Flight of the Volkswagen

An article by Don Quixote    3 Comments

In honor of Radio Flyer coming to DVD this week and The Explorers coming next week, it’s time to tell the tale of The Flight of the Volkswagen.

It was the fall of 1993 or 1994. Its amazing how a period in your life can become so blurred that even years and the order of events get turned around in the tangled neurons in your life. Nathan Prong and I were roommates and I was working as a part time youth minister for the South Point Community Christian Church. It was a pretty good experience I think. I believe the guy I worked with was named Bret Keys and his wife’s name was Pam, but I could be totally wrong. All I really recall was two things: Matt (who I cannot remember his last name) and his sister. Matt was going on 7 feet at age 13, and the tree of us ended up going to see David Copperfield at the Fox theater in Detroit.

In any case, I didn’t have a car of my own as I hold sold the one I drove on to campus with because it was broken (a 1969 Blue Chevy Impala) to Rob Herrig. As you might imagine it was pretty tough to have a youth ministry on the south side of Detroit, live in Lansing and not have a car. Yet as fate would have it, Nathan currently wasn’t working at a church anywhere and kindly shared his: A glorious burnt red Volkswagen Rabbit.

This thing was a mini-box on wheels, had the head room of an outhouse, and leaked oil through the round oil gage in the center console. It sounded a lot like a hedge trimmer that had smoked all its life and left a gray cloud where it went, but man did it get good gas mileage.

Every weekend I would pile my stuff in it and drive off to Detroit, I always had a headache and was a little hard of hearing when I returned, but man, you cannot look a gift horse in the mouth. This one particular weekend I got roped into doing something at Wolverine Christian Camp.

Now in all my camp team traveling experience I believe I have only been to Wolverine two or three times including this one, which meant I had no idea how terrible the dirt road leading to the camp was, add to that I was running a little late.

Now 1980′s Volkswagens where not about comfort or road handling; they were about cheap. As I sped down this dirt road (and by speeding I was probably doing 40 – but if you know Wolverine, you know that’s like doing 80 on a normal road), the car started to shake a little bit and handle a bit funny.

POP!

One of the front tires had blown out.

Now normally this won’t be a big deal. Blow outs happen all the time in cars, you simply slow the car and pull over and stop. Well, considering my speed, the road, and the total weight of the car (about 300 pounds with me in it), the car started to slide all over the road. This in and of itself is a pretty terrifying experience. The road was flanked by a seemingly 5 foot drop off and then dense trees. I had to fight to keep the car on the road.

That’s when I saw the sign: DIP IN ROAD.

There should be so sort of law against misleading road signs. When you think of the word dip, you think: small depression, slightly uneven payment. The reality was this was a crater taken out of the center of the road.

The car had started to slide slightly and I was leading with the front passenger side of the car when I hit “the dip”.

Like a scene out of Dukes of Hazard, this little red Rabbit took on the spirit of the General Lee and leaped into the air.

Time seems to turn into a crawl and I flew for what seemed like hours. But the honest truth is that I just had enough time to say, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww CRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!”

“UGH”

The car skidded to halt. I sat there gripping the steering wheel, somehow I had managed to stay on the road, out of the ditch and didn’t wrap myself around any trees.

The Rabbit didn’t fare so well. Upon inspection I found that I had 3 blown tires and 4 bent rims. I was still at the camp but I figured at this point, what did it really matter and drove the Rabbit the last quarter mile.

It was the Flight of the Volkswagen and I lived to tell the tale.