Slice of Lime-Magic Bus

Here is another retro style Slice of Lime. After an exchange with Cooper discussing the merits of old VWs I decided this would make for an easy post today.

Prior to entering into the blissful bonds of matrimony, Mr. Lime owned a 1969 VW bus. When we were in college together we were also both members of a small comedy/drama group. The bus became our official vehicle for traveling gigs, mainly because it was the only thing that could carry all of us as well as our equipment...not because of any reliability in the service it provided.

Regardless of reliability it was a fun buggy with lots of personality. Here's our little group getting ready to strain the limits of our beloved bus' functionality. In January of 1987 we took a trip from central Pennsylvania to Kentucky. The goal was to go do some shows and in between to provide service for a local charitable organization in rural Appalachia. We all look so excited and hopeful don't we? Please excuse the Pepto-Bismol sweater I am wearing. Mr. Lime loved that sweater. He was also fond of a pair of camo pants I was given to wearing. I wore both frequently but never at the same time.

The trip should have taken about 11 hours. It took 15. Did I mention the bus lacked heat exchangers? And it was January? And the transmission was kind of touchy? And this vehicle was not known for its get up and go? Yeah, it was a looooong, cold trip, hence the many blankets and sleeping bags. At one point we were passed by a tandem tractor trailer...going uphill...on a steep mountain. There were 3 drivers who could operate a stick shift but only Mr. Lime had mastered the peculiarities of this particular transmission. We were a little worried about getting to Kentucky at all. In fact, we all prayed rather desperately that we would indeed make it that far. We learned specificity in prayer is advisable because upon crossing the border into Kentucky we decided to try to thaw out at the first local eatery we found. When we came back out of the restaurant the bus would not start at all.

Thus, we found ourselves stranded in Kentucky a few hours away from our final destination. Through a relay of phone calls made to the one person we knew in the state we found a place who could fix the bus and some very gracious folks willing to put up a gang of near frozen college students who had not planned on hotel fees since they had free housing arranged for where they were ultimately headed. When we finally got where we intended to be we were more than a bit off kilter from the long, cold ride, the unexpected delay, and the cramped quarters. Ok, so what we were really doing there was playing Funny Bones, which is sort of a standing up version of Twister where you have to sandwich big playing cards between assigned body parts without dropping previously placed cards.


The girls mostly worked at a childcare center and the guys were doing home repairs for some fairly impoverished folks. During their travels the guys found a VW graveyard. Mr. Lime stopped to ask if the owner had a set of heat exchangers he'd be willing to part with so we could be just a teensy bit warmer on the return trip. Fortunately, he did and so we had them installed. Here I am employing my superhuman strength to jack the bus up so they could be installed.
We made it home without incident and continued to enjoy the bus for another year or so before it finally let Mr. Lime sit one too many times and he decided to sell it.