The Absent Uncle: The allure of the open road

Back in the spring of 1978 I was faced with a choice: Try to find a different job for the summer or take an extended trip back to Minnesota

I was out of the Navy for about three years, and at the time was a fulltime student at San Diego State and a part time special education school bus driver. In an election held in November 197 a proposition on the California ballot passed and froze property tax levels 

The reaction was swift by public entities funded mostly by property taxes and programs were cut or severely curtailed. Most Special Ed programs were cut for the summer session of 1978 and not very many bus drivers were going to be needed. 

I made my choice and decided to succumb to the desire to explore the open road; partly to go places I had never visited and partly to make a final decision about moving back to Minnesota when I finished college in another year. 

My route: Leave San Diego and drive to a small town south of Tucson where some old Navy friends had settled. Then drive through New Mexico and stop at Carlsbad Caverns before driving to the Dallas area to see another old friend. Then drive across the rest of Texas, through Arkansas, turn north through Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and Illinois to visit an aunt and uncle before heading to the family farm near Marshall. And to do the trip on mostly backroads 

This drive was to be done in my trusty (and rusty) 1962 Volkswagen bus. It was equipped with an ice box, a sink, and a foldout bed. Such cramped luxury! And it had the smallest engine possible resulting in a top speed of 52 MPH (with the wind and downhill). 

I quickly realized that the appearance of the VW bus would cause some amount of attention to be paid to my presence in the communities I was driving through. Some of the attention was simple harassment, some amount of curiosity, and plenty of suspicious looks wondering what I was up to. 

The job I found in Minnesota for the month or so I was there was fascinating, and the drive back to California through North Dakota, Montana, Yellowstone Park, Utah, and Nevada was a little less intense from public scrutiny. I successfully arrived back in San Diego in time for fall semester and school start. (Also, my VW engine blew up two weeks after my return! What timing.)

Plenty of stories came out of that journey in the summer of 1978 – a journey I will never forget. I am writing a complete narrative of that journey and will pull a few stories to include in this column occasionally.