Volkswagen Van... Memories of the Old Camper.
Walking around the work complex at break is an easy way to get out of your head for a bit. Hours sitting in front of a computer looking at fingerprints can cause knees to lock and brains to shut off. So break time is often spent out walking.
One entire circle of the headquarters complex takes fifteen minutes. You walk around the four buildings along the road that connects all the parking lots. Not the prettiest walk on earth but often you’ll come across a rabbit or groundhog. Some Sandpipers are often nesting in the area as well.
On evening shift, it’s a quieter walk. Most cars are gone and few people are out sharing in the laps. On humid evenings, great billowing clouds take on the orange glow of the setting sun... thunderstorms are nearby.
And I walk along a vehicle I haven’t seen back here before. A Volkswagen van is parked along the route. An old van from the late 1970s.
I should say that I’m not a car buff. I don’t recognize cars the way some do. Knowing the year and type of engine under the hood simply by a glance... that’s a skill not held by me.
But I know more of this van because it looks very much like the old Volkswagen camper we used to own while I was a kid.
And so my walk goes on with the flood of memories of our old camper.
It’s actually likely that I spent more miles on the road in that camper than in any other vehicle. It took us from Newfoundland south to Florida and also west to Victoria. I don’t know if this is truth or just my memory playing tricks, but it’s within my head that on the day dad drove the camper to the dealer, ready to trade it in for a Caravan, the odometer rolled back to zero.
My memories of the getting of the camper are also fuzzy. I believe we flew from St. John’s to Toronto and picked it up there, ready to continue our trek west to Victoria in it.
That camper was a wonderworld for a seven year old kid. Drawers to hold cutlery also held bits of driftwood and sea shells that I found along beaches and wanted to bring on our journey with us. Cabinets contained small boxes of cereal. A breakfast of Apple Jacks waiting for me to be eaten in the early morning hours while we’re parked on asphalt, awaiting the ferry to the mainland. A small soggy box of cereal, opened into a bowl, with the diesel fumes of tractor trailers idling outside our window.
There was the closet. A small door next to the back seat. Rain coats and mom’s good blouses would hang there. But sometimes, in the early days, I’d be able to venture in there myself, tucked into the smallest room in the van... just as a little kids likes it.
Behind the back seat would be the storage area. An open space where luggage is fitted in jigsaw form. Stuffed toys would be propped up along the edge of luggage. Bears, sheep, and a mouse named Micky all in their rightful places as the miles drove by.
At night, the back seat would be flattened and the luggage would be shifted to the floor. This became my parents bed.
Above, the roof of the camper would be raised on an angle somewhere between 25 and 45 degrees. A ledge would be as a loft, overlooking the luggage and front seats below. At the back of the van, the space between this ledge and the roof would only be a foot or so, but at the front, it would raise a good four or five feet. This is where my sister and I slept. Looking back, I’m sure Edena wasn’t thrilled to be a seventeen or eighteen year old sharing this sleep area with her eight or nine year old brother.
In front of us, on the other side of the gulf of emptiness that was a four foot gap from the lip of our loft bed to the canvas that kept us on the indoors of our camper... the gap where mom and dad would stand to say goodnight as they tucked me in, only shoulders and head at my level with the rest of them below, out of view... on that other side of the gulf would be a tent like zippered screen. We could unzip the canvas and have a window onto the world.
I remember the most amazing night view I had in that van was in a paved campground in New Jersey. A forgettable parking lot of a camp ground, memorable because our screen window looked across the river to the lights of New York City.
The most annoyed that I can remember my sister, during our trip to Florida, was related to New York. Not the city itself though. It was due to our wardrobes one day as we were returning from Florida and driving past New York on the way home. That day, Edena decided to wear her I Love NY t-shirt. Not yet dressed for the day myself, I saw her shirt and thought that was a great idea. I figured we could be like twins, and pulled out my own I Love NY shirt.
Unwanting to be her brother’s twin, Edena got another shirt. I was left confused and disappointed. I remember years later, with me in my 20s and her in her 30s, I went to BC to visit Edena. One of her friends, meeting me for the first time, exclaimed how much my sister and I looked alike. They even asked if we were twins. This time Edena seemed much more happy with the idea... and I was not so impressed.
The “living room” of our camper was a six foot gap from the back seat to the front. Sparky, the dog, would spend most of his time there. But it was a fun gap for us in the back. A buffer from children to parent. A buffer we could sometimes play with.
On a sunny day in America, my memory says somewhere in the Carolinas, but really it could have been about anywhere, Edena and I took turns shooting my water pistol. We aimed for the front windshield.
