VW LUST

 One of many air-cooled remembrances

 

My first real car was a ’71 VW Super Beetle.  Clementine orange.  I purchased it new after an ill-fated six week ownership of a Triumph Spitfire into which I could barely fit.  My new Volksie was the perfect car for the college-aged me: economical and dependable. But what I really lusted after was a Karmann Ghia: the poor man’s Porsche.  Smooth European lines.  Coachwork by Karmann ~ whoever the hell that was ~ and as reliable as my Beetle.  But like that Spitfire, with my six-foot-four-inch frame I knew I could only lust after one.

One evening around dusk, heading home from the wholesale house where I worked late and approaching the Southern Pacific tracks on First Street in Chico, I saw a cluster of college students milling about excitedly.  In those days, Chico State was thought to offer class credit for beer consumption, and it might have been that these kids had been studying, because about 100 feet north of the crossing, a beautiful forest green Karmann Ghia was high centered across the tracks. Several young men were trying to lift the rear end and boost the thing over the rails ~ Hey! Fellas! The front end is lighter!  

 

Several hundred yards north, the bobbing headlight of a southbound EsPee diesel foretold of impending disaster.  Brakes screaming, it became clear the train wasn’t going to be able to stop in time and, at the last second, the crowd split like the Red Sea parting.  

 

The impact was brutal.  The beautiful little Ghia was bent and crushed and emitting sparks as the locomotive skidded the little coupe’s carcass across First Street right in front of me, coming to a halt about a block away.

 

I was sure no one was hurt and I was sure I had nothing to offer Chico’s finest when they arrived, so wide-eyed and sullen, I hung a U-ee and drove to the rented mobile home I shared with a roommate.

 

As a connoisseur of hopped up Chevelles, 442s and GTOs, my roomie often made fun of my spanking new VW.  I opened the door and moped in.  Shortly, he asked why I appeared so down.  Had I lost my wallet?  Did I get fired?  Was I still pining over the lack of a girlfriend?   

 

I didn’t tell him.  I knew he wouldn’t understand.

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Church of the Open Road Press