This is not one of those modern VW Beetles, what I think of as "fake bugs". Don't get me wrong - I'd love to have one of those cute little cars, maybe a yellow one with a convertible top. But they don't hold a candle to the original, the one-and-only Volkswagen Bug.
The first time I saw this particular car I was driving to pick the kids up from piano lesson. I noticed it parked in a driveway, the license plate stamped with the tag "VW 73" and the sign in the window announcing that it was "For Sale". I noticed the owner standing to the side, a tall stooped man with a white beard, sort of the way I imagine my dad might have looked if he had been given the luxury of becoming an elderly man. I realized that this man was likely the original owner, that this yellow, beat-up round car was probably his baby, the one tangible item left over from his long gone youth, the car his wife probably told him to sell already so he half-heartedly put the sign in the window, hoping no one notices it.
As I passed this relic from the 70s I recalled my own past with the VW Bug. Our first Bug goes back to my early childhood in Florida, a white model with chrome bumpers and a sunroof that opened by turning a handle. As a small child I loved poking my head through that sun roof. I'm sure the back seat had no seatbelts, or at least none that I can remember. This car traveled with us to Maryland in 1974 when we moved to the DC area. I have a strange memory of returning from the movies one afternoon after having watched "Bambi" on the big screen and seeing our white VW Bug standing upright against a street sign, no driver in sight. Apparently my dad had forgotten to engage the parking brake and while he was enjoying a hot shower in our apartment the car slowly rolled out of the parking lot, down a hill, across the main road and up the post. A surreal image of it still exists in my four year old memory bank.
Here is a photo of me and my mom and that awesome sun roof. This was taken in Tallahassee, Florida before we moved to Maryland. I love the little details in this photo - the old style door handle, the round side mirror, the white steering wheel, my little pink sweater, my glamorous mother.
Eventually my parents sold the white Bug. I'm not sure why they sold it, but in its place we got a red VW Bug, the car that will forever hold an amazing place in my heart. Whenever I see an old-style Bug on the road I smile, but whenever I see a red one I'm flooded with a rush of emotions and memories that can't be adequately described in this little bit of writing.
The red Bug was my dad's car. He was a big man and I will forever have the image of him in my head as he looked every morning, folding his six foot three body into that little car, an apple hanging out of his mouth, chugging off to work at the World Weather Building. Even after he'd driven away we could still hear the tell-tale "bbbbrrrrrreeeeeeee!!!!!" of that engine as he slowly made his way down our street. Sometimes he would drive us to school in it and he loved to show us how he could drive the car with his knees while using his hands to do other things, like clip his nails or peel an orange. We would always shriek "Tato, put your hands on the wheel!" at which point he would cackle like a deranged lunatic and then squeeze the sensitive area just above the knee of whoever had the sudden misfortune of occupying the front passenger seat. Ouch.
Here is the red Bug parked in the driveway of the house we grew up in. They don't make them like this anymore.
As we got older we lamented the fact that we didn't have a "real" car in the family, something that we could easily learn how to drive. I remember my dad's first attempts at teaching me to drive this car and the sheer frustration of trying to develop a feel of the clutch and the gear shift. After an unsuccessful lesson in a parking lot at school we gave up. I eventually took my driving test in a borrowed car from a friend, an automatic. I had not yet learned to appreciate the sheer joy of driving the Bug.
Meanwhile, while I was away at college, my sister became quite adept at driving it, likely realizing that it was her only chance to get any freedom away from the house during her volatile high school years. My favorite story is the time she and her friends decided to skip school, piled into the red Bug and made their way toward McDonald's. As they were sitting at a stop light, my mother suddenly pulled up beside them. My sister's friends all ducked just as my mother turned her head to see my sister sitting calmly in the red Bug, staring straight ahead, seemingly alone and inexplicably not in school when she should have been.
One summer when I was home from college I needed to go somewhere and the only car available was the red Bug. At that point I had yet to master the art of driving stick and had been spoiled by driving my dad's newest baby, the brown Nissan Maxima, a car which deserves its own blog post one day. No one was home and I desperately needed to get somewhere. I ended up grabbing the keys, jumping into the Bug, saying a little prayer and chugging slowly down the street. Without my nervous father sitting beside me, correcting every little move, I suddenly figured out how to let up the clutch, shift gears and miraculously not stall out. I puttered around the neighborhood for about ten minutes before venturing out onto the main road. I was hooked. I ended up driving the Bug everywhere for the rest of the summer, blasting the three AM stations with the windows rolled down.
My dad eventually sold the Bug to a man who wanted to buy it and fix it up with his teenage son. By then the Bug was a little worn out, but it was worn with love. Here is a photo of it in our driveway in Silver Spring, shortly before we sold it. I miss that little guy.
I often wonder what the tall elderly man with the white beard would say if I pulled over one day and asked him about his beat up yellow Bug. I wonder what stories he would tell, whether he is really trying to sell it or just going through the motions, delaying the painful goodbye that will one day happen. Maybe I'll stop one day to find out. I hope that if he loves it as much as I think he does that he holds onto it. They won't ever make another one like it.
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