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The vehicle that was the "Sunshine" of my life
This entry was posted on 4/29/2007 3:05 PM and is filed under Movies, Cars.
One of the movies I really connected with last year was "Little Miss Sunshine."
As entertaining as it was, I'm not sure it was really worth all the Oscar buzz. I could explain more, but that's not the point of this post.
The point is this: I really felt an emotional kinship with one of the movie's main characters.
No, I'm not talking about Abigail Breslin's Olive or Alan Arkin's Edwin, the cranky grandpa.
I'm talking about the big yellow Volkswagen bus that takes the family across the country on their misadventures. 
That very bus was the most memorable car of my childhood.
I wish I could say that I spent my pre-adolescence pushing our own 1973 yellow VW bus manually so that it could get it into gear. Or that it dramatically jumped over a few concrete barriers and fell apart in a hotel parking lot.
Unfortunately, that stuff happens in Hollywood, not during Rob Hoffman's early years.
Yet I loved our bus. It was quite the character.
This was no minivan: The two rows of passenger seats were really just padded benches. And instead of carpeting, the floor was black rubber. With its underpowered engine, every steep hill seemed like Mount Everest.
But the most unique feature? The raised back shelf. Today, my parents would probably have been arrested. They threw pillows and blankets onto that shelf. And that's where my younger sister Alex and I would sleep - without seatbelts - while our family drove up every Friday night to our 14-acre farm, 60 miles north of New York City. Underneath us, serving as the perfect white noise, was the rear engine that was the hallmark of Volkswagens from 30-40 years ago.
I shudder to think what a rollover might have done to us.
The fact that I'm writing this today tells you that such an event, thankfully, never happened.
We crammed all kinds of things in that bus: Small sailboats, an army of kids, elaborate model airplanes and even a sick calf. (Imagine that happening in a Dodge Caravan). But my favorite story involves parents weekend at Camp Winadu in western Massachusetts.
Because all the local hotels were booked, my dad came up with an idea. He would place a wooden plank that would run nearly the entire length of the bus, supported by both the front passenger seats and the back shelf. And on top of that plank, they would place a mattress, which would turn the bus into their own little Motel 6.
The arrangement came in handy in other ways as well. One evening, my parents attended a concert in nearby Tanglewood. For those unfamiliar with this venue, it is a summertime mecca for outdoor classical concerts. And it can get pretty crowded at times. So rather than deal with the exiting traffic, my parents simply crawled under the covers, napped for an hour or two and left the empty Tanglewood parking lot without tapping on the brakes once.
It was such a successful idea that about 10-15 years later, while I was off enjoying my adulthood, they repeated the trick at another outdoor concert.
By that time, however, the bus had finally given way. Fewer and fewer mechanics were able to figure out the foibles of the VW bus and its unique attributes all but disappeared from the automotive vocabulary. Eventually, my dad caved in and traded it in for a Vanagon, which Volkswagen began building in 1980 with such newfangled features as (gasp) power steering, air conditioning and electrical instrument panels. Now in their 70s, my parents still use it today - though only for short trips. They also don't speak about it with the same fondness as the old bus.
As for myself, I guess I did have at least one misadventure with the VW bus. I learned how to drive at its steering wheel, mastering its dodgy manual shift and even managed (small miracle!) to become proficient at parallel parking.
But at the age of 16, the bus caused me to fail my first driving test.
At one point, when we were in a cul-de-sac, my tester told me to go into reverse.
To my horror, I proceeded to back into a fire hydrant that I couldn't see through my rear view mirror because my car seat and the rear window were too high.
My ego was bruised, but the bus was fine.
Let me put it this way: I didn't have to get out and push it back to where my mom was waiting for me.
See? Hollywood isn't anything like real life.
At least my life.
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