Vandemic
By Suzanne Hackett-Morgan
2020 began with a sense of hopefulness and adventure. I had been accepted to an artist’s residency on the coast of Washington state for March to put some quality time into a memoir I’d been writing. I was already 38,000 words into the story and at a point where I’d benefit from refreshing the sensory memories of living in a constant state of dampness. Twenty-five years of living in the Nevada desert had evaporated much of the language I would have used to describe it. I found just the right satchel to fit my writing instrument (an iPad) and a sketchbook, and ordered a flat-brimmed, 20X Burns felt hat to shed the rain, keep my head warm, and give me a certain cache.
In January and February, I visited my parents in their Southern California home and my plan was to fly from Burbank to Seattle, rent a car, and catch a ferry across Puget Sound to the residency in Port Townsend. But my parents have a nightly news habit, and soon their FOX NEWS was reporting on this new, mysterious, deadly virus in Wuhan, China. The news alerted us to the first cases of the disease appearing in the United States in Washington state, and how the Pacific Northwest had become a hot spot in the nation. Before I knew it, flights were being cancelled, things were being shut down in California and back home in Las Vegas. Within days, I realized I had no choice but to set aside my aspirations for this residency and figure out how to get safely home to my husband and son before I no longer had that as an option. That was March 14, 2020.
I came home, adjusting to the fact that I would be going nowhere, far away or close by, anytime soon. My house contains my painting studio and everything I need for writing, so I declared my own artist residency and for a time it was really a positive and productive novelty. Like everyone else, I occupied idle hours with cooking, baking, and projects around the house we had been putting off. I finished a couple small paintings of landscapes I was pining for. Of course, I kept writing on the memoir, even as my world was shrinking to the size of the few rooms I occupied, my traveling reduced to the well-worn trails between studio, kitchen, bath, and bed.
Six months into this self-imposed isolation and all I began to think about was getting away and cutting loose, which for me meant getting back to the “van life.” Not the YouTube hipster version in $100,000 remodeled Sprinter vans with solar panels, USB, toilets, etc…but something more akin to the scrappy vehicles I explored in as a young woman. My first van cost $600: a rusty, blue 1960s Ford Econoline van I named “Tinker.” It was held together with Bondo and spittle, just a wooden plank for a dashboard, built-in plywood bookshelves and desk, a loft double bed, and a homemade pop-top that one held in place with four lengths of two-by-fours in the corners. The pop-top had canvas sides and vinyl windows that you would raise by laying on the four-inch foam pad serving as a mattress in the loft. You’d push the roof up with your feet as you juggled the two-by-fours into their post positions in the corners. It was a lot easier with company. But it was a fun transport for a college pal and me to get to our summer employment in Yellowstone Park and just the right vehicle for all kinds of hiking and hot spring shenanigans with our new friends.
As I learned over time, every van has an ending. Here’s how Van #1 met its demise.
It was dark, and I was driving Tink north from the Old Faithful Lodge to Canyon Village, right through the Hayden Valley, a large sub-alpine valley generally regarded as one of the best wildlife viewing spots in Yellowstone National Park. There are herds of bison there so numerous you could easily imagine the great prairie as it was centuries ago. I was just thinking about this when I had the prescient notion that I should slow down, just as a bison leading a small herd appeared in my headlights. A second later his frightened brown eye and head smacked up against my windshield with a loud whap! And the van came to a full stop. I backed up a little and could see the animal staggering off to the side of the road. I was closer to the ranger station at Canyon than at Old Faithful so I continued up the road. I didn’t know what else to do but report the accident and turn myself in.
When I parked at the ranger station, I was able to better assess the damage to Tink under a street light. The impact had smashed my dashboard (such as it was), the gauges barely hung on by their wires, the driver’s door was caved in, the windshield was cracked. The bison left a green/brown stripe splattered along the whole left side of the vehicle and some of its coarse brown hair was stuck to the flaking paint. The ranger was largely unsympathetic, but said he would go check on the bison and I could get an update in the morning. His report was encouraging, as he had found the bison on its feet, just standing at the side of the road, a little stunned but otherwise ok. Tink did not fare near as well, but after they laughed at the situation, the insurance company paid for a few repairs to make the van marginally drive able again. I eventually got it home to Burbank at the end of the season, where I ended up selling it to a group of filmmakers to haul their gear.
Van #2…not sure I ever gave it a name. It was a late 1960s, yellow VW bus with a spare tire mounted to its front grille and a colorful mandala sticker on its rear window. I bought this one in Missoula, Montana, to drive to rugby games. Took it to Glacier National Park with a best girl friend. Drove it home to Burbank for Christmas. Alas, on that trip problems ensued near Weiser, Idaho. I was going up a hill when a green light blinked to life on the speedometer. I thought, “How nice they use a green light to let you know everything is ok.” I knew there was also a red light and assumed that was the one foretelling bad news. This was before I knew about the book How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. Clunk, Clank, Crack, Blonk….zzzz…….DEAD. The green light means you had a serious oil problem. The clunks were a rod puncturing the engine block. I know that now. I don’t want to know what the red light means.