After a few shots, with gravity streaming the water down towards the dash, mom leaned forward, looking for storm clouds... “is that rain?” she asked. Our laughter and her reaching out to find the water on the inside of the camper, rather than the more conventional outside location for rain, ended the joke.
I used to love sitting up front on my mother’s lap. To be able to look out at the world as it rushes towards us was as exciting to me as if I were invited up to the cockpit of a jumbo jet.
Being the late 70s, the idea of the seatbelt seemed like a good one, but it wasn’t necessarily mandatory. Catching my parents in the right mood, I’d be able to sit there in the front, as we drove the highways of America, free as a bird. In the wrong mood, mom would stretch out her seatbelt so that I could be buckled in on top of her... the shoulder strap on the verge of choking me for miles.
I don’t know why it was decided... perhaps it was a lack of clean laundry... but one summer’s day, my mother forced me to wear a turtleneck shirt. That was bad enough... a turtleneck in the summer’s heat... but when my desire to sit up front with her merged with the clothes on my back, the result was not good. So with the turtleneck pinned to my body, and my body pinned to my mother via the choking seatbelt... and with the front windshield offering no shade from the beating sun... I became as an ant under the magnifying glass held by a torturous kid looking to burn things.
I threw up that day... and have hated turtlenecks ever since.
One night, in the midwest, the heavens opened up and the thunder and lightning came with it. It was decided, on that night, that the camper’s roof would remain down. The bed of Edena and I would remain closed. Edena’s sleeping bag hit the floor, while I was bunked in the Volkswagen hammock. A flag of cloth that snapped into place over top of the two front seats. Life doesn’t get much better than a hammock in a van.
In summers when we remained home, the camper would sit in our driveway as a playhouse for me. Radio, places to sit, a portable table to play cards on. It was a rainy day retreat as my friends and I dripped from our walk to the mini mart. We slowly dried in the van as we ate chips, bars and fun dip.
My first and only game of strip poker game within that van on a summer’s night. It wasn’t the traditional form of strip poker. We were four ten year olds, bored to play poker with no stakes (not like ten year olds have much money to bet). So the stakes became the embarrassment of nudity. After all, it’s pretty easy to tell the winners from the losers when a lack of cloths is in play.
But none of us had any interest in anything other than humiliating their friends. The losers were given sleeping bags to cower in shame within.
And when the Volkswagen’s curtains became sun bleached beige on one side and original colour brown on the other.... with the odometer getting ever closer to rolling back to zero... it was time to say goodbye. No other vehicle held as much of our family’s life as that one. It was our means of exploration while still carrying a bit of home with us. Food in the cupboards, a deck of cards tucked in a shelf along with our cutlery... and my driftwood and shells. Baseball gloves in a storage closet, sitting under rain jackets and extra shoes and boots... awaiting the next time we camp near a big grassy field. Jewelry, stuffed toys, and a four inch black and white TV... all in their rightful places, in this nook and that cranny as we drove on, mile after mile, with water pistols bringing rain... and laughter.
You never know what you’ll come across while going for a walk at work.
MONDAY...
— Pretty quiet day. Some video game baseball.... a walk around the pond that ends minutes before the start of a line of small thunder storms that drift through. I’m on the back end of the pond (about 10 minutes from home) when I’m looking at the mass of dark in the sky and seeing some lightning... as it all draws closer.
TUESDAY...
— Sarah Palin speaks of Grizzly Mama’s. As in that’s what the mothers of Alaska are and this is good for America. Sarah Palin is a total idiot and it’s legitimately frightening that people would take this woman seriously. Sarah Palin is Celine Dion smarts with political ambition... and that’s enough to cause shivers to run my spine.
— Lots of rumbles of thunder and lots of rain this evening while we’re at work.
WEDNESDAY...
— Was supposed to play RCMP ball today but the thunder and lightning and swirling clouds of black put an end to that. Actually, shortly before 2:00, it was looking very tornadoish. But nothing touched down and the day went as normal.
THURSDAY...
— Pizza day at work. That is to say, Larry, Annick and I ordered from Louis’ Pizza. And, in fact, I was the only one of the three to get pizza as the others did salad and spaghetti. Anywho.
— Walked at breaks tonight. Was nice. Saw an old Volkswagon van that is the same make as our old camper from my childhood. The things you see walking around the headquarters complex.
FRIDAY...
— Work is pretty slow going tonight. The clocks are running slower than normal. Some TV afterwards... and I fall asleep on the sofa until close to 4:00 Saturday morning.
SATURDAY...
— Busy day... after watching some baseball at home, go to Shannon’s and watch some there too... to Dick’s for burgers and rings... back to Shannon’s for a bit... then off to meet Phil to watch UFC. Good card and fun show. But by the end of the night I’m too stuffed with food. Shouldn’t eat tomorrow.
