VW Super Beetle

1971 was the first full year that Volkswagen (the people's vehicle) produced the Super Beetle.  The engine was increased to 1600 cc. putting out 60 HP. The front torsion bar suspension was exchanged for McPherson Strut and rack and pinion steering. Inside, the seats had integrated head rests and shoulder harness seat belts were standard. With the removal of the torsion bars, room under the hood grew so that the spare tire could lie flat (the beetle also grew in length). The windshield received a curve and the dash became padded. The Super Beetle also got a forced air gas heater that really was an improvement over the old. It was meant for use until the engine warmed up and took over.  All in all, creature comforts were a nice switch from the old bare-bones beetles.

 And, boy could that Super Beetle go. Yowser. It could now keep up with traffic going uphill and downhill the speedometer could be pegged at 120 mph. I bought my 1971 Shantung yellow Super Beetle in the spring. This was my first brand new car and I wore out a set of Michelin tires in the first year. The cost was $2100 and within a month I had swapped out the factory headlights for Cibie driving lights and I also put a pair of Cibie fog lamps on the bumper. Altogether it was close to one million candlepower. Man, did they ever light up the road at night (no daytime running lights in those days).

In 1971, I was working in Okanagan Centre, Vernon, and Kelowna but every Friday night I would drive to Vancouver. I would leave after supper when traffic in the mountains would be less and I could open the car up as fast as it would go. The lights lit up the road far onto the shoulder as well so I didn't have to worry about animals and comfortable cruising was about 85 mph (135 kph) and I could straighten out the corners by using the whole road. The old Hope-Princeton highway was plenty curvy but at night you could see oncoming lights flashing the sides of the road a couple of curves ahead. There were only two roads to the interior of B.C. in those days - the Fraser canyon which led more to the Cariboo and Hope-Princeton which led to the Okanagan and on to the southern route to Alberta through the Crowsnest Pass. Being a main route, there was a fair amount of truck traffic and the road was only two lanes for most of the way although by the early 80's, a lot of it had been widened.

Truck traffic made it a little trickier to keep a decent speed in rainy or snowy weather. The spray from the trucks kept you quite blind until you were alongside the cab but professional drivers would signal with lights when it was safe to pass. Coming up to a truck, you asked permission to pass by flashing your brights. If it was safe to pass, the truck would flip his lights off once; if it was unsafe, he would touch his brakes enough to light up his brake lights. Once you got around the truck, a thank you was transmitted by turning your lights off once. The system worked quite well. I have tried that today and truckers seem ignorant of that communication. I suppose radios and phones have taken over.

In the winter, it was a rare weekend on Highway 3 that there wasn't a truck on its side in the ditch. If the truck had just wandered or been caught by the snow bank and gently leaned on to the hillside, then a couple of trucks would chain onto it in-line and with diesels snorting black smoke would pull it back onto the road. The Hope-Princeton in winter was usually covered with compact snow which compacted to a depth of six or eight inches into what was essentially an ice road. That was why so many trucks ended up in the dingles.

During the first year of owning the Super Beetle, I racked up 45,000 miles. Before I eventually sold it, the beetle had taken us to Newfoundland and back and had around 200,000 miles (320,000 kilometres) on the clock. All of this with an engine that had been designed in the 1930's that didn't need water and antifreeze, computers or much of anything else to keep ticking along.

VW Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle was really a people mover that was ahead of its time. It was reasonably priced at less than a 1,000 times your hourly wage. In 1967, I was making about $3.00 an hour and a brand new VW cost $1800. The car was really a prototype of what became an economy car that other manufacturers tried to match for cost of manufacture and operation. Not until the Japanese cars came on the market was the VW Bettle surpassed. The Beetle was also aerodynamically designed not to have a lot of drag and it weighed in at only 1800 pounds. The opposing four cylinder, air cooled, rear mounted engine started out at 34 horsepower with an oil cooler to give the engine long life. Top speed was 71 mph (115 kph) which was enough for the post-war autobahns and was far superior to the Citroen 2CV which was aimed at a low speed, poor road rural peasant market and Morris Minor that was designed for a market that had no high speed motorways.

By 1967, the VW Beetle power had increased to 54 HP and top speed was 81 mph (130 kph) although with a steep downhill and a following wind, it was easy to peg the speedometer at a 100 mph. I bought a 1967 Beetle in 1968 for $750 in North Vancouver. Imagine, a year old car for $750. It had been a delivery car for Isaac's Drug Store and every fender had a dent. The brother of a guy at work was a body man and he pounded out the dents and  painted the car for $62.00. I suppose the extra two bucks was for shop supplies. It had a radio, window washers that ran off the spare tire, a heater that diverted warmed air from the engine air flow and air conditioning was the front wing vents that could be turned to deflect the air flow on the driver and passenger.

