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Date:         Sat, 11 Apr 1998 22:43:19 CDT
Reply-To:     Joel Walker <JWALKER@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@UA1VM.UA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: demographics of Vanagon.com
Comments: To: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:30:34 -0400 from
              <damosem@MAIL.MCO.BELLSOUTH.NET>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

<this is longer than i'd thought it would be. so unless you're really curious, you might want to skip this one :) >

well ... i guess SOME of you might be curious. morbidly so. sitting around over your beer and pretzels, asking strangers, "Who's this Unca Joel character?? and why does he send out that Statz garbage every week??"

ok, i'll tell. :)

i was born, before Time, when the earth was still cooling (crust had formed, but we had to invent shoes to walk on it ... still too hot). i've seen governments rise and fall, and rise again, and fall again. i've seen fire and i've seen rain ... whoops. not my song. :)

i was raised mostly in the Alabama Territory, which later was split into the states of Mississippi and Alabama. i currently still live in Alabama, in the city that was the first capital of that state, the city of Tuscaloosa, named after a war chief of the local natives at the time. or, as i sometimes like to call it, Tookalooka, Amabala. :) i grew up in other cities in Alabama, lived in Chicago, Atlanta, and a few other places, but somehow, the trees weren't "right" in those other cities. back here, the trees are "right" ... i can't explain it any better than that.

i spent time in the Air Force Reserve, spent active duty time in the Army, serving in Viet Nam for two years, learning to love monsoons and little five-fingered lizards that ate the enormous cockroaches that liked to chew on your fingertips (if you smoked, that is). i've been to Texas, Colorado, Virginia, and Northwestern Florida, but never stayed longer than six months.

i spend a lot of my youth in college, wasting time and money, bumping my brains against mathematics and engineering ... until i finally figured out that i was NOT gonna be an Engineer. not the kind they wanted to make me. so i dropped out of school. wound up getting a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and Mathematics ... which is to say, they GAVE me a degree, based on "tenure" (they were tired of me hanging around!!). :)

from there, i started working as a computer programmer. first in Fortran, then in COBOL, working with the punched cards and magnetic and paper tapes, and weaseled my way into employment with Univac, one of the older large mainframe computer companies. i worked in the field for a time, supporting the state government in Montgomery, Alabama, then got myself a cushy job in Atlanta, teaching software courses to customer personnel. only trouble was, i wound up spending three out of every four weeks flying and traveling around. :( i didn't like that or the traffic in Hot'lanta, so i found my way back here ... to a Do-Nothing gummint job and a smaller paycheck (but less traffic and less stress and NO motels or airports!!).

what does this have to do with VW's?? i'm getting to that. first one i ever saw was in 1956 ... an air force neighbor brought one back from Germany. had the little semaphone turn signals. it was cute. we got one (from a local dealer). several other beetles followed, and then a squareback, and then, after i got out of the Army, i got my first bus. a 1971, blue and white. Da Blue Goose. :) that was a GOOD bus. faithful, steady, reliable. but i was young and reading manuals was new to me ... and i missed the part about the buses being under more strain than the beetles. so i thought the valves would last until 100,000 miles. not so. at 88,000, old #3 exhaust let go. :( a horrible racket that i hope none of you ever hear. brings tears to my eyes just to think of it. new engine and new clutch. lots of money.

after a while, i got a 73 bus and sold the 71. the 73 didn't last long ... it was used, and the Vanagon had just arrived on the scene: and i was smitten. :) BIG. FANCY. NEAT. :) i traded. der Bus was his name. blue and blue. and oh, we went EVERYwhere. somewhere along in here, i wound up with a 1968 Double-cab pickup, a 1974 Porsche 914, and another Beetle (for $1.00). along comes 1986, and a white water-cooled Vanagon with AIR CONDITIONING!!! (and power mirrors. seductive little bastards, those mirrors). i had just gotten a big raise (not on merit. they raised the base salary of all the positions in my area) and, as i am want to do when faced with large amounts of money, i paniced. :) i traded all four cars in on the 86 Vanagon. i found out i LOVED air conditioning. :) where had it been all my life!!!????

but life with Moby Bus (alias the White Elephant) was not serene. he had fuel injection problems and the local idiots that mascarade as a vw dealer WOULDN'T fix him. they didn't care or even know how (or if they did, they didn't want to bother). so i took it to other dealers as far as 100 miles away. same thing: (1) it's not broke ... they all do that; (2) oh, you need $700 worth of new fuel injectors; it spend 10 of the first 30 days of ownership in the shop. i was NOT pleased at VW or any of the dealers. i was furious. this was NOT the Volkswagen that i had come to love and admire.

so i traded ... for a Honda. nice car. 40 mpg. but boy, it was just tooooo small. so after four months, i calmed down and came to my sense. traded again for an 88 Vanagon (got screwed by the VW dealer ... NOT the same local one. i went out of state for this one. i had called 38 dealers in the southeast, looking for a specific bus. only FOUR of those dealers knew what a Vanagon was or wanted to talk about one!!!). and that's Gus, the non-camper i still have today. the one with all the lights on the front (someone has some pictures out on the web). :)

years go by (are you getting tired of this?), i have other cars, other buses, and still Gus is with me. and now i have the Silver Snail, an 87 Camper GL. i've had it for a year ... and have already found out: i'm not exactly a camper person. i have yet to fiddle with the stove and fridge and propane and stuff. :) and i've got my eye on this 91 GL automatic downtown ... :)

ok, fine. he's an old fart who likes buses. :) yup. and somewhere about four years ago, i answered a question from Gerry Skerbitz about his 84 bus, and we started talking "buses". next thing i know, there is a Vanagon mailing list. at first, there were only about 20 people (we kinda all "knew" each other), then it started getting bigger and bigger. of course, i was sorta "pimping" the list every time i saw a vanagon or bus question on the rec.vw.whatever newsgroup. :) and it grew and grew and grew.

now, i don't know when the Statz got started. it was a minor curiosity, probably based on someone asking "is anyone else from Pennsylvania? and are you going to Carlisle this weekend??" ... so i started keeping a file of who/what/where. and it grew and grew and grew ... until it has become a full-fledged near-obsession, taking several hours each week to update and prepare. :( and i've run out of disk space (on my mainframe account). i may be forced to learn out to use one of these damnable PC's and move it down to some (oh, horrors!!) Microsoft spreadsheet or something! :(

so that's who i am. and yes, as Tobin and Christa and Steve Dolan and Dave Schwarze have all reported, i DO keep my oil filters and spare parts in my kitchen cabinets. :)

unca joel


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