I recently traveled to Chesapeake, Virginia to visit my mother for the first time in several years. When I was last there her garage and the barn out back still had quite a bit of Volkswagen parts stored in them. Over the years since my dads death mom slowly but surely eradicated the inventory of new and used VW parts he had accumulated.
It wasn’t until I actually went for this visit that I realized how serious mom had been about wanting to get rid of all that “junk” (now mind you a good bit of it was brand-new-still-in-the- package parts). Where there had at one time been four or five engine blocks (short and long) there was now just one partially assembled (or disassembled - I can’t be sure which) block which promptly came home with me. In the barn rafters were about six to eight brand new running boards, and the bottom half of a back seat for a Type I. On the wall was a lone hub cap and on a metal shelf unit I found a lonely aluminum VW emblem with the prong that attaches it to the bus front missing.
Gone were the boxes and boxes of brand new engine tin, tin screws, fender webbing, muffler donuts, 36mm axle nuts, gland nuts, gasket sets, oil caps, carburetors, accelerator cables, fuel filters, hose clamps, coils, visors, door handles, stick shift knobs, headlight chrome, bumper brackets, turn signals, rims and mirrors. Even the old spare fenders were gone! :(
My dad has been gone fourteen years now and even though I miss him everyday, the empty void once occupied by him never seemed quite so immense and final as it did when I discovered the last vestiges of Volkswagen parts he had amassed was no longer there. And this at Christmas time too.
Unfortunately nothing physical on earth lasts forever and as much as I cringe at the thought, one day hundreds of years in the future the roads will be void of our fantastical, lovable cute little cars. Like a well loved pet, we receive joy from our bugs and buses and the memories we create with them. My dad and the hoard of VW parts he left behind are gone from my moms house now but they will always be there for me to enjoy in memory even if they aren’t here in person.
-Charlton (a.k.a. “Bugz”)