We bought our Five Different Shades of Orange 1973 Super Beetle at a garage sale in Bristol back in ’02 or 3. That kinda makes it sound like we were rolling in cash and just picking up cars as we were out and about enjoying a Saturday, but it actually took a few weeks to make sure we had the money… and Bob (the seller) was having a fair amount of separation anxiety… so it was a process. He would come into the restaurant Kateri and I were managing to grab a bite and we would chat to get acquainted with each other a bit more so that he could feel comfortable knowing his little bug was going to a good home. We feel it did.
It was one of those days where we were simply out and about driving around Vermont, watching shit go by, and hitting some yard sales…Kateri loved “Yardsaling”. The Super Beetle was parked on the road with a for sale sign in the window, so we started the whole kicking the tires, inspecting underneath, checking out the rusty spots, and dreaming of what it would be like to use for one of our favorite pass times… smoking weed (with a couple of Road Sodas back in the day) and driving the back roads of the Green Mountains… together.
The inspection and dreaming was all going along fine until I had decided to roll a window down… and it didn’t go back up… and we hadn’t met the owner yet! Yup, Kateri was pretty proud of me at that point! Well, really all it did was force us (me) to find the owner and have a conversation about the vehicle… because I might’ve broken it. When we found Bob we told him we were checking out the car and his first response was, “You didn’t roll down the window, did you?”. Yup…. proud.
We had a nice conversation, checked out some of the other stuff he was selling, purchased an iron gate that we carted around with us for years (not sure where that ended up!), and set up a time to take the bug for a test drive. Of all of our experiences with that little beetle, the test drive was my favorite. Kateri had never been in… or at least driven…(?) a Volkswagen Bug before and we figured that even if we didn’t buy the car, she at least got to have that experience! I’ll tell you… from the moment she saw that little, Five Different Shades of Orange Super Beetle… with a sunroof!… it always put a smile on her face. To be able to clearly remember her enthusiasm when she got into that car, fired it up and heard that distinct Bug sound as she cautiously took off down the road with the windshield six inches from her face, it makes me happy to this day… even as I can feel the tears on my cheeks. (I guess that’s how you know it was a good thing)
I love all the memories I have of Kateri and I with that little buggy. It was an adventure every time we pulled away from our little house in the hills… to drive around other hills… never knowing if it was gonna start up again once you stopped for gas, a bite to eat, or to just take in a view. There was one time we decided to putz down south a tiny ways to where Kateri’s little sister was working for the summer at a kid’s camp. Luckily it was a beautiful day because at every stop we had to wait, let the engine cool down (I think. Again, I’m a cook and not a mechanic!… but believe those engines were air cooled.), and hope that it would start so that we could get to the next point on the trip… and eventually home! It was a great lesson in patience.
The license plate! Oh my gosh… I loved our license plate. It was the first time we got vanity plates. (Are they still called that? Personalized?… whatever) At first, Kateri wanted to have some sort of variation of Pickin’ Apples… her code phrase for sex when she was younger. But we weren’t able to get one of those. We live in Vermont… there are a lot of “Apple” people here… so we started brainstorming other ideas. As much as I like to think it was “our“ Five Different Shades of Orange ’73 Super Beetle… it was really Kateri’s. Once we realized her nickname would fit on the plate, we just thought it would be appropriate! And then we found out THAT was taken. So what do you do?… You add a number to the end! Yup… people would see us puttering around The Green Mountains, smiles ear to ear, in a bright orange bubble with green rectangles on either end that said… SQUIRT1..!
Although “Squirt” is what a lot of people call Kateri, we got a kick out of thinking about how drivers who were following us would interpret it!
When we moved to Colorado in 2007 we had to get rid of it. A friend said he could hold onto it for us and used his ex-girlfriend’s AAA membership to pull it out of it’s winter storage space… tarped in the woods… and transport it north to his place. It wasn’t in too great of shape at that point, the rust was kinda running rampant. As the tow truck guy was slowly using the winch to pull it up the angled flatbed… the battery fell through the floor! It’s sorta sad thinking about how she never hit the road again, but it’s kinda fun thinking about how our friends would sometimes pack into that broken down and stationary Bug after they had a few drinks, pass around a joint, talk, and reminisce about the good times. Kateri got to have that experience once when she came back to help a friend out. I love that image… Kateri smiling and happy in her ’73 Super Beetle… with people she loves.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
- Last night I realized I had stopped counting how many days Kateri has been gone… how long I’ve been a widower… and I was comfortable with it. I figured it just meant other things were starting to fill my brain in this new life. Transitioning… or some crap like that. Then I rambled into my phone… and played a song.
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Well… I officially have a Therapist for the first time in my adult life. It’s funny, as I sat here after writing that sentence, I didn’t know what I really wanted to say!… and then a friend texted and my thoughts shifted to jogging in the rain… which sounds kinda sloshy… fun, but I will probably never do… and doesn’t have anything to do with my Therapist. This is sorta what happens for me every time I stop and take the time to think about what it is I’m going through… where I’m at… what brought me here over the last 44 years and how it all works together to push me in a certain direction as I try my best to steer the wheel of life… which happens to have a significant amount of “play” in it! I keep seeing sayings like “YOU control your life” and “It’s how you show up” type stuff… and it’s true… but there’s a shitload out there that we have absolutely no control over which affects our life in one way or the other and to whatever varying degree! Hence… “play in the wheel”! (My father had an old Wagoneer. One of those classy ones with the mountain scene on the back widow. You could give the wheel a quarter turn before you headed in whichever direction!… Man, I would love to have that Jeep now.)
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 