Somehow I got towed to town, and I got to park in a mechanic’s yard for a week while we waited for a new engine to arrive from Boise. I spent those waiting days singing and playing mandolin in bars and hanging out with itinerant workers living along the river. “Squirrel,” they offered. No thank you. Van #2 made it to California with its new engine (thank you Dad) but I traded it in for a more reliable mini-pickup with a camper shell which got me and my stuff back to grad school in Montana for the next semester.
My third van was a used 1990 Vanagon I named “Geordi” after Lt. LaForge from Star Trek the Next Generation (to me the van looked like a shuttlecraft). It was my everyday commuter to work and school (and by this time in my life I was married, a Mom, and working so I was able to afford the thousands a year it took to keep it running) but Geordi took us everywhere else as well: Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Las Vegas, the California coast. Just having it around was an invitation to go somewhere.
My favorite trip was with my 10-year old son driving from LA to Phoenix along the old alignments of Route 66 in Cali and Arizona. We wore matching coonskin caps and—even though the distributor cap crapped out in Kingman and only by the grace of God did we find a kindhearted mechanic who pulled a replacement out of his own defunct van to help us get back on the road—it was an “all-smiles onboard” adventure. After the family moved to Nevada, regrettably Geordi’s A/C was no match for the Las Vegas heat and the suit and nylons required by my new high-end job. I sold it on eBay to a guy in San Clemente so Geordi could retire at the beach.
My vehicles seem to reflect the stage of life I was in, and there’s nothing to compare to the feeling of driving a well-running Vanagon. You sit high up over the front wheels, the engine is in the back purring quietly. Nothing encumbers your view out the windshield; your perspective is that of being one with the road and the landscape, as I’ve experienced it on a motorcycle, but more chill, more “truckin.’” At least that’s how I remember it, but it’s now been 17 years since I’ve driven one. The confinement of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 may have contributed to what has become an obsession with finding and purchasing the right van to restore my joy.
The van of my dreams proved hard to come by. Given the pandemic, the market seems hot right now for anything one can escape in while isolating. I’m also not the last Boomer standing with a fetish for the VW bus. Looking for your vehicle online is challenging like I imagine dating sites are. Can you trust the pictures they posted? What about the stories of upgrades, lack of rust, and “it’s been garaged all its life.” What if you actually talk to the seller and they give you the heartbreaking story of how this was “the family van since I was 7.” And the prices take all the fun out of it.
I found a 1985 totally restored Westfalia camper van for $31,000. I put a $500 deposit on it and made plane reservations for my husband and I to fly down to Arizona and pick it up. I even worked one of my paintings into the deal. Then, the night before, I got paranoid thinking this precious restoration was too nice to even back out of my driveway let alone drive anywhere . So I let the deposit go. I found another Vanagon in Bakersfield; 1990 with a pop-top that had impressive photos. So the husband and I made the four-hour drive to give it a whirl. The van did not match the photos or the description at all; it was a nasty piece of work and so was the seller. I let that deposit go too.
The dealbreaker on all of these 30+ year old vehicles is that, just like us, they all have problems, readily apparent or just waiting to strand you on the high side of the Tehachapi Pass. It’s been a process of coming to the awareness that you can’t go home again unless you literally are stranded on the side of the road in Idaho and your parents really love you, or there’s a global pandemic and you’re stuck with the world on its own terms.
There is a happy ending. Through patience and determination and the willingness to try new things, we are welcoming a 2003 Eurovan Weekender into our life shortly. It rides enough like a Vanagon to give us that feeling, but it also gives us more confidence it won’t die after six blocks. We’re looking forward to small adventures until we can make a bigger trip, and I couldn’t be happier.
Photo/Courtesy of Suzanne Hackett-Morgan.
Suzanne F. Hackett-Morgan earned a Master’s Degree in Art (Painting) at California State University Northridge in 2003 and a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. She received recognition in 2007 from the Nevada Arts Council’s Artist Fellowship Program. Hackett-Morgan is a founding director of the Goldwell Open Air Museum and Artist Residency in Nevada and is its current Executive Director. A leader in the Nevada arts community, she is a consultant to other arts organizations through the Nevada Circuit Rider program.
Her landscape paintings have been exhibited in Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and California, and she has completed several public art commissions in Clark County, Nevada. Her downtown mural, Here It Is, was featured in The Killers’ CD, Sam’s Town.
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