a2 Sunday News, September 6, 1981

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

As the old Volks van was towed away to the

scrap heap, I tried to work up a fit of nostalgia,
but it was remarkably mild.

No tears, No great belly
laughs. Just a sigh of relief.
For some of us, letting go is
the hardest thing in the
world.

Stil, it was a moment to
remember. The end of an
era.

The poor thing was in bad
shape -- the back tires were
blown, I sold the engine a
year ago, the body was
beginning to look as
wrinkled as a brain. And
there was all this mess on the
north side.

In fact, if people asked me
why I kept it, I was careful to
tell them that it was a
direction-finding device. If

they would buy that, I'd say I
was into urban archaeology,
and the van was a relic of a
bygone age that would be
worth a fortune someday.

The truth is, of course, I'm
@ sentimental fool and
merely glancing at the ugly
old lump of twisted metal
was enough to precipitate an’
organic flashback.

I bought the van in 1967
and promptly headed off
with the then-wife and two
small children -- one of them
still on a bottle -— for
Mexico. There were a lot of
Volks vans on the road that

year, especially along the
West Coast.
Most of them were

'wisted memories

painted in bizarre,
hallucinatory patterns. I!
guess you'd have to be in
your 20’s at least to
remember the psychedelic
van phenomenon, but it was
the forerunner of the big
modern American van with
its plastic bubbles and fat
tires and airbrushed land-
scapes painted on the sides.

At any rate, my van wasn't
psychedelicized. It was a
flat, anonymous grey. My
excuse was always that |
didn’t want to be attacked by
rednecks.

I'm not sure that I would
recommend living in a Volks
van with a wife and two kids
in the summer in Mexico.
But on the other hand, if you
want an honest to goodness
adventure, sure. Go for it.

1 awoke one morning in

the middle of a desert north
of Mazatlan to find that
there was water all the way
to the horizon. The storm
the night before had
unleashed a flood that came
to the bottom of the van's
engine. Exciting? Wow.
Theittthere was the
hurricane that blew so hard
it would have -easily rolled
the van over, except that 1
stayed at the wheel all-night,
turning the vehicle inch’
inch to keep her lined up
with the wind. That was a lot

‘of fun, too.

Vil never forget the
morning I climbed out of the
front door on the driver's
side after parking in a thick
fog the night before to find
that I was looking straight
down at the rocks along the
California coast maybe 300
feet below.

Or the time I got a bit
loaded on Tequila and in-
sisted on roaring into
Guadalajara to get some
more. Awoke in the fierce
morning light to find that I'd

managed to cave in the van's

roof by driving into a tree
with a low-hanging branch.

Rentalsman appeals court decision

The Rentalsman’s Office
has appealed a Supreme
Court ruling against six
mobile home owners in
North Vancouver, ensuring
that the tenants will not face
eviction in the near future.

On August 10, the
Supreme Court of British
Columbia ruled the Ren-

talsman had “erred in law”
when he ruled that the
owners of the Range Motel
on Capilano Road did not
have the power to terminate
the rental agreements of the
tenants in the mobile home
park.

The motel owners had
given the trailer owners
notice this spring because
they wanted to expand the
motel this fall onto the land
on which the trailer park
sits.

A spokesman for the
rentalsman’s 3 office  con-
firmed last week that the

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IN
MEMORIAM

The Firefighters &
officers of the Oistrict
of North Vancouver
Fire Oepartment moun
the passing of ther
Drother and Colleague.
DEPUTY FIRE CHIEF
KENNETH EARL
BEISIEGEL.

They wish to relay theu
condoienc 6s to MMs
widow son and the
other members of Ms
family

office had appealed the
decision to the B.C. Court
of Appeal.

Had no appeal! been made,
a final eviction date would
have been set.

The six trailer park
tenants fighting the eviction
are being represented by the
North Shore Tenants
Association.

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Then-wife wasn't speaking to
me, quite understandably. |
was lying on the ground in a
nest of large, hairy spiders.
Yes, well.

1 think what I miss most
isn't really the van - I
haven't gone camping in
for years -- it's the fact that
you could go camping just
about anywhere in B.C. and
not have any trouble finding
a secluded spot. Best of all,

you could go to Long Beach,
north of Tofino, and camp
on the sand as close to the
high tide line as you dared.

Can't do that any more.
The feds have made into a
park. Elsewhere, you can’t
find a place to park where
there aren't already 500
different kinds of
recreational vehicles.

So long van. It was fun,
but...

ee,

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