Progress being made, (on support vehicle)

(Kitty still with us)

In addition to safety gear, recently a flood of boxes containing new parts steadily kept arriving. My suspicious-of-the-empty-boxes-spouse asked, “What are all these parts that keep showing up? I thought you had a 500 dollar limit?”

Oh yes my little crumpet, tis true I can spend no more than 5 Benjamins on that heaping pile of rust we foolishly decided to call a racecar.

However, there is NO spending cap on Brownie, the worlds greatest crappy RV! In fact, since we were gonna keep it after all, I decided to pimp it out! I mean if we are going to use this as race headquarters, I gotta replace the exhaust anyways, and we GOTTA do SOMETHING cool to it!!!

My “I-can’t-believe-I-married-you-spouse” slapped herself on the forehead, yet again.

“No, no, I have it ALL figured out. I even have a plan this time!” I defended my self.

Side-pipes, disco ball, vintage steering wheel, some shag carpet to go with the existing shag carpet, a little velour to compliment the wood paneling, I’m doin this thing up big time, ’70 STYLE! “

Ooooh yeaaaaahhhhh!”

“Think about it” I added excitedly to my rolling-eyes-spouse. “It could be, like, the ultimate 70’s cruising van, except with a built in shower!!”

“Oh dear, REALLY?” she said with a lot of hesitation. “I dunno, I think I would have to actually see it.” While she still doubted my vision if not my ability, I could see she was starting to get infected with my enthusiasm for the project.

I forget, she is a product of the ‘80s. And while the passage of much time has allowed me to finally look back on the ‘70’s with rosy-colored goggles, she has no memory of it at all. Bell-bottom cords, feathered hair, velour shirts, CUSTOM VANS, CB radios, Smokey and the Bandit, BJ and the Bear, NONE of this rang any bells. So I went online and looked up as many photos of vintage custom vans as I could find on Yahoo and Google.

Turns out, there are about 5.

What the HELL? What happened to all the cool shaggin-waggons? (I doubted myself for a moment, then I was sure, no, it really DID happen).

I suddenly had a new obsession, researching the millions of vintage custom vans that apparently have all mysteriously vanished off the planet. Were we REALLY so embarrassed about what had transpired, that we spent the entire 1980’s wiping out any trace they even existed? Am I the only one who secretly disagreed every time they were made fun of? I find that hard to believe, even if it is true.

In fact, now that I think about it, my favorite TV show “Life on Mars” had not shown ONE example of the “Vannin Craze”.

Hmmm… not to be deterred, I got back on Evil-bay and found some vintage customizing brochures from the era, in COLOR! Brochures are my heroin. I have more than I can count, from Ford Couriers, to 1960s Dodge School buses, and nearly every early Datsun sales catalog ever printed. Sometimes I just gotta stare at one for an hour to get my fix.

So a few days later a bunch of custom van brochures showed up at the house… and I had a lot of explaining to do.

After I made up for it with a night at the movies and some pizza, I showed her the vans in the photos. Some were horrible, some were kinda cool. But I got the all important “That would be neat” from “under-my-spell-spouse”.

And then I reminded myself:

I am SUPPOSED to be working on the race-car.

Next: Progress on RACE car

Previous: An ode to my fuzzy little companion (Sad)


From the Beginning: The Hook... (Part 1)