My Army dad was stationed in France when I was 6 to 9 years old. Not long after we moved there they traded in the station wagon for a red and white Volkswagen van. They packed up two adults and five kids and all the camping gear and food and everything else we needed for that crowd in and on top of that van, and we camp-traveled all over Europe whenever my dad got a vacation. All done on a shoestring, and yes, my mom did amazing things with a Coleman cookstove too!
This brought back lovely memories for me. Most of our road trips were in a Oldsmobile sedan, but my Dad bought a VW bus in the late 60s, so there were many travel adventures in that as well. He had it for quite a long time. My favorite memory of that car is that he would say to my nephew (then 3), "Let's go to the moon!", and they'd get in the front seats, buckle up, and my Dad would take Dan into outer space, narrating everything they were seeing. It made both of them, and us, so happy.
The photos are priceless, Susan! Loved this so much! My husband had an orange VW bus when we were dating. It was not decked out for camping, but it worked just fine as a make-out vehicle. 🤣
I loved this story! I learned to drive on a Beetle. Taught by the 11-year-old I was babysitting who hot wired the car! Have wanted my own ‘60s Beetle my whole life.
In the spring of 1970, I drove from upstate New York to Oregon, by myself except for the occasional hitchhiker, in a 62 VW Karman Ghia. I didn’t go fast but I got 40 mpg. I stopped in Fort Collins, Co. for the first Earth Day. I listened to Gary Snyder read poetry. I was stunned to see that he is still alive, when I thought of him on Earth Day a few days ago.
I drove the Ghia a few more years in Oregon. I think I paid $300 for it in NY.
Thanks for the story, Susan. VWs in those days were the stuff of legend. I bought a brand-new Beetle in 1967 and drove it and my almost new wife from San Francisco to Colorado on vacation. On the way back, we were in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, listening to dreary news about the war raging in Vietnam, when we came to a halt at a highway construction zone. Foreign cars back then were still a novelty most places other than California and VW owners still flashed headlight greetings to one another. We were surrounded by pickup trucks and big rigs during the delay and we could feel the stares and glares of other drivers.
The flagman who stopped us. (flag girl, flagperson?) was barely out of her teens, small and thin, her face all but engulfed by a yellow hardhat. I noticed that she was the only female in the road gang. She eyed our California plates and shiny new Beetle. With a sly grin she flashed us a surreptitious peace sign, careful to conceal her hand from her co-workers. I reciprocated. Her simple gesture made us feel lighter all the way back to San Francisco.
I love your story. My dad was a road warrior. So, on one trip they loaded up us 4 kids and my grandparents for the spring trip from Wisconsin to Hollywood Beach, Florida in the Griswold Station wagon. My grandfather is 6'7" and grandma was 5' tall and 4' wide. She horded the candy basket for the whole trip. Grandpa had a large brass spittoon he had to spit his chewing tobacco into every 5 minutes. Since we were going south, it would be downhill all the way and we will get there faster. According to grandpa. Grandma lifted her leg when she farted and did it about every 10 minutes. We drove my dad crazy. When we finally got to Florida, my dad went to the local bar and got shit faced drunk. I had to go get him and tell the blonde sitting next him he was married and he had to leave now. Family vacations...🤣😉
HAHA! Dear God, that sounds like a plot from a Flannery O’Connor story. I thought cross country trips with my tuneless whistling grandmother were tedious. Four kids and farting, spitting grandparents? Unspeakable.
Wait till you hear about my wedding. I was 8 months pregnant, wore a red dress, my husband was in a body cast, and the only guests invited were my mother's Herbalife customers. My mother was very worried our daughter was going to be a bastard. 🥴
My husband and I were married by a drunk judge in New Orleans. After he pronounced us married…state of Louisiana…blah blah, he said “As the French say, another one down the tubes”. Quite the consecrated moment.
Oh Christ, that's funny. The photographer showed up an hour early and no one was there. He took a few and left. Someone gave us a wedding book with the names Lisa and Jim. My husband's name is Joe. My sister said let's open gifts. It was like she had a suicide vest on. Everyone cleared out. The cake got dropped on the floor. And one of my mom's guest turned out to be a pedophile. We were 22 years old. We didn't know shit. My husband fell 4 stories at work and I was pregnant. We didn't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I have to laugh! We never remember our anniversary. One time the kids texted us about a having a fun day and celebrate. It took us 3 days to figure out the message was about our anniversary. We don't give shit. 🤭
My friends keep telling me to write that book. I said, shit I have to wait till they die. The fuckers are about 90 years old. Christ, they'll will live to 100. I have always wondered who I fucked over in another life. 😂 Pay back is a bitch.
