Not All Legends are Bad

all the ways my '61 VW Bug tried to kill me

Me and Derek in the parking lot of Walt Whitman High School.

For years I understood that my first car had been lit on fire by David Fiver and Jan Marsfield in an abandoned parking lot while they looked on from a block away as the fire engines and police arrived. Jan had placed his four wisdom teeth on the driver’s seat in hopes that he would be identified and could start a new life.

At least that’s the story I believed and told. Dad had loaned the ‘61 VW Bug to Jan, “who finally drove it to its death” as Dad told me, after having passed it down to each of his three children. Then a few years after that, David told me about the parking lot fire and Jan’s faked death.

It was not until I sat with Dad as he lay dying from cancer and we swapped stories that he told me, no, that never happened. He got the VW back from Jan and took it to a junkyard. When David and I caught up by Zoom a few years back, I asked him about the car arson, and he confirmed they did all that - but with another car. The wisdom teeth part was real.

For decades, I had conflated the two stories into one - and believed it. That’s how legends start. Not all legends are bad.

What I do remember about my VW Bug is how many times it almost killed me. Not that it cared - did not even provide us with seat belts, a common courtesy in later automobiles. Once I was driving a bugful of high school students to “629” - the Thursday morning breakfast club at Fourth Presbyterian Church where we would eat sugar cereal and pancakes and then watch a ridiculous skit often involving shaving cream. Then the youth minister would give a brief Gospel presentation. Hundreds of kids went. Afterwards we’d take the rubbery pancakes so lovingly made each week by a retired couple and have “pancake wars” on River Road as we drove to school. Not safe.

As I was driving this group of friends packed into the car, we skidded on ice going downhill at the intersection of Westbard and Massachussets. I remember us turning around and around in the middle of the intersection, watching the world rotate as we all screamed our heads off. I remember seeing the lights change from red to green to red to green to red again - not the same light mind you, but four different lights going round and round in front of the windshield as we spun. Thankfully, all the other cars had stopped to watch the spectacle and I puttered away to 629. Afterwards I did some calculations and figured out we’d done a full 540 degree turn. Evil Knievel would’ve been proud.

Another time my car was in the Homecoming Parade, advertising the school play, Agatha Christie’s “Appointment with Death.” It was not a very good play. On the final night of dress rehearsal, our director, Mr. Gallagher, said out loud “Oh, now I get it.” And he had selected it. In any case, I played Alderman Higgs and my car was advertising it in the parade, with posters taped to the side and what not. My friend, Derek Denkla, asked if he could drive. I stood on the passenger side running board - a thing cars had back then, incredibly, where you could stand outside the car as it drove, like some kind of Secret Service agent. Bad idea. Derek took the turn into the parking lot too fast and the passenger side door swung open, throwing me up into the air, horizontally. I clung for dear life to the tiny gunwale on the roof of the car, the only thing keeping me on this side of eternity.

This other time I was driving home from Walter Reed to get my weekly blood test after being diagnosed with ITP, and the brakes just broke. And by broke, I mean, the rod connecting the pedal to the brakes literally broke as I pushed my foot down. I was speeding straight into a busy intersection so I quickly turned the wheel left in front of ongoing traffic and drove onto a church lawn until I putted to a stop. It was Lutheran. I went inside to tell them what happened and the young pastor seemed nonplussed. He was tall with straight bangs, and let me call my Dad from the office. His only condition was to help me push the VW to the edge of the lawn because I was blocking their church sign.

Dad came and we drove the Bug down the hill to a nearby garage by pushing it against the rear bumper of our station wagon, and then slowly driving the wagon to the garage with the Bug inching behind, its only brake the station wagon bumper. We tried to tell the mechanic what the problem was. I think at this point it’s important to mention that the emergency brake did not work either. We tried to warn him about that, but he waved us off and jumped in. After circling around the gas pumps a few times, not able to stop, he put it in reverse or something and when it finally came to rest, he jumped out, shaking. Anyway, they eventually fixed it. The Bug had not killed me yet.

Once it almost killed me another way. The night before I had to report to Navy ROTC orientation at Duke, I decided to drive into DC with a friend to walk around the Lincoln Memorial. When we returned to the car around midnight, the door locks decided to no longer work. After mulling around, trying to figure out how to get in, I opened the hood and punched through the cardboard glove compartment. I then reached through to open the little triangle window. Then I reached through the triangle window to roll down the main passenger side window and opened the door from there. Once more, I survived. But I did not get much sleep before the Navy made me walk around the Gothic campus for five days nonstop in gym shorts and black leather shoes. We looked goofy. I joined the Army.

How much of this legend and how much of this is truth? After years of telling and retelling the same stories, I can’t say for absolute certain. What I do know is that as Dad lay dying we swapped stories about this car he loved so much, chuckling at each one, sharing these memories together.

Not all legends are bad.