When a change in jobs made it necessary to drive up a steep, winding road every day, I needed a different car for the trip. The year was 1969. What I decided on was a Volkswagen Beetle. With manual transmission and a short wheel base, it was perfect for the everyday climb. The color was robin’s-egg blue, and we christened it the “Blue Bug.”
It was great for the drive to work but not so great for family vacations. With my wife and teenage daughter, we headed up the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains for a camping trip. With camping gear in the rack on top and other stuff in the back seat, we were really loaded. When the highway got to about 7,500 feet elevation and we were facing a strong headwind, the Blue Bug maxed out at about 45 mph. We didn’t try that again.
The grandchildren all loved to ride in the Bug. Our youngest, Grant, liked it so much that he asked, “When I grow up may I have the Bug?” Since “grow up” was many years away, we said “yes.”
When we moved from Southern California back to Deersville, Ohio, in 1990, the Bug went into the moving van along with our furniture. It was fun driving the Bug over country roads, but not in the snow when the roads were salted.
Years passed, and suddenly “grow up” was here. Grant had his driver’s permit and was ready to take possession of the Bug. The plan was for him to fly from Portland to Ohio, and then he and I would drive back to Vancouver. We both looked forward to a fun adventure.
While Grant was mastering the skill of stick-shift driving, we visited some of the local attractions in Ohio. We visited the birthplace of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, where there is a statue and kiosk. Next we journeyed to Cadiz, the home of one of three traffic signals in Harrison County. It is also the birthplace of Edwin Stanton, President Lincoln’s secretary of war, and Clark Gable, whose father was an oil field worker during the oil boom, around 1900. And we stopped at a strip mine overlook to see the largest shovel in existence at that time, the Silver Spade, which weighed 14 million pounds and had a boom length of 200 feet.
We were ready to head west. We left Deersville in a light rain that lasted most of the day, and stayed in Illinois. We drove through flat farmland and arrived at Mitchell, S.D., to visit the Corn Palace, a multipurpose arena whose outside is covered in murals made of corn. We visited Mt. Rushmore and stayed the night in Rapid City. The scenery had improved, with pine-covered hills replacing the brown flatland where large round hay bales were stacked to form windbreaks.
The next day, we visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. It was a solemn place for us, since we had just visited Custer’s birthplace. We were in the mountains now. We had some snow and high winds. It was a chore to keep the Bug under control. The final leg of the journey was through the Columbia River Gorge, and it was beautiful.
As I drove into the driveway and beeped the horn, Grant held up our “Washington or Bust” sign. We had driven 2,812 miles. Grant was too old for show-and-tell at school — but I suspected that some of his classmates would have seen Mount Rushmore and the Corn Palace, but none the Silver Spade and the beginning and ending of Gen. Custer.
The “Blue Bug,” now a deep maroon color, rests forlornly in the garage awaiting repairs and a new interior. When these are done, I will be happy to take it to a car show and relate its history to all who are interested in a 1969 Blue Bug.
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