‘COLD WAR’ ADVENTURES WITH HEINIE, A 1962 CONVERTIBLE BUG

[Note: The author, a former Air Force medic, spent two years putting band-aids (typically consisting giving ''Apes'' injections of V-Cillin-K for the Clap) on those unhappy souls who were assigned to guard Minuteman II missiles and SAC B-52H bombers in the US Air Force, while stationed at Minot AFB in North Dakota in 1967. The very first thing he did upon landing at his new duty station was to buy a used, blue 1962 VW convertible. Therein lie the following excerpts about truly sub-zero ‘Cold War’ life with ‘Heinie the wunderbug’.]

A winter’s tale (yellow snow explained)…

I''ve had a great number of adventures with some of my past VW beetles (Typ 2s, Type 181s), but none more frosty than the following frozen vignette from my annals (or is it anals?...I always get those two confused). It put a whole new meaning of ''Cold'' in ''Cold War''...

I’ll never forget one particular time when my good buddies Mike and Russ and I (all medics) drove out to Oswanna’s family’s farm on the south outskirts of town. It was deep winter, the snow was falling and the wind was blowing up a howling blizzard. It was a typical NoDak snowstorm, with the snow whipping by horizontally in 40 knot winds, obscuring almost everything from ground level up to about 30 feet above the deck, when we decided to go out to see my girlfriend in ‘Heinie’, my little blue VW convertible. But let me explain that a bit: the typical North Dakota snowstorm was more of a horizontal than vertical affair, since the unobstructed winds on that flat Dakota prairie swept all the dry snow in a layer over the ground to a height of from thirteen to twenty-five feet. This meant that vision ‘on the deck’ could be totally whited-out and so obscured that you couldn’t see more than 10 feet ahead, while just twenty-five feet higher up, the air was crystal-clear and the sun shining (albeit somewhat unenthusiastically).

For our part, there was so much snow already deposited on the ground that it was just about all we could do, even in my stalwart little bug, to keep ploughing on through the deep drifts that clung to the roadway. Despite the bug’s near-unstoppable snow-keeping ability and given the rapid build-up of that freezing white stuff, we all knew that to stop anywhere between town and farm would quite possibly mean getting snowbound and temporarily marooned until the storm blew over. Thus we kept driving onward, despite the fact that Russ and I had had several beers in town and were starting to feel a dire need to take a whiz (Mike, as a Russian Orthodox priest in training didn’t drink anything ‘harder’ than root beer). I had let Mike drive, so Russ and I were passengers in the cramped bug, but since our respective bladders threatened to burst on the next sharp impact with a bump on the roadway, in our increasing desperation we finally hit upon an ingenious plan to relieve ourselves without necessitating a perilous stop.

Forcing the bug’s right side door open against the howling slip-stream as a shield, first Russ (in the backl seat) and then I (riding shotgun) managed to trade places and climb over the gearshift to shoehorn ourselves into the right front seat in succession and wedge ourselves in the open doorway (no mean feat in a cramped bug) so as to direct a steaming jet of yellow fluid out onto the roadway. And this at a speed of about 35-40 mph in an almost total whiteout! It remains one of my finest performances to this day, I think, calling for a mix of good balance, reckless daring, and precise aim that would have made a navigator on one of our ‘nuke-armed’ BUFFs proud.

Mike’s performance as pilot (with nerves of pure ice) on this crucial mission was also flawless and after a short interval we managed to reach the safety of Oswanna’s farm where she wondered how we could be so crazy as to attempt a passage in those conditions (after all, even the farm animals had had enough intelligence to stay safety out of the storm and in the barn; those that didn’t, and ended up grazing on frozen weeds near the road leading up to Oswanna’s farm, might have been momentarily distracted by two neat little lines of yellow snow that pretty much led right up to a point shortly past the entrance, by her gate!).

Russ and I later paired off as suitors for Oswanna''s ''favors''. He was from Noo Yawk City and made ocasional painful efforts to tootle an alto saxophone that he fancied he was a cool jazzman at. I, on the other hand, was a California ex-surfer dude, blonde hair, surfing knots on gnarly knees and all. Russ was also a certified neurotic (not atypical of New Yorkers in my experience) and couldn''t match my quotient of natural California cool (so I imagined). Eventually I seem to have come ahead in our personal contest for Oswanna''s attention and remained a friend for several years after she left the frigid wastelands of the prairie for San Fornication (er, I mean ''San Francisco'') to try a stint as a teacher there. Russ seems to have fallen completely off her radar after we got out of the Air Farce.

