There's a certain romance in driving a forty-two-year-old VW van across the backroads of America's Heartland. In my case, that romance is with Josie, my VW Vanagon "Adventure Camper."
She's the furhest thing from a sleek, modern marvel. But she has something better: character. She is more akin to a loaf of bread on wheels than she is an areodynamic wonder. She's powered by nothing more than a 67-horsepower, flat four, fuel-injected, air-cooled engine; German engineering at its finest.
More than a travel vehicle, she is a companion, an ark of half-forgotten dreams bumping along the two-lane backroads. When she pulls into a gas station or decides to rest under the shade of a knarled cottonwood, people start to pay attention. They stare. Then they smile, not at me, mind you, at her, the way travelers once nodded and tipped their hats to a passing stagecoach.
She carries more than spare parts, backpacks and canned beans: she carries stories of every greasy hand that's ever laid hands on her engine, pronounced a benediction, and then swore when the prayer wasn't answered. She carries rumors of adventures to come. And when idling at the courthouse square, there's a certain dignity about her, like an elder who's seen it all and still finds wonder in the mundane.
Strangers smile—not at me, mind you, but at her, the way travelers once tipped hats to a passing stagecoach.
1
Breakdowns are inevitable. You don't wander the backroads in an ancient van without expecting to brook with catastrophe. One soggy, miserable rainy day I was hunting for the hamlet of Alone, Kentucky, noted in my Rand McNally Atlas as a ghost town. I searched and searched, criss-crossing rain-sickened asphalt, and found nothing but an old cemetery marked "Alone." I drove deeper off-road, hoping to find the remnants of abandoned houses and boarded-up storefronts. I got nothing. I jumped out of Josie, left her idling, and looked at my phone and noticed I had zero cell coverage. I was isolated out there, with no phone; the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I jumped back into Josie's cockpit, admitted defeat, and headed toward the closest Walmart parking lot, where we'd spend the night.
I headed for the fringe parking lot, pulled into a space, and cut the engine in hopes of catching a quick nap. Waking from the nap, I decided to relocate; noise from the road fronting the parking lot was just annoying enough that I knew it would keep me awake. Back in the cockpit, I turned the key and… nothing. Not a chirp, not a growl or a stutter. Nothing.
My mind instantly jumped to the fact that Josie's red alternator warning light had been flickering at me. I simply ignored her warning. Now, here I was stranded. A cold chill shot through me when I realized that if I'd cut Josie's engine back when looking for the ghost town, I'd have been stranded there, with no cell service. I was drawing heavily from a karmic bank account already dangerously close to being overdrawn.
Frustration roiled inside me, but there was nothing to do but unroll the bedding, make some coffee on the camp stove, and watch the thunderheads muscle the sun from the sky. I swear I could almost hear Josie snicker: Slow down, kid. The view's better when the wheels ain't spinning.
2
This romance lives in the imperfections. Her rear suspension squeaks and groans when confronted with dirt and gravel roads. The dash taps out a high-pitched Morse code that I've yet been able to decipher. But those aren't faults; they're features, each carrying a lesson. They force me to listen. I lighten my foot when climbing a hill so as to not overheat her engine; I pat the dashboard when reaching the pass, her engine sighing with relief. She has taught me patience the way a river teaches stone, but constant abrasion.
And when confronted with speed limits, while carrying around half a studio apartment, she laughs. Full speed on the intestate? She's barely able to manage seventy with a brisk tailwind. But coax her into a steady fifty-five, and she will cruise that pocket all day, if you ask her to.
I've learned that slowness isn't punishment; it's invitation. It leaves enough time to read hand-lettered signs such as "HOME-MADE FRY PIES 4 SALE or REPTYLE ZOO, NEXT EXIT," allowing debate whether a fry pie or a corn snake is deemed more urgent at that moment. Slowness means you can catch a whiff of alfalfa curing in a windrow or hear a cow bell out there beyond the tree line or notice when the soil turns from clay to loam. Other cars race past those like a radio stuck on scan; Josie plays them on vinyl.
At night the rain on her metal roof is like finger drumming a countertop, a lullaby no sound machine can rival. Morning rolls in slow. I make oatmeal on the stove and eat it straight from the pot while watching the steam curl up and roll through the cabin. It's luxury measured in silence.
3
Josie seems to attract certain kinds of people: ex-hippies, classic car enthusiasts, kids who've only known cars that communicate using dashboard emojis. They like to touch her. They press their hands to her metal flanks like they're touching a relic, which, of course, they are. At a grocery store in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, a man in bib overalls circled twice before asking what year she was. 1982, air-cooled engine, I said. He patted the rear quarter panel and nodded. "That's when vans were still honest; no digital garbage on this machine." We stood there, neither friends nor strangers, but merely co-conspirators in the cult of honest steel.
These types of people materialize when trouble's afoot. No politics, no religion. They kneel beside the jack and offer a hand. Once, in Alabama, a pastor in shining shoes climbed under Josie in a misting rain to help fix a dangling muffler bracket. "Got anything like an eight-inch ring clamp by any chance?" he asked. And I did. He grabbed a Philips head screwdriver and took to rigging the clamp. "That'll hold you until you figure out a more permanent solution," he said, as if he were reading scripture. He crawled out from underneath Josie and invited me to Wednesday supper at the church fellowship hall. Fried chicken, sweet tea, and ninety minutes of stories about revivals and the day part of the sanctuary ceiling collapsed. "No one was around, hallelujah," said a deacon.
These kinds of micro-communions are the welds holding together a patchwork of long, curving roads. I collect them all in my notebook like pressed flowers. And when I get the chance to review those notes, I realize Josie isn't just transport; she's a lure.
4Her confined quarters demand routine: crack the window vents, close her ancient, original equipment curtains, cover the reading light with a bandana. Make up the bed, original foam mattress with a two-inch memory foam covering that supports sheets and a sleeping bag. Dinner cooked on a camp stove; one-pot meals; clean-up efficient in her stainless steel sink.
Morning coffee is conjured up from a cheap pour-through contraption, breakfast, when I have the time, might be eggs and bacon, usually, though, it's simply instant oatmeal: heat water, pour, eat and move on. Ten minutes of my life I'll never get back. A lonesome-sweet taste in a Walmart parking lot, while semis rumble at idle and the dawn wraps itself in slow, pink sheets.
5One day I'll likely park Josie for the last time, her engine tired, frame flecked with rust, fan breathing its gasp. I'll step out, finger the keyring, and walk away slow, turning back every ten feet. I also know this: long after she's ravaged for parts, the romance will idle, valves clicking in another person's chest. They'll hear it if they listen close when they pass a dusty exit. They'll wonder what would happen if they turned off the highway, slowed to human speed, and let the world in through the cracked wing windows.
But until that day, Josie and I we'll keep wandering: faded color scheme, squeaks and groans, with plenty of room for second-guessing life decisions. A headwind will assault her flat nose and spill around the corners with a sigh, as if even the air understands—some loves are better built box-shaped, rattling, vulnerable, and unashamed of the patchwork keeping them together. Some romances are meant to go slow enough for the heart to keep up.