I hear ya! That's where my humor comes from...trauma. I was told by a therapist once I use it as a defense. I told her an offense, right flank, left flank, and body of armor. And that I embrace it. Get over it. Your parents are gone. They can't hurt you anymore. The thing about trauma as a kid, we have to accept it because our brain tells us we have to survive. We must ally with our abusers. The goal is to take our power back. They can't have it anymore. Dead or alive. Fuck 'em!!
I loved our VW bus. We had the modern, fancy one - with the pop up roof. Dad was a preacher - and Mom wanted adventure. They compromised to spend weekends out in nature. As Mom didn't drive, Dad drove the whole clan somewhere into a forest - "somewhere with a creek!" where he would park the vehicle and lay down to nap. (His sermons were usually written at 3 am. That man was tired!)
Mom would be cooking lentil soup from a can. In my memory, it's always lentil soup from a can.
And the 3 little kids would be clamoring over the rocks in the creek, building damns and having little boats made from natural resources travel down the creek.
This brought back many camper memories from military years. Ours had to be bigger because we had to pull a ski boat and included three kids. Oh, the stories‼️
Still remember those 2 and 3 am departures on road trips as a kid in the sixties and early seventies. Then there was the big trip with the really early departure from Southern California to Canada, we left at 11 pm. Funny thing is it must be in the DNA, my wife and I still will leave with a 3 or 4 am departure to avoid morning traffic and get through as much desert heat early as possible.
Dad knew I was a map geek. Got assigned navigator duty by age twelve. I’ll still take paper maps over gps any day for through drives..
Dad’s trips were rigid. Driving was by the clock. Stop exactly at noon for lunch. Pee break times rigidly enforced; better pee lots now even if only a drop or hold it for hours. Had to suffer through mom and dad singing songs from ‘40’s and ‘50’s musicals - no ear buds back then.
So how did that VW microbus camper do on hills and mountains? Dad hated getting stuck behind one on the grade north of Bishop on US 395 when we took the annual Eastern Sierra’s fishing trip.
Great memories Michael! I’m getting the visual of the singing! 😂. I don’t remember about the Bus in the mountains….I guess he just put it in a lower gear and pushed through. We used to look longingly at the Airstream trailers we saw, struggling to get up the mountain. Tent camping is incredible fun. Maybe I’ll get to it again-I just really enjoy that as well!
At some point we graduated from sleazy road side motels to a 17 ft plain Jane basic trailer behind a ford station wagon (faux wood grain siding). Trailer camping was little fun. Dad said “it’s getting dark and bugs are coming out, go inside”. “But dad, look at all the tenters, they’re outside having fun roasting marshmallows around the fire and have hot chocolate.” He’d have none of that. Those tenters were “noisy” “we can afford a trailer”. Actually we couldn’t, we had really big credit card bills.
Mom told me years later that dad and her tried tent camping once as newlyweds in a borrowed tent. Bears went through the campground at night. (Of course they did. It was Sequoia.). He packed up the tent the next morning and ended the trip early. He also didn’t like chocolate.
Thanks for the memories shared about your family car-vacations an VWs. Reminded me of my family car-vacations and our VWs. When dad was stationed in Japan, he bought a new '57 Bug. I was only 5yo and the bug seemed like a Caddy in Japan as there were not that many cars on the road there then. When we moved back to the states, the VW got shipped back and I remember it seemed so small compared to the Fords and GM models and that VW 40 hp engine just couldn't compete, lol.
My Army dad was stationed in France when I was 6 to 9 years old. Not long after we moved there they traded in the station wagon for a red and white Volkswagen van. They packed up two adults and five kids and all the camping gear and food and everything else we needed for that crowd in and on top of that van, and we camp-traveled all over Europe whenever my dad got a vacation. All done on a shoestring, and yes, my mom did amazing things with a Coleman cookstove too!
The ultimate! Camp traveling all over Europe! WOW 😍 Im jealous! Fantastic memories! I'm so glad you shared Rhiannon! ❤️✌️
This brought back lovely memories for me. Most of our road trips were in a Oldsmobile sedan, but my Dad bought a VW bus in the late 60s, so there were many travel adventures in that as well. He had it for quite a long time. My favorite memory of that car is that he would say to my nephew (then 3), "Let's go to the moon!", and they'd get in the front seats, buckle up, and my Dad would take Dan into outer space, narrating everything they were seeing. It made both of them, and us, so happy.
Thats beautiful Ellen!! These cars really do evoke memories! Yours is a good one!
Looking Tres Cool next to the Bug
😂😂😂
I love every single word of this ❤️
Thanks, Gloria. I miss the VW Bus... it was a definitely a positive time for my dysfunctional family. ❤️
Our vacations were a combination of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The photos are priceless, Susan! Loved this so much! My husband had an orange VW bus when we were dating. It was not decked out for camping, but it worked just fine as a make-out vehicle. 🤣
Hey Cherie! Thats hilarious! 😂😂 Whatta memory! Thanks for reading...I really love everything Volkswagen !
