I became acquainted with the White Rabbit after my friend moved away and we began writing each other. She lived in Texas and I lived in Oregon. As we exchanged long letters, our virtual romantic interests peaked and I decided I would go to Houston to visit her. So I saved up my money and took a train to see her. I’m not going to suggest my head was driving that decision, but at least it told me not to try driving my old Volvo 142 that far. That may well have been my only good call on this mis-adventure.
The train trip from Oregon to Texas took three days. I never wanted to repeat doing that again, going coach class. But it was certainly colorful, replete with grifters, a traveling card shark, a damsel in distress, and old trainmen who seemed to be relics of the past.
When I got to Houston, the very first thing I heard from Anna’s mouth, right at the train station was “ I don’t think this is going to work out”. How’s that for a warm welcome after three days on a train?
We decided a road trip in her White Rabbit was going to be a better way to spend time than sitting around her house thinking about what could have been. Turns out we really made better friends than lovers anyways; well, not that I really ever had the chance to find out. Maybe just as well, because her brother Rob needed to come with us. The night before we were to leave he had gotten mixed up with some guys and one or two of them had ended up beat down with a baseball bat, so he needed to lay low for awhile. What better idea than to drive across Texas and Oklahoma in the middle of summer in a beat up VW Rabbit with your sister and her friend?
I’m a big guy, 6’3 and not so light. Rob was tall but skinny; however he insisted on bringing his guitar. Three teenagers and a guitar plus a girl’s luggage made for a crowded little bunny, especially in the Texas summer. Air conditioning? What’s that? Most of the time we kept at least one foot out the windows; Rob hadn’t even brought shoes.
Concepts of physics, safety, or legal constraints were unknown to Anna and her White Rabbit. She seemed to travel at a constant 70-80 mph under all circumstances. I was amazed that she had not been locked away long ago as we sped through the streets of Houston and out onto the great brown expanse of Texas.
Anna and her White Rabbit just didn’t pay much attention to where they were going while hurtling down the road at Ludicrous Speed. I was constantly pointing out directions and signs, like the big orange “Road Closed” one just ahead. Anna expressed doubt that the whole highway was actually closed. So she took the extreme left side around the barriers and signs. As we hurtled onward we were suddenly propelled over about a 12 inch gap between the old concrete and the new concrete. The White Rabbit knew how to leap.
But this new concrete was still quite wet. This fact was made apparent by the greatly increased drag on the White Rabbit’s wheels and its resultant slower speed. Anna responded by giving it more gas. We whizzed by open-mouthed construction workers who dropped their lunches in order to shake their fists at us.
The little bunny leaped another 12 inch gap and we were back on firm concrete. At some point during this short ordeal Rob woke up and sought the reason why. I attempted to explain to him what had happened as tactfully as possible but Anna disagreed with my version of the events. We did find common ground on one conclusion: that the cops would certainly be after us soon. And since the highway we were on went pretty much in a straight line right to Tulsa, we decided to divert to some secondary roads. Apparently it worked.
That’s not to say we didn’t have other encounters with the law: On the way to Bartlesville, Rob got arrested, we got him un-arrested, we eluded the police, and pranked the Broken Arrow police department. But that’s another story.
On the way back, somewhere between Dallas and Houston the White Rabbit began to lose its seemingly magical abilities. It grew slower and slower, until Anna had to pull off the highway. We popped the hood and I was faced with a mass of deteriorating hoses and old wires. I really did not know much about cars at all so I just looked for something that might look broken.
I soon found it: the thing I believed to be the carburetor was falling off. All the nuts had fallen off and it was just sitting on the manifold. So we did what teenagers do when the chips are down: we sat down and Anna put Pink Floyd’s “Hey You” on the stereo. We all just sat there feeling depressed while Roger Waters sang “and the worms ate into his brain”.
I finally decided that some action was called for before the worms ate all of mine: I should find a parts store and that I would just start walking toward the most populous looking area. Just then a policeman pulled up and asked us about our predicament. After explaining it to him, we were told that we had to move or be towed and that he could not let us use his phone or give us a ride. I told him that the car was worthless to us and that it we would just leave it unless we could obtain the four nuts necessary to fix it.
After some thought he decided he would drive me to the parts store. As it turned out the store was just down the road. I got several different sized nuts and I walked back to the White Rabbit. Even though I got the new nuts on, it still would not start. So Anna walked to the parts store and called her dad.
We eventually got back to Houston in Anna’s dad’s car and the White Rabbit got towed back. I had to leave on the train the next morning so I never got roped into trying to fix it. Consequently, when I left that I had spent all of my money on gas for the Rabbit and had no money for food for the three day trip back. Anna’s mom must have felt my coming pangs, and packed a sandwich for me.
So the first day I had the sandwich and then it was make friends with the bar-car guy and try to keep full on Chex mix and salted nuts. I was pretty dang hungry when I got back. Funny thing happened though; I found my ticket stub in a jacket pocket several months later and took it out of the envelope to save it. Right behind it I found a 20 dollar bill I had stashed at the beginning of my trip and forgotten about.
I have owned a lot of Rabbits since then (lord only knows why). But this one was the first one I was really intimate with; a lot more intimate than I ever got with Anna. But given that my nuts never did get the White Rabbit’s motor going, maybe that’s just as well.
If you added drugs and booze, this could be a story written by Borat doing his best Hunter S. Thompson impression!
Oddly appealing…
I had a similar experience with a girl named Megan… took the bus to Berkeley… stayed at the YMCA hotel on Turk Street… yeah, it was better being friends…
Did Mr. Roper kick you out of the YMCA hotel for being a homewrecker?
I want to hear how you ‘alluded’ and pranked the various police departments of Oklahoma!
