My VW Bug

I bought my first VW bug in 1976 when I quit my job in Indiana and moved to Virginia to accept a job with a government contractor. It wasn't much to look at: a grey/blue 1960 model with a lot of rust spots. The body started rusting out so badly that I could see pavement passing by under the driver’s side floor board. As I was driving along, if I hit a puddle of water in the roadway, my feet got wet.

Driving from Indiana to Virginia with all my stuff piled into it, it was so bogged down that semi rigs passed me on uphill grades.

Finally, the entire braking system failed and I decided enough was enough and put the car out of its mystery. I bought a 1971 red bug in 1977. I drove that car to death, making several trips between Virginia and Indiana and between Virginia and Florida. It served me well, but finally started requiring successive minor repairs so that I was accumulatively putting out too much money to keep the thing on the road. I gave it to my sister’s husband at the time. He used it for parts, I think. A coworker at the police department had a car for sale which I bought in 1983: a burnt orange Datsun B210.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of my original bug. I have a couple of the one that replaced it.
 
 

The sign out front reads “Defense Communications Engineering” or something close to that. It is in Reston, Virginia. I had to visit the facility from time to time as a part of my job. My red bug can be seen parked near the front of the building.

 
 
 

I lived in Vienna, Virginia. This picture was taken during the “Blizzard of 1978.” It snowed a lot and it was cold. The following four pictures don’t include my red bug, but they give a sense of what the blizzard that year was like.

 
 

A gas station at Maple Avenue and Old Courthouse Road. I lived on Old Courthouse Road east of this gas station.

 

This is a parking lot along Maple Avenue. There are cars under those white hills.

 

This is the front yard of the house in which I lived in Vienna. It was a Civil War era wooden clapboard house with two stories, a basement, and an attic. This is the path leading to the roadway out front. The metal pipes are the railing for the stairs.

 
 

Maple Avenue, also known as Route 123, was the major road through Vienna. The sidewalks remained impassable for several days.