Fortunately, we were allowed to remain there at her farm for a few hours until the worst of the storm had abated somewhat and were also invited for dinner; arriving back at the base’s main gate well after dark, the Apes (Air Force slang for ‘Air Police’) were likely scratching their heads over the tardy arrival of my bug out of the heart of NoDak darkness on such a terrible night!

Heinie, the German ‘chick magnet’

In the spring, another good friend and fellow medic (‘Paul’, who had a bright red 1963 VW convertible) would join my own blue 62 ragtop bug for a two-car convoy to the nearby shores of Lake Sakakawea, hauling a car-full or two of healthy, eager ‘Norsecahoovian’ Minot College girls along for a day in the sun. There were small sailing dinghies available for sailing (El Toros & Lido 14 Class) at the lake and the fishing was also great, if you liked great big lazy lake carp. Sometimes during the winter snow melt-off, these huge carp would get trapped in little drying rivulets and you could just wade in and catch them by hand (some 22 inches long and larger). To me, a person whom the fish usually avoided (as often as the girls), that was quite a unique experience!

Along with us was a stunningly Nordic blonde coed named Carole Ann Johnson, whom I had designs on, but she ruined everything by informing me that she was saving her body for her husband, whomever he turned out to be. She was a good little Lutheran (LSA), so the odds were indeed daunting...almost as daunting as they would be for a good little Morman girl! 

Seeing a convertible VW bug in North Dakota back in those days was rare enough in itself, but seeing two together sailing down the Dakota prairie roadways in convoy in 1967 was somewhat of a sight to behold. The fact is that, appearances to the contrary, the soft-top VW beetle was actually far better insulated than its hard-top counterpart, so in addition to the excellent snow-tracking and cold-weather characteristics of our ‘Strength-Through-Joy’ wagon progeny, they were also warmer in the winter. [Regardless of Onkel Dolf’s less socially acceptable accomplishments back during the war, he and Grossvater Ferdie (Porsche) really got it right when they came up with the käfer!]

My own blue 62 soft-top bug (my second car) was named ‘Heinie’ (after the German poet, Heinrich Heine, a well-known German pacifist of the late 1700s) and it was the first thing I acquired after arriving at Minot. [My very first car had been a lime green ’40 Chevy Master Deluxe Coupe (that was barely able to wheeze its way to the California beach I used to surf at and back) that I had picked up for $50.]

Having had to leave it home when I enlisted, I gave a lot of thought to what sort of car I would acquire at my newly assigned base before passing by a local Minot used car dealership and spotting the blue bug. It was a 62 model (at that time only 5 years old) and the asking price, used, in 1967 was $600. Although a considerably daunting sum for an Airman making only $125 a month to contemplate, I was fortunate enough to get an HFC (Household Finance Company, a franchised high-rate-of-interest, commercial loan-shark business) loan for the full amount and soon took charge of the small beast. It seemed to be in great condition with only about 60,000 Dakota prairie miles on the clock, so Heine and I began a happy association that would last until I foolishly traded it in on a new 69 beetle (big mistake, as it turned out) some years later, shortly after I mustered out.

Sheepskin and battery warmers

While installing a battery warmer wrap under the rear seat (where the battery was located, being a dubber), I had been briefly startled to find enough oats and barley to fill a bucket lurking there! Asking the dealer about this, I was told that the car had formerly belonged to the son of a local Lakota Sioux chief who had used it to haul around feed for his sheep. I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t use it to ferry the sheep themselves, thinking this all over, but the car had a strong sense of good karma (no pun intended, but it’s a good one) about it, so we hit it right off.

The second winter I was in Minot, my cohorts and I decided (after a few beers, of course) on Halloween to put a lighted and carved pumpkin on top of the ragtop’s roof and drove slowly down Minot’s mainstreet in a howling blizzard. All the sensible townfolk were off the streets and staying warm at home, but unfortunately, the local constabulary was on patrol and we were pulled over. Since having a lighted jack-o-lantern on the roof one’s car had not yet been specifically identified as a vehicular hazard at that time, we received a ticket for some other catch-all violation of the North Dakota auto code (creating ‘malicious confusion’, perhaps?) and were let go with a warning to leave the pumpkins at home henceforth!

