VW - Freedom Car

After moving to League City, we were still a one-car family. That meant I could take the car to work — leaving Kathy and the kids stranded — or we could all get up a little earlier, feed the kids, bundle them into the car, and drive to drop me off so Kathy could keep the car. The process reversed at the end of the day.

The trouble was that we were almost never synchronized. Either she was late for any number of good reasons, or I was, for any number of good reasons. The mismatch caused some discussions.

We hadn’t yet discovered Dave Ramsey, so we were living paycheck to paycheck — no spare cash for a second car.

Then I spied an ad for an early ’60s VW Beetle, $250 or so. We drove clear across Houston to look at it, and it wouldn’t start. Using my God-given and Dad-given diagnostic skills, I discerned that the culprit was the starter solenoid. I negotiated a lower price on the condition that I could get it running, then crawled under the VW with my handy-dandy tools — no mean feat given the low clearance — and jump-started it.

I paid the guy $195, and we set off to caravan home in a rainstorm. Rusty on the clutch, I killed the VW dead in the middle of the intersection of South Main and Holcombe — a busy crossing right beside the Medical Center, at rush hour, with horns honking. Kathy used our car to block traffic and climbed into the VW while I crawled back underneath to jump the solenoid. The rest of the drive home I was not gentle with the clutch, and I was soaked.

The next day happened to be a Saturday, and I replaced the solenoid.

I worked on that car a lot, with improvised tools and John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. It became my commuter car — to and from work, and to and from grad school at the U of H main campus. Kathy reveled in her new freedom.

We stayed a two-car (or more) family until we left for Mercy Ships in 2003, and became a one-car family again in 2024.

I sold the Beetle in ‘74 or so — for $395.