I loved this story! I learned to drive on a Beetle. Taught by the 11-year-old I was babysitting who hot wired the car! Have wanted my own ‘60s Beetle my whole life.
Hot wiring a car at 11 years old?! 😂 Thats Awesome! 😂😂😂😂😂 You absolutely need to find one and buy it! ✌️
His dad was an electrical engineer at Sandia Labs. Like father, like son!
In the spring of 1970, I drove from upstate New York to Oregon, by myself except for the occasional hitchhiker, in a 62 VW Karman Ghia. I didn’t go fast but I got 40 mpg. I stopped in Fort Collins, Co. for the first Earth Day. I listened to Gary Snyder read poetry. I was stunned to see that he is still alive, when I thought of him on Earth Day a few days ago.
I drove the Ghia a few more years in Oregon. I think I paid $300 for it in NY.
Oh yes! The Gia! I remember thinking how sporty and cool they were! What a trip you had!
Thanks for the story, Susan. VWs in those days were the stuff of legend. I bought a brand-new Beetle in 1967 and drove it and my almost new wife from San Francisco to Colorado on vacation. On the way back, we were in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, listening to dreary news about the war raging in Vietnam, when we came to a halt at a highway construction zone. Foreign cars back then were still a novelty most places other than California and VW owners still flashed headlight greetings to one another. We were surrounded by pickup trucks and big rigs during the delay and we could feel the stares and glares of other drivers.
The flagman who stopped us. (flag girl, flagperson?) was barely out of her teens, small and thin, her face all but engulfed by a yellow hardhat. I noticed that she was the only female in the road gang. She eyed our California plates and shiny new Beetle. With a sly grin she flashed us a surreptitious peace sign, careful to conceal her hand from her co-workers. I reciprocated. Her simple gesture made us feel lighter all the way back to San Francisco.
What a great memory!!
Ah, thats great! It was a special club of folks who had the bugs! Very cool!
I guess when gas has to pass right hahahahaha 😂
I love your story. My dad was a road warrior. So, on one trip they loaded up us 4 kids and my grandparents for the spring trip from Wisconsin to Hollywood Beach, Florida in the Griswold Station wagon. My grandfather is 6'7" and grandma was 5' tall and 4' wide. She horded the candy basket for the whole trip. Grandpa had a large brass spittoon he had to spit his chewing tobacco into every 5 minutes. Since we were going south, it would be downhill all the way and we will get there faster. According to grandpa. Grandma lifted her leg when she farted and did it about every 10 minutes. We drove my dad crazy. When we finally got to Florida, my dad went to the local bar and got shit faced drunk. I had to go get him and tell the blonde sitting next him he was married and he had to leave now. Family vacations...🤣😉
HAHA! Dear God, that sounds like a plot from a Flannery O’Connor story. I thought cross country trips with my tuneless whistling grandmother were tedious. Four kids and farting, spitting grandparents? Unspeakable.
Wait till you hear about my wedding. I was 8 months pregnant, wore a red dress, my husband was in a body cast, and the only guests invited were my mother's Herbalife customers. My mother was very worried our daughter was going to be a bastard. 🥴
I hope to God someone took photos!
My husband and I were married by a drunk judge in New Orleans. After he pronounced us married…state of Louisiana…blah blah, he said “As the French say, another one down the tubes”. Quite the consecrated moment.
LOL!!!!
Oh Christ, that's funny. The photographer showed up an hour early and no one was there. He took a few and left. Someone gave us a wedding book with the names Lisa and Jim. My husband's name is Joe. My sister said let's open gifts. It was like she had a suicide vest on. Everyone cleared out. The cake got dropped on the floor. And one of my mom's guest turned out to be a pedophile. We were 22 years old. We didn't know shit. My husband fell 4 stories at work and I was pregnant. We didn't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out.
I am literally crying! Nobody could make this up. It just gets worse as the day goes on!
I didn't mean to make you cry. I wish I was making it up. We made it. So, far 41 years. I really hate weddings.
😂😂😂😂 Should I be laughing? Or crying? Lisa59, LisaKO'Brien, and Susan, walk into a bar and the book writes itself! I love it!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I have to laugh! We never remember our anniversary. One time the kids texted us about a having a fun day and celebrate. It took us 3 days to figure out the message was about our anniversary. We don't give shit. 🤭
I dont even know where to begin here! 😂😂😂😂😂 Lisa, thats just great! I cant wait for the screenplay! 🤣🤣
My friends keep telling me to write that book. I said, shit I have to wait till they die. The fuckers are about 90 years old. Christ, they'll will live to 100. I have always wondered who I fucked over in another life. 😂 Pay back is a bitch.