Despite the often challenging conditions encountered on the Northern American Prairie, Heine the VW ragtop gave me excellent, uncomplaining service while in the US Air Force, regardless of whether I was freezing my arse off in North Dakota or (somewhat later) roasting under the merciless Arizona sun (at my next base assigned, MAFB in AZ), and I really should have kept it, since I regarded it with about as much affection as a favorite dog; you don’t survive weeks of severe 12 degree winter weather with ANY car without silently thanking God every time you arrived safely at your destination! It never once failed to start right up, even when the outside temperature was a good 15-18 below (an ancestral memory I am sure it inherited from its unlucky KdF precursors on the Russian Front during WW2!).

Heine is sold to a Hippie author’s friend

Unfortunately, after getting out of the Air Force and returning to the Peoples Republic of Berkeley, I decided to trade Heinie in on a new model VW. Originally intent on getting a new 1969 VW convertible to replace Heinie, they had none available at the Berkeley VW dealer, so I let the ^&%^$*& salesman sweet-talk me into getting a beige hard-top käfer instead. True to VW’s rep for trouble-free Fahrvergnügen, it ran perfectly, as smooth and uncomplainingly as a Swiss watch, but I soon got tired of it since it had none of the peculiar little quirks and endearing rattles that I had come to regard as ‘personality’ in my blue 62.

For some reason I’ve never been able to either understand or explain, I actually enjoy having a few eccentricities in my vehicles; something about karma again, I guess. [Somewhat later I heard (from the dealer) that my beloved Heinie had been sold to a friend of notorious post-Beat era author Richard Brautigan!]

However, being very protective of it and trying to guard the brand new 69 bug against any possibility of damage on the crowded Berkeley streets, I was in the habit of leaving my new bug parked safely at home by the curb, in the street in front of my apartment, and used a small motorcycle to get to and from work. Only a week after I had bought the new beetle, I returned from work to find that some garbage truck had passed by too close to it and, misjudging the clearance, left a huge crease along the entire left (driver’s) side, gouging a one inch deep gash in both front and rear fenders! Since the fenders on old VW bugs project a good 6 to 8 inches beyond the doors, it is all too easy to overlook the fact that the lower-situated fenders are closer to one’s passing vehicle than might otherwise be apparent and in a somewhat higher American, full-sized sanitation truck…well, so much for my justifiably paranoid precautions! Seeing that great ragged groove along its flanks, left me devastated…I felt like my girlfriend had been violated!

Fahrvergnügen lives on!

Eventually, I sold the 69 bug and bought a beautifully funky old double barn-door 1955 Typ 2 (named ‘Urge’), which I had a number of equally amazing adventures with (including an early summer trip through Death Valley!) but eventually sold that when I went to work overseas for the Saudi Government.

Since then, I’ve had a whole series of VW ‘air suckers’, including several now-ultra-rare 412s, a whole gaggle of 914-4 ‘Volksporsches’ (including one real Porsche 914-6), several more ‘käfer’ bugs and finally (my next-to-last mount), a 1973 VW Type 181 that has been tricked out like a WW2 German Kubelwagon.

My ‘KubelThing’ definitely raised eyebrows at the local German-American club fests, but it suited me so perfectly that I felt it unlikely to ever again feel the need to gaze lustfully at someone else’s dubber with that acquisitive urge we all know so well. [This was later shown to be as untrue as President Biden’s claim to be the ‘salvation’ of America…].

After an interval of a decade or more , I found myself with a superbly maintained 1974 ‘Super Beetle’ that I foolishly sold to a parsimonious Canadian, eh! And finally, I have very recently acquired another ‘certified VW money pit’ (a bright-orange 1973 Standard Beetle...it has a small sign on its rear that says "Slow is all I know!") that is now my ‘emotional support vehicle’ of the moment.

Of course, now all new VWs are injected liquid-slurpers, but as an old Porsche Club friend once told me, “If it ain’t got an air-sucker shoved up it’s arse, it ain’t a REAL VW!”

Luftsauger über alles (Air-suckers above all), Kameraden!