High Desert Hippie
We’re on a little sight-seeing trip for a couple of days. The Better Half snapped this photo of a late-sixties or early-seventies VW Bus with doo-dads reminiscent of the hip-generation. I have to agree with Eric Cartman when he says “Goddamn stinkin’ hippies - I hate ‘em!” Clickable image . . .
6 Responses to “High Desert Hippie”
drjim on 23 Mar 2010 at 2007 #
Hmmmm….a quick scan doesn’t reveal any peace signs or Obummer/Bidet stickers.
Is that possibly not a real hippie?
Minstrel on 23 Mar 2010 at 2047 #
Perhaps not . . .
I drove one of these from 1969 to 1994 - put 350,000 miles on it and at least 3 engines in it. I was never anything but the gun-toting, freedom loving, beer slurping, meat eating, military supporting redneck you read about here . . .
drjim on 23 Mar 2010 at 2218 #
Ken Purdy, one of my favorite automotive journalists, said once that if you took all the cars in the world and lined them up, somebody in a VW minivan would pull out and try to pass them.
Minstrel on 24 Mar 2010 at 0130 #
I can see how that might have happened. There were plenty of truckers today that thought they needed to pass another big rig on the up slopes that they would pull out into the fast lane and slow us 70 MPH guys down to 50 or so for a couple of miles until they could huff and puff their way past the other big rigs.
DirtCrashr on 24 Mar 2010 at 1728 #
Coming back from India we picked-up a new ‘69 in Amsterdam that year and drove around Europe for a few months to wear out the tax-liability.
Everybody in the Alps passed us, even kids on mopeds. It really needed a flat-six like a Porsche but then it just would have burnt up #3 cylinders faster. My brother has the old Bus now, it’s kinda a storage unit for him - with dreams of being re-birthed that will never occur.
Engine re-builds taught me how to work on motors and I bought a bondo-bandit ‘60 Ghia rustbucket in Santa Cruz that had such severe blow-by you couldn’t drive uphill after it warmed up. I filled the holes in the floorboards (you could see the road through them) with some goop and glued-down new carpet. Drove it out to DC in ‘81 after Graduation from UCSC - and then back again. I had engine cylinder’s stenciled on the side of the door, like a fighter-pilot’s enemy meat-ball markings, indicating how many motors I had blown. Point of pride I guess, in the end there were five. I’m glad I finally outgrew that though - it helps to have a real job and real money to get a real perspective. My mind was clouded for years.
Minstrel on 24 Mar 2010 at 1806 #
Good story DC. I could afford car payments, but waited to upgrade until I had the kids raised and some savings in the 401(k). By then, I DESERVED a Lincoln Mark VIII. These days, I drive an SUV with a 14 MPG six liter engine just to spite the old hippies here on the left coast.
Yep - buses that drive in California are so slow that they are often passed by tectonic plates.