It really was an amazing car though.  It had independent, four wheel, torsion bar suspension. It had a steering damper which only race cars had at that time. Seat belts were not mandatory or were non-existent in North American cars but the VW had them. The engine could be swapped for an engine that was made for Porche to make the beetle a high performer. If you lifted the hood, the first thing that you saw was the spare tire facing you and behind that was the gas tank. Behind the gas tank was a cargo space. The space was not huge and if you overfilled and forced the hood shut, you could put a bump into the outside surface. However, the rear seat folded flat for lots of cargo and even with the seat-back up, there was room in behind for groceries and/or kids and dogs. The handiest thing that the Beetle had was reserve gas. There was a lever to the right of the drivers right foot that could be turned, when you ran out of gas, that gave you a gallon or so of fuel that allowed you at least to find a gas station. We called them gas stations at a time when they were full service and now when they offer no service we call them service stations. Go figure.

Performance was pretty good as the car had been designed for the autobahn. It, of course, was no match for North American big iron but it also did not use the same amount of fuel. It was, though, capable of flat out operation all day long and mine was usually pedal to the metal. It made the trip up the mountain to SFU in good form and at least on one occasion was full of water melons to the residence there.

A downside to the Beetle was that it had cables to operate everything - clutch, accelerator, and heater - and these were prone to breaking or rusting up to become inoperative. I don't remember what caused me to start looking for another car but I traded that beetle for 1970 Rambler. Green. Yowser. But that's another story.  I did miss that beetle after it was gone and bought another a couple of years after.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is upon us and with it a gathering of family and friends and usually a table laden with food the variety of which can be astounding to new comers. The main guest to dinner was a 22 lb. turkey, done with strips of bacon on top and bread stuffing with mushrooms and nuts. A large ham roll provided that diversity from fowl. An accompaniment of oven roasted potatoes, broccoli and corn in a cream sauce, parsnip puffs (a casserole), boiled baby beets in sauce, and a lime and pineapple moulded salad. Dessert was pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream accompanied by tea and coffee. That table very nicely stuffed 15 people.
 
I can't remember a thanksgiving in Finland although they no doubt have some festivities for when the crops are in. The major feast at the end of summer was "Rapu Juhla" or crayfish festivities, when pots of crayfish (mini-lobsters) were consumed all over the country with copious amounts of alcohol. Turkey is a new-world food that we, as new immigrants, embraced enthusiastically. Maybe that's why Finland doesn't have a formal Thanksgiving. How much can you do with rutabaga and herring?
 
Finland of course is not a third world country and does not have famines. What we see in the news of the hunger in Ethiopia and Somalia can be a fact of life in a majority of our world at some time or other. Agrarian countries are so dependent on the weather that a small shift in the weather patterns could spell crop failure and famine. One of the signs of global warming is a shift in the regular rain belt and an increase in drying winds. Where crops may have failed once in a decade could see failures once in five years. It would be very difficult to accumulate surpluses in such a situation.
 
So the question really is, how can we in the countries of exceptional surplus share with the countries of grinding poverty and famine?  Our surplus of wheat already goes to international aid (often to countries whose staple is not wheat). We can, I suppose, stop using up more than our share of the world's resources. But isn't that a source of income for some of the countries in need? What is clear though, is that we need to figure a way to ease this inequality from the grassroots up because it will never happen from the top down. And more of the world could then give thanks.

Straw Hats II

Travelling in Ontario, for the wedding of our niece Meghan, I came across the Biltmore Hat factory and store in the city of Guelph. What a wonderful place.  The Biltmore Hat Company started that name in 1919 after being bought from the original start-up entrepreneur of two years earlier. The company has been in continuous production since then, although under different ownerships. Early in the life of the company, Italian immigrant women made up the work force to sew the hats in a piece-work fashion. Over the years, the nationalities of the immigrants changed but the industry primarily employed women. The main reason for this is that men just didn't have the capability to gossip with any natural ability. They soon left to work in the mines and forests or descended into a coma.

They make both straw and felt hats there on machines some of which date to the turn of the last century. There are two showrooms in the store that are filled with racks of hats of all sizes and shapes. There are the old western 10 gallon hats. The well known Mountie or Smokey the Bear hat. There are Homburgs and Bowlers ( or Derby after the Duke of Derby). There are straw stetsons, pork pie hats, fedoras, panamas, and milans.

 I had to buy a hat, firstly, because this was THE factory and, secondly, it was a great deal at the factory store. As my wife knows, decision making is not my strong suit and here were two show rooms full of hats for every possible occasion and style. But I persevered and with the help of the store lady bought a Panama Excello.

The Excello is made with Toquilla straw sourced from Equador and from the Andes Mountains. It is a creamy colour fedora style with a flat, indented crown and a 2.75" brim. A brown hatband with the Biltmore crest at the left-side bow sets off that creamy colour. Yowser!

Unfortunately, the Biltmore factory may be ending its days for good. The property on which the factory has stood since 1919, is slated to be turned into 64 condominiums.

The company, according to its website, is presently owned by an American accountant turned hat seller in Louisville, Kentucky, Eric Lynes. Interestingly enough, Mr. Lynes originally found the Biltmore company because he was searching for a particular hat for himself. The thinking in Guelph is that production may move to Mexico or China. Too bad for Canadian industry - again.