Is there a better name for an Oklahoma town than Broken Arrow?
And why was Rob arrested in Bartlesville?
(Don’t like to fly? I was once a terrible fearful flyer but somehow got over it…which is good b/c I fly weekly with my job.)
Well, I grew up about 30 miles from Bartlesville, and as for odd Oklahoma city names, most agree Bugtussle takes the cake.
I do so love Borat and Hunter Thompson, never thought of them together! There is allot more to the story, but I could go on and on. Rob really wanted the Broken Arrow city limits sign and decided to take it. The town name I remember best was proudly proclaimed on a water tower in Texas; Ennis. I wondered if they had a permanent staff on hand with black and white paint just to paint over the ever appearing P and to repaint the disappearing N.
I have my own Rabbit story. In university, I drove a 1978 Rabbit Diesel L model for two years, which for me was an eternity at the time. The reason I drove it for so long was I was in love with motorcycles at the time, and cars were only for winter.
Mine was a “safety orange” five door. The car was in really good shape and the motor had lots of compression. It also got like 50 mpg as the cars were light. It also drove exceptionally well within its 48 hp limits.
Anyway, in my final year of university, my girl and I decided to rent a cabin in Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in order to study for finals. This was in late March and the rain was just coming down in torrents the whole way there. When we got to the resort, we found the road blocked by a huge pool of water. My girl said “We can’t get through this!” Being 26 years old at the time, I wasn’t going to let a lake stop a Rabbit and since it was a diesel, I figured there was no ignition to short out. Without even checking how deep it was, I decided to try it.
I put it in low gear and waded in at a better than walking speed clip. The pool turned out to be much deeper than I had thought. My immediate response was to gun it and hope the air horn would not gulp in any water and bust the engine. The water was splashing above the window sills and I just kept on pushing it and low and behold, we made it. Girl was amazed. She liked me because I was rather, ahem, unconventional.
When we got to the office, the lady there asked, “So did you park and walk in?” I replied, “No, I made it through in my little car!” She said, “Well, that car must have been a scuba diver!” She then asked what kind of car it was. “A Rabbit Diesel,” I replied.
She retorted, “Well, you can call it ‘Scuba Bunny!”
And from that day forth, it was always called Scuba Bunny, until like the fool I was at the time, I sold it.
My first car was a white 80 diesel 2 door – as you mentioned, no p0wer but an exceptionally fun ride. As I was too lazy to apply to real schools I wound up doing the commuter school for the first year and it was in this little car that I learned an awful lot — the best teacher was a chiean sophomore named Jacqueline.
(if you’re out there, Jackie, take a bow! )
Once i got my act together I enrolled at a school about 5 hrs. from home and that bunny would be my ride back a few times per year. Eventually i destroyed that car between the long rides at 75 mph and the heavy loads of laundry being hauled for Mom’s washermachine. too bad, that car paid for the sins of my youth, but I confess that I’m a better man/driver for my experiences in the VW
Rather touching, for teen-age impulsive horniness…
Indicative of the Vee-Dubb, too. I had an encounter, longer-term but no less painful…that started on a Yamaha SR 500 and ended inside a VW Fox. That I pressured her into buying.
But, as my inner old-man tells me…that’s all part of life. You make mistakes, they hurt, you yowl. That’s true of that broken leg you got as a kid, jumping off the roof with a blanket-cape; and that’s true when you have a major fail in choosing a partner.
Pain is natures way of steering one on the right path.
Always wondered why the Golf was renamed Rabbit for the US market, anyone know?
I do know. VW named its cars after winds, in this case “Golf” meant the Gulf Stream. Passat was another one, Scirocco yet another. The brass at VW thought that Americans would not be comfortable with the name “Golf” and not know what it was. They also knew that Americans really loved the Beetle name and thought it was cute. “Rabbit” was therefore coined as a cute name. They even tried it again (I think) for the 2008 Golf.
Because “Golf” is a stupid fucking name!
Bravo! That’s a fantastic story, the best I’ve read here in a spell. You wrapped it up well at the end, with a pun that actually fit. And haven’t we all been along on at least one lap of this tale?
The last photo looks like the rear window is mostly missing.
Great last line.
The teenage or college-age road trip–even with the mechanical, financial and hormonal misery frequently involved, I wouldn’t trade that part of my life for anything. (But give me a reliable car, plenty of cash and/or credit for emergencies, and a non-flighty travel partner any day.)
I picked up a 77 rabbit in about 97 for $500. It was a faithful commuter for 5 or 6 years and saw some faux rally time as I beat her up on the local logging roads. Eventually it got parked when it was leaking brake fluid from multiple places in the line system. It was a yard ornament for a few years before the missus talked me into giving away to an aquaintance. He got her running and sold it for $500! I still occasionally see it running around town.
My road trip for unrequited love involved a snowy 300 mile drive circa 1988 in a 68 VW buss. It had studded tires so it got around pretty well in the snow (it also had several miles of logging road abuse in it’s time). I was within 30 miles of my destination when I got a little cocky and was going too fast on the interstate. I ended up doing an endover flip, landing in the median.
Normally when you roll a bus, the top folds sideways and is toast. Since I had flipped ass over nose, the sides were straight, all the doors opened and closed and it did not loose any glass. The tow truck driver did a good jop of righting it without any further damage. The girl’s dad was nice enough to come an get me and let me have it towed to his house. He had some electrolyte for the battery (all the fluids drained while it was upside down) and we put some oil in it and she fired right up. I deconcaved the roof a bit by hand and drove it the 300 miles home without incident. I drove it for a few more years before it met a firey death, but that is another story.
Most of them meet a fiery death in the end. Great story.