Wednesday, January 01, 2014

VW Vanagon





















Favorite car I ever owned, the shoe-box-on-wheels Vanagon. Apparently the bronze color I had was not common, as it is hard to find images of that.

Note the high clearance.

13 comments:

bs king said...

The bisonmobile. I liked it too.

bs king said...

When you turned the heat on, it smelled like maple syrup.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yes, and I was always vaguely worried that something poisonous was happening.

Mike Campbell 75% breaking the roof opening was a small thing I never quite got over.

Sam L. said...


"Mike Campbell 75% breaking the roof opening was a small thing I never quite got over."

Makes me no sense. Please decode for me.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Moonroof/sunroof with crank handle. Mike seemed to strip it somehow.

Sam L. said...

Ah. Wife had a Dasher w/ a crank sunroof.

I'd wondered how Mike appeared here, not having been previously mentioned.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

A beloved/notorious figure in the family history, but ultimately, not one of influence.

bs king said...

Your last statement gave me a vision of a Wyman "hall of other family history" where you have pictures of all ancillary characters you've encountered with little captions.

Have I mentioned that in my head you all own an alternate house, an old English estate that's a bit of a cross between Hogwarts and the aunts house from the Code of the Woosters?

This means that all the pictures on your walls talk and say various snarky things to passersby.

Now I'm curious what the caption beneath my picture says...because if Mike Campbell's there, I definitely am.

bs king said...

I realize I should elaborate on why you own an alternate house in my head, because you'd likely get a kick out of it.

At some point in reading Narnia and later Harry Potter, I found the concept of people who were ordinary in this world being extraordinary in another world rather intriguing. I started to go through and figure out who among those I knew could conceivably actually inhabit another world that I didn't know about, and your family was one of the most obvious answers. Since all the books that have this particular mythology are British (at least that I've read) you ended up in a large country estate in the English countryside, somewhere near Worcestershire.

It has lots of pictures of people who give you a hard time. You'd like it there.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Well, at least you know where your associations come from. I think of your brother Tim every time I cut onions lengthwise, yet I have no idea why.

You are exactly right otherwise. We did rather fit that mold and might possibly have come from some other world. That changed entirely when we brought in Chris and John-Adrian from Romania, because then there were two competing other worlds, which diluted the effect. The Wymans that you and Tim knew are deeply different from the ones Dan and Abby knew. Your parents were more from our first world, I think.

You would not be a picture on the wall with a single caption, you would be one of those eccentric nieces or vicar's wives or obscure consultants wandering about the place unaccountably - something with gardens or vegetables would be appropriate.

bs king said...

I like the niece who doesn't really leave idea better. The vicar's wives always seemed so stuffy, though that could just be a Jane Austen prejudice.

I actually had an explanation for Chris and JA built in to this. There was a war of some consequence in your other world, requiring a variety of alliances that you and yours helped broker. You defeated your enemies, but your biggest ally ultimately died, leaving two sons in your care. In their grief, they requested to live in this world with you. Of course since they were less familiar with it, you had to claim they were from a different country. JA picked Romania after trying out a few. He's quite taken with it. You occasionally have to remind him he's not actually from there.

It was all in the third book in the series.

Sam L. said...

Oh, AVI, this gets couriouser and curiouser. You might see if Mr. Sippi Of The Cottage could take a whack at your family story.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I'd like Bethany to have first crack at it. Awesome.

At least one vicar's fiancee in Wodehouse was an interesting character, BTW.