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.

Fishing For Pickerel, Catching Perch ~ 1965

That first year that Stephanie and I were married we discovered a lot of things about one another. We'd only met a few days before we got married on December fourth, 1964, mid winter in Boston. She didn't know that I had a passion for fishing and I had no idea that she'd never fished before. Came spring time and I gave her some basic casting lessons at the park.

Anybody who's ever done much fishing knows that all fish aren't trophy size and you don't always catch fish. Come opening day of the fishing season and Stephanie managed to land a 5 lb. 14 oz. largemouth bass, along with a mess of smaller ones and several yellow perch. A week later she caught a 5 lb. pickerel. They were all caught with a bucktail jig on 4 lb. test line. She'd caught the fever! We spent our weekends fishing!

I'd already I sold my Honda motorcycle and bought a '64 Volkswagen. We started looking for a boat. When we found this 12 foot Penn Yan we both fell in love with it. The canvas covering was bright red and the varnished cedar planking with ash ribs on the inside made it look like a piece of fine furniture. It cost us $120 and it lived atop the VW for several years.

Stephanie might have been the one to catch all the big fish but I kept trying. Here's a shot she took of me in the old New Bedford Resevoir with a white perch. See! I could catch fish! They were just a lot smaller than the ones that she caught. She was using our "fishing camera", an old Minolta Autocord that went on to photograph several hundred weddings before I sold it for more than I'd paid for it.

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.