My parents are dead and I STILL can’t write about my shit. The cringe factor is too much for my sons, I’m afraid.
I hear ya! That's where my humor comes from...trauma. I was told by a therapist once I use it as a defense. I told her an offense, right flank, left flank, and body of armor. And that I embrace it. Get over it. Your parents are gone. They can't hurt you anymore. The thing about trauma as a kid, we have to accept it because our brain tells us we have to survive. We must ally with our abusers. The goal is to take our power back. They can't have it anymore. Dead or alive. Fuck 'em!!
I'll help you...I'll ghost write it and we'll change their names. You'll make a fortune! 😂😂 I love it all!
You got a deal. Fuck them! I'm slapping my name on it. 🥂🍻🍹🍷🍾🍸
Omg that’s a good story rolmao
OMG! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I'm in tears!😂😂😂😂😂 Lifted her leg when she farted...going downhill....LISA! This is gold! Whatta story...go write all that down! 😂😂😂
I loved our VW bus. We had the modern, fancy one - with the pop up roof. Dad was a preacher - and Mom wanted adventure. They compromised to spend weekends out in nature. As Mom didn't drive, Dad drove the whole clan somewhere into a forest - "somewhere with a creek!" where he would park the vehicle and lay down to nap. (His sermons were usually written at 3 am. That man was tired!)
Mom would be cooking lentil soup from a can. In my memory, it's always lentil soup from a can.
And the 3 little kids would be clamoring over the rocks in the creek, building damns and having little boats made from natural resources travel down the creek.
Elsie that’s a beautiful memory! I see it clearly! Lentil soup? 🤔 interesting! Thanks for sharing-those campers with the pop up roof were so nice!
Thank you for triggering the memory.
Yes, lentil soup - still my favorite. It's a cultural German thing. I embrace my weird now.
😂😂. It’s a good weird!
Heck yeah - it's entertaining!
This brought back many camper memories from military years. Ours had to be bigger because we had to pull a ski boat and included three kids. Oh, the stories‼️
Still remember those 2 and 3 am departures on road trips as a kid in the sixties and early seventies. Then there was the big trip with the really early departure from Southern California to Canada, we left at 11 pm. Funny thing is it must be in the DNA, my wife and I still will leave with a 3 or 4 am departure to avoid morning traffic and get through as much desert heat early as possible.
Dad knew I was a map geek. Got assigned navigator duty by age twelve. I’ll still take paper maps over gps any day for through drives..
Dad’s trips were rigid. Driving was by the clock. Stop exactly at noon for lunch. Pee break times rigidly enforced; better pee lots now even if only a drop or hold it for hours. Had to suffer through mom and dad singing songs from ‘40’s and ‘50’s musicals - no ear buds back then.
So how did that VW microbus camper do on hills and mountains? Dad hated getting stuck behind one on the grade north of Bishop on US 395 when we took the annual Eastern Sierra’s fishing trip.
Still tent camping and loving it.
Great memories Michael! I’m getting the visual of the singing! 😂. I don’t remember about the Bus in the mountains….I guess he just put it in a lower gear and pushed through. We used to look longingly at the Airstream trailers we saw, struggling to get up the mountain. Tent camping is incredible fun. Maybe I’ll get to it again-I just really enjoy that as well!
At some point we graduated from sleazy road side motels to a 17 ft plain Jane basic trailer behind a ford station wagon (faux wood grain siding). Trailer camping was little fun. Dad said “it’s getting dark and bugs are coming out, go inside”. “But dad, look at all the tenters, they’re outside having fun roasting marshmallows around the fire and have hot chocolate.” He’d have none of that. Those tenters were “noisy” “we can afford a trailer”. Actually we couldn’t, we had really big credit card bills.
Mom told me years later that dad and her tried tent camping once as newlyweds in a borrowed tent. Bears went through the campground at night. (Of course they did. It was Sequoia.). He packed up the tent the next morning and ended the trip early. He also didn’t like chocolate.
Thanks for the memories shared about your family car-vacations an VWs. Reminded me of my family car-vacations and our VWs. When dad was stationed in Japan, he bought a new '57 Bug. I was only 5yo and the bug seemed like a Caddy in Japan as there were not that many cars on the road there then. When we moved back to the states, the VW got shipped back and I remember it seemed so small compared to the Fords and GM models and that VW 40 hp engine just couldn't compete, lol.
Thanks for reading Charles. That’s so cool he the car shipped back! I loved my little bug!!!
Susan Niemann: Thanks for again sharing photos from the family archive! Thanks for sharing deeply of yourself!
Armand, thank YOU for reading! I so appreciate it. ❤️
Same here probably 8 or 9 when we went. So late 60’s. sometimes Susan the selective memory serves me quite well lol 😂
HaHa! I get that! 😂