Sentimental Sunday... The Hero and the Orange VW Bus

To my knowledge the only picture we have of it.

The vehicle the Hero bought for our beginning family was an Orange Volkswagen Bus.  It had been converted inside by the previous owner to have a "bed" in the back.  We traveled frequently to Oklahoma to see my parents and TexasBlu would end up in a makeshift bed in the back seat of our car (back in the day before seat belts).  She loved lying and reading her books, so he wanted her to be comfortable. Thus the Bus with a bed in the back.  : )
The other reason he bought the Volkswagen was that he had heard they were extremely easy to work on. (Rolling eyes, not sure who was the source of that information).  His dad had never taught him how to work on a car.  They just always sent it to a garage to get fixed.  He decided, given our financial situation,  he needed to learn to work on his car himself.  Wa-la, easy to fix VW.  We were blissfully ignorant of our life to come.
First, no one worked on VW's except VW dealerships or specialized garages. Expensive.

This is similar, but it seemed the one we had was a lot tighter in the area. 

Second,  The bus, he found out, was not like the basic VW.  It had a Porsche engine with dual carburetors.  He found out he had to check the battery fluid.  Hmmm.  Where was it... oh yes, down under the carburetor and to the back... He had to buy a special mirror to be able to view it.  Just things like that...
Third, it was a stick shift.  Oh lots of experiences with that.   
Well, this was a preview.  He had many stories come out of owning the VW bus and had a love/hate relationship with it for years.  For the next few weeks, I will be writing the Orange Volkswagen Bus Adventures, or how the Hero learned to be a mechanic. ; )