Born Free in Volkswagens

This interesting VW specimen was parked on the side street next to my motel all the time I was in Ventura. Seeing it each morning as I walked for coffee always brought a smile to my face. 

Sunday found me attempting to take a full day of complete rest, but with the on-and-off-again rains having returned to the coast around Santa Barbara, I found myself straying into work activity, with the excuse that I could get a jump on the week ahead.

As I usually do this time of year, I let the NFL games play on the television as I worked.

But the bylaws of broadcast contracts dictated that the local CBS affiliate had to forgo airing the competitive match-up that most of the nation was watching.

Instead it had to air the game between the pathetic Oakland Raiders and the even-more-pathetic Kansas City Chiefs.

After a quarter and half, when the score was 6-0, I couldn't take anymore of it even as background noise.

So I flipped over to TCM just in time to catch the beginning of Born Free (1966), a movie that came out back when a game between the Raiders and the Chiefs was actually worth watching.

Born Free is also one of the movies, the mention of which, brings me immediately back to the glowing twilight of my early childhood memories

Back then it was an extremely popular movie. Everyone seemingly knew the melody of the theme song and could sing along to parts of it.

If I recall, the first and last time I saw the movie was when I clipped out a discount coupon from the local daily newspaper as part of the summer kid's matinee series.

Watching it this afternoon I got a big smile from one of the early scenes. In the background of one of the shots was a Volkswagen bus from that era, looking all shiny and brand new in the dusty golden landscape of east Africa.

One reason for my smile was because I practically grew up in Volkswagen buses. When I was a kid, My dad was a VW enthusiast, for the primary reason (as he himself told me) that they were cheap and that he could actually work on them by himself.

Found this photo of '66 model with CA plates on the Internet.

We went through a series of such vehicles from about the time I was four until I was in high school. I remember shivering in them in the Iowa winters due to the lack of traditional heaters in them. In 1978 we emigrated out to Colorado in one.

That bus was the first car I ever drove after I got my learner's permit. My dad taught me how to use the stick shift on a gravel road outside Fort Collins.

More than a few times over the last couple years, when I've expressed to friends my ongoing desire for an RV, they have suggested that I purchase a VW camper van.

For most people in my life situation, it would be a splendid idea, but for me it would feel as I were covering the same ground that my father did.

Besides, there is no shortage of other folks willing to keep these machines on the road.

As anyone who has ever been to this area knows, the southern California coast is more or less VW heaven.

One can hardly walk down the street around here, especially in Ventura, without seeing a VW bus from one of the years during the long epoch during which they were manufactured.

Although some show their age, most of the ones I've seen are in quite nice condition, well-kept in appearance and moving through traffic easily in the flow of the late model hybrids and SUVs around them.

Some have been modded up into interesting configurations, but there are others that look like they just rolled off the assembly line at the factory.

Just yesterday I saw a baby blue one in almost mint-looking condition that for all the world could have time traveled right from the scene in Born Free.

I wish my dad could come out here and see them. He'd get a kick out of it. But he's never been much of the travel-for-travel's-sake type, unlike his parents and his son.

I guess that kind of wanderlust skips generations in our family.

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'Cause you're born free