Just Keep Truckin’

Pat Kelly was asked about his life in the slow lane, driving an old widget of a vehicle with a pencil-neck-size steering column, cardboard-thin floorboards you can nearly poke your foot through and a horn that bleats like a small wounded animal.

Yes, he said, owning a Volkswagen van--better know as the “bus” to most die-hards--is to accept freeway breakdowns as a funny fact of life, to make peace with the idea that your rubber-band-run engine would inevitably make you the last person to get there, but that you’d keep on truckin’ just the same.

“That’s exactly the reason you drive ‘em--to take the slow road and be glad you did,” said the gray-bearded Phoenix resident, who has driven vintage old Volkswagen buses for more than 20 years. “Everyone drives like hell to get where? It’s nice to just go and get there in your pokey old Volkswagen bus.”

Kelly was among several hundred hard-cores who gathered Saturday at Veterans Stadium in Long Beach for the 14th annual meeting of the Society of Transporter Owners to revel in the simple joy of the Volkswagen bus.

Boasting 1,600 members worldwide--a majority of them in Southern California--the group gathers each year somewhere in the Southland for a bus-loving convention that is part meeting of greasy-fingered motorheads and part tie-dyed Grateful Dead concert, and just about everything in between.

For most owners, the clunky, box-like buses harken back to simpler times, mostly to the free-loving 1960s when there was a weeklong rock concert or demonstration or sit-in at which the longhairs could camp out in their own Woodstock on Wheels.

The Volkswagen buses were so much a part of the 1960s youth movement, some owners say, that their symbol--the “W” in a circle--became the inspiration for the circled peace sign made famous in the era.

*

“These buses are a part of American life,” said 70-year-old Paul Combs, who was willing his old ’67 bus to his grandson. Combs and his wife, Jane, say they must have traveled to the moon and back in that bus, delivering four grandchildren home from the hospital in the battered old van.

Years later, after numerous other cross-country trips, fixing countless minor breakdowns with “Mama” along the side of the road, Combs was introducing grandson Devan to the rest of the bus-owning community. “There was a period when these buses represented a lifestyle on the road,” he said, “but that’s gone now.”

Volkswagen produced its first bus in 1949, making only minor changes in its design until 1967 when manufacturers did away with the split windshield and, later, with the air-cooled engine. In the 1980s, the company began making the Vanagen, which evolved into today’s Eurovan model.

Owners of these distant cousins are welcome in the club. But the star of each meet is always the vintage, made prior-to-1967 bus.

“I was raised in Volkswagen buses,” said 25-year-old Bryan Booy of Brea, who now owns his own. “It’s the only thing my dad would own. He said there was nothing that could beat their economy, simplicity and quality engineering.”

So who cares if the older models now shimmy and shake on the road at any speed over 60 mph. Heck, bus owners even revel in their slowpoke, ramshackle reputations. Take the bumper stickers that hawkers were selling Saturday, along with hard-to-find spare parts.

“Too slow? Too bad!” read one. “Honk If Anything Falls Off” and “She Left Me Cuzza My Bus,” announced two others. And still another: “0-55 in 11 minutes.”

Bus owners keep track of their vehicle’s family tree like they would a priceless heirloom.

Ken King and Katie O’Grady found their 1959 half-truck Volkswagen bus collecting weeds in a farmer’s field in northwest Canada. As the story goes, the owner blew out the first gear on the way home from the showroom and got so mad he abandoned the bus.

O’Grady said it took the couple nearly 40 hours to make the drive from Canada to Long Beach for the convention, with several breakdowns along the way. “To get here without any engine trouble,” said the 20-year-old, “now what fun would that be?”

Booy said his beautifully reconditioned bus, bought last year for a measly $3,000, was once owned by a man who drove it across Europe before selling it to two surfers from England.

“This bus,” he boasted, “comes equipped with its own free spirit.”