join a VW owners
club.

I learned when I was automotive editor of The Kansas City Times that car
club members spend countless hours polishing their prized possessions.
Me?  I punish my no-frills machines.

A lot of things on the van don't work anymore.  We bought it to get only
one luxury item -- heat!  Heat on my old air-cooled, 220,000-mile bus was
like being warmed by a passenger's breath.

It got worst when the heat pipe from the rear engine to the front end
rusted off in 1984.  It joined the sliding door, which  jumped its rusted
track and kept going in 1983 when my brother-in-law, Walt, was helping me
load a refrigerator into the bus.

I wired the sliding door back on, but I didn't realize the heat pipe had
fallen off until it was too late.  Getting a van with heat became a
priority after Adrianne was born.

As with the bus before it, we drove our heated VW van all over the
country.  But our one luxury item went cold six years ago, when the motor
of the electric heater shot craps.

Rats!  I vowed to leave it broken when a mechanic said it would cost $400
to pull the dashboard to fix it.  I get some heat as long as the heat
vents are open and the van is moving.

This van likes being in the shop.  It was there this week.

An old friend of Valerie's had a saying: "Beneath every old Volkswagen
lies it's owner".

That doesn't mean the guy is dead.  He's just tinkering, which is a hobby
for people like me.

Many cars are like shopping center horses, anyway.  You've got to have a
lot of quarters to keep them going.  One repair guy I used to take my old
bus to put it this way: "If you want to play you've got to pay".

But that's with any old car, although nowadays even the old one defy
tinkerers.

That's why I know the phone number by heart of the south Kansas City
garage I use.  Our luxury item -- heat -- has kept my van in the shop a
lot lately.

Antifreeze, which the old bus didn't have,  pooled under the van in our
garage at home.  First it was a head gasket, then a leaky heater valve
and finally a new radiator.  Ouch!

But my time machine with 147,000 miles must collect it's due.  My dad
says I'm rebuilding the van in the Johnny Cash tradition -- one piece at
a time.

He did it with his early '80s Ford and his '68 Chevy van.  Junk yards,
wire, body paste and a mechanic named "Hard Times" have kept him going.

It's a family tradition.  My van is just another car in the parade.

Lewis W. Diuguid
ldiuguid@kcstar.com