A Really Cool Customized Volkswagen Microbus

"Feb. 1972" is scribbled on the back of the contact sheet and it's a pretty clean looking scan because it's a 6x7cm negative on 120 roll film. I was probably shooting with my Century Graphic.

I remember seeing this vehicle a knowing that I just had to get a few pictures. It appears to be a "custom" but amateurishly done combining of a travel trailer and a VW Microbus. It's hardly streamlined, and it makes you wonder how that 40 or 50 horsepower motor ever got it up to highway speed.

I'm not sure but I think this was in Coconut Grove. Lethal Yellowing had yet to wipe out the coconut palms.

Sherry, The November Girl

November 1969 was the month that I turned 27 and according to our annual ritual Jim Kukar had asured me back in July that it was possible to turn 27 and still feel alive. He recently gave me the same a asurance about turning 67. Somehow "feeling alive" now doesn't quite feel the same as "feeling alive" did back then.

Jim was editing the North Dade Journal and I was the photographer. I got to go all sorts of places and meet all sorts of people. I suspect that was how I first met Sherry. I remember that she lived maybe a dozen blocks away and she wanted me to take some pictures of her. She liked the idea of being photographed in the nearby woods and frankly I was a little surprised when she told me that she wanted to pose for some nudes, but being the gentleman that I am I obliged her wishes.

That piece of cloth covered the tattered upholstry of the seat back in my VW Microbus, and the stripes were shades of magenta. The wooded area was to the north of 163rd St. east of U.S. 1, growing on filled in salt marsh. The taller trees are Australian pine while the bushes are Brazilian pepper, both invasive fast growing non-native species that the state has since spent a huge fortune cutting down and clearing out.

Sherry had a natural flair for posing and moving around gracefully, and we got several nice photos but this was our favorite. I was using my Minolta Autocord. The scan is off the contact sheet.

More Pix Of Me By Stephanie Brundage

Click on the pix to make them bigger.

Back in the sixties there still used to be a bunch of run down motels, "tourist courts" they called back them, along Biscayne Boulevard (U.S. Route 1), as well as trailer parks dating back to the days when house trailers were small enough, and automobiles powerful enough, that you could actually both tow it cross country and live in it when you got where you were going. Little by little the trailer parks dissapeared and the motels got demolished to make way for office buildings.

You'd drive down the road and see signs advertizing the sale of everything in the apartments. I bought a wall unit air conditioner and a couple of TV sets for next to nothing. The trailer parks, sans trailers, were often still nicely landscaped with rows of stately royal palms. We used to like to go there to take pictures.

My wife Stephanie shot these pix of me with a Minolta Autocord. I had as much hair then as I have now but no dusting of grey. Those bell bottom jeans were light brown and the high side zip boots with squared off toes were the height of fashion. Yup, I actually drove around town in that brightly painted VW Microbus.

A Very Early Photo Of Elena Kaplan

It was maybe April 1971, still a few months shy of the "Due Date" and Elena was still in the oven. Stephanie has that glow about her that only pregnant women seem to exhibit. The abdominal bulge was Elena.

I was still driving my 1961 VW Microbus. Karl's garage down the street kept it running until I bought a brand new 1972 model a year or so later. We had a 12 foot boat at the time and I made a little platform on the roof-top carriers so I could stand up there for high angle shots at various concerts and events. Most of the time I just kept the boat there. The van had no AC and the shade kept it a lot cooler inside.

The North Miami door decals were the same ones used on all of the city vehicles. It was the city's idea to give them to me. It made it easier to get into otherwise restricted areas when I was shooting stuff for the city. After a couple of years some uppity county cop decided that only official city vehicles, those with a yellow license tag saying "CITY", could have decals like that. By then everybody around knew my van and my boat anyway. I could still drive and park where I wanted.

A Love-In At Greynold's Park

When I found out about the love-in at Greynold's Park I told Al that he's gotta take me! No excuses! I'd heard so much about hippies and the culture of the late 60's, love-ins at Greynold's Park, live rock music, free love, pot, the smell of incense, wildly painted VW Microbuses, miniskirts and bell bottom jeans...but to hear Al tell it? Girls, free love, ganga,girls, free love, ganga, girls, free love, ganga...Oh yeah, and rock music! Lots of great Rock Music (and girls, freelove, and ganga)

So here we were at Greynold's Park. No it wasn't in a time machine. Somebody came up with the bright idea of holding another love-in after a hiatus of forty years. And there weren't all that many sexy teenage chicks in miniskirts and love beads either. But what the hell. I'm a toy monkey and I'm female. I wasn't too happy to discover that all those handsome young guys depicted in Al's vintage photographs, the ones with shoulder length hair, fringed leather vests over tie dyed T-shirts (or even bare chests - yummmm!) still a few years from being hairy, bellbottom jeans, and sandles were now for the most part grey haired (those that still had hair anyway) old men with paunches spilling over what was left of a waist line.

Of course a lot of the ladies weren't in much better shape, but at least they had the excuse that making babies isn't exactly kind to a woman's figure. And there were the usual guys with chicks young enough to be their daughter, or grand-daughter even! Well, maybe they were. Let's give them the benifit of the doubt, OK?

The dudes all thought that Al was a complete nut (or REALLY stoned!) walking around carrying a toy monkey at his age. Toy monkeys? twenty year old chicks? Pretty much the same thing, isn't it? Reliving their earlier years, their childhood, the youth that's long lost but not forgotten.

Now the chicks, they're always fascinated by me, and they think that Al is one cool dude for having the guts to carry me around like that! I got more kisses and hugs from all those chicks than I've had in ages. I was hoping to catch a whiff or three of that ganga smoke, find out what that's all about, but these grey haired old fuddyduddies have all turned into beer drinkers just like their dads before them. Why can't they brew beer from bananas?

The Second Coming

Al's been telling me about the love-ins at Greynolds Park back in the the '60's. He said that they were actually held across U.S. 1 in East Greynolds Park back then. There'd be a big flat bed truck for the band to set up, and whatever big name rock group was playing at Thee Image that weekend would give a free concert at the park on Sunday afternoon. Thee Image was located in a former bowling alley in what is now Sunny Isles Beach, and has long since been demolished to make way for still more high rise condo buildings.

Well, he told me that if you didn't have the few bucks to see your favorite group in air conditioned comfort on Friday or Saturday night you could see them for free on Sunday. One big advantage of the Sunday-in-the-park format was that since it was a peace loving crowd the cops mostly just minded their own business and pretended that the haze of smoke hanging over the crowd was due to so many people holding incense sticks in their hands. I've often wondered what it was really like back in those days. Just listening to Al isn't the same as having been there, I'm sure! Here's a photo of Al's VW Microbus from those good old days back in the 60's. http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6344/1997/1600/Blog%2070%20e.0.jpg

A few weeks ago somebody came up with the idea of having another Greynolds Park love-in after forty years. It was held in the main part of Greynolds Park and there was a pretty good turnout! Al let me ride on his shoulder so I could get a better view, but I sure wished that his hair was still below his shoulders so I had something to hang on to other than his big ears.

We met this cool chick (that's what Al still calls 'em) and the two of them chatted a bit about the old days. Al told her about the his '61 VW Microbus that he had back then. As I listened to the interesting stories they told of that long gone era it became obvious that their memories were were a bit on the hazy side. Was it the forty years that had passed or was it breathing all that haze in the past? I guess I'll never know.

On the way home Al said that he was trying his best to remember what she might have looked like as a teenager. I think that Al was really trying to remember if he'd ever had her in the back of his Microbus.