I was lucky enough to drive a aqua and white 66 Dodge Van that had been converted to a camper, compete with pop up top!
I have no pictures of that one, but except for the pop-up (mine was aluminum and very rectangular) and the rims (mine were just pressed steel) that was it.
My father got it already customized right after he retired from the Navy in the early Seventies, why I have no idea. At the time, my two older brothers had moved out, and my parents each had a car, so...I got that one to drive.
Gosh. To be 17 years old...have a van which is, for all intents and purposes...yours. It was recognizable, and I had a lot of adventure in it...
Like the time I was tail end Charlie full of a lot of band instruments in a line of busses taking the CYO band somewhere, and my driveshaft exploded and came apart...nobody on the bus saw what happened, and they kept going without us to the competition, and...a good portion of their equipment!
We had been tooling along, me and two of my best friend lucky enough to be allowed to drive to the competition maybe 15 yards behind the last school bus in line. We could see the other kids clowning around through the rear windows, then suddenly...the vehicle began to vibrate. I involuntarily took my foot off the gas, and the vibration and thrum sound stopped, so...I pressed on the gas. When I did, the vibration not only recurred, but instantly increased and then-BOOM-the drive shaft smashed the underside of the van with enough force to make a dent in the floor you could see from the inside of the van. With my hands on the wheel, it felt as though the rear wheels had come off the ground just a bit, but...I can't remember if that happened, or if it seemed like it should. As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw shiny bits of metal going in every direction behind me in the road, glinting in that afternoon summer sun.
We pulled off the road, and knew we weren't going anywhere, then saw that we were right beside the Coffey's house, where one of the girls in our band lived. We knocked on the door, and got one of those "What are you boys doing here-aren't you going to the competition tonight?" kind of greetings. This was pre-cell phone days, so...we called the State Police, and asked if they could flag the busses down and give them a message that we were broken down. They said they would try, but I don't recall if they did...:) Or the time my best friend and I, bored on a Saturday night, went through every girl we could think of, trying to find a combination of two available we could go to a drive in movie with. We found a couple of gals we knew, picked them up, and went to the Drive in about 20 miles away.
I have no idea what movie we saw, but on the way home, driving down New England roads, my buddy was busy in the back making out with one of the gals, while I made awkward small talk with the other one sitting beside me as I drove down that twisting and hilly rural road. I didn't know the road that well, and suddenly, as I came around a slight curve and up a short, steep hill, was an overpass for an old railroad bed.
I didn't even have time to brake, and that Dodge van came all fours off the ground, and I was airborne. In the back, my buddy and his smooching parter were both thrown up in air when I went over that bridge, and the pop up top of the camper went up as well, so in the back, they were doing the equivalent of a road-borne "Vomit Comet" ride, if there were things like cameras back then. Up in that pop-up, there was a rectangle of canvas attached on one side and rolled up in a very thick plumbing iron pipe. You could pop the top up and secure it, unroll that canvas thing and attach the solid pipe to the other side and sleep on the stretched canvas. Well, that canvas thingie with the heavy pipe in it popped up in the air too, and we floated along kind of suspended in the air for perhaps a second or two before all four wheels slammed onto the pavement. Down came the foldable camper top with a crash. Down came my buddy and his date. Down came the blanket, followed by the canvas thing with that iron pipe in it!
It is amazing they didn't get brained by that thing, but it's also amazing I didn't wreck the vehicle because there was a turn in the road very close to where my Dodge van returned to Earth. Heh, we still talk about that one today! We know we're lucky. A lot of people that age don't come out of those things.
And the time I nearly froze in that Dodge van.
Me and my two best friends, in February of 1975, drove up to southern Maine to go to a "Color Guard" show. Those competitions in those days involved 99% females or our age, so we went to root for and pursue not only the girls in our unit, but the girls in the other units, as if that was ever going to happen. Heh, when you are 17, those are the driving forces. Plus, we did enjoy watching the shows.
Anyway, we drove up the day before and pulled off Route 95 into a little secluded turnaround area. We were in the dark, backed in, and maybe 50 yards away was the access road lit by a single streetlight, that led to the Interstate. We had recently gutted the camping inside of the van to "redo it" so it was bare walls, not even any crappy paneling between us, thin steel, and sub-zero temperatures. We had sleeping bags, and a Coleman catalytic heater. We figured we would be okay.
It wasn't even a contest. The Cold won, hands down.
I woke up at one point in the night, and my sleeping bag and me were frozen to the floor where one of us had knocked over an open drink. I wondered why the heater didn't even seem to keep us warm, and saw one of my buddies curled up fetally around that heater. Heh, I grabbed it from him, and did the same, then someone took it from me...:)
In the early morning, I was the first one up, and when I climbed into the driver seat and thawed a fist-sized viewing port through the window using the ball of my clenched hand, the windscreen cleared enough to see a Maine State trooper turn down this little dead end headed right for us. Heh, you can image the mini-pandemonium with the urgent tocsin "Guys! Get up, there is a cop car heading our way!" The guy was cool, just told us we couldn't stay there, and since we were leaving anyway...:)
So many memories of that car!
Thanks, openurmind...just felt like rambling back in time there!