STORIES: Fahrvergnugen

Fahrvergnugen: Fun with a vintage VW It started, innocently enough, with Brendan's purchase of a VW Thing from his brother. The Thing is a wonderful little vehicle: reliable, sturdy and easy to maintain. Brendan's was a bit cantankerous, but that was part of its charm. When summer came around, he wanted to try to take the Thing down the road into camp. A few maniacal staff members had driven a variety of cars down the rutted, rocky road into camp a number of times, and the thought was that the Thing, driven slowly enough, could take the road.

Sure enough, the Thing made it down without incident and then began a string of run-ins with the Camp and Program Directors. The first was on a Saturday, shortly after the official close of program for the week at 10AM. Brendan decided that he didn't want to walk all the way across the valley to check out his last troop, so he'd just drive there in the Thing.

This would have been bad enough, but a number of staff members who'd just gotten off work (including myself) hopped aboard for a ride. This would have been trouble enough, but we were all now crazed by the moment and decided that a drive-by of the program office at the center of camp would be a good thing to do. So we merrily cruised up to the front of the program office where the Camp and Program directors sat waiting to check out the last few stragglers, honked the horn, and with a wave were off again.

I could feel the piercing stare of death through the wooden walls of the PO.

Brendan was immediately called to task for his actions, and each passenger in the car was also sought out and immediately given a tongue-lashing for his involvement. This was simply the beginning of things, however.

Camp is very enclosed and secluded: there are only a very few radio stations available, and you'll see the same people for a week at a time. Your only friends are your co-workers, and your only source of communication with the outside world the mail. People have a lot of time on their hands, and is often the case, the Devil finds a bit o' work for them idle hands.

The program director, the second-in-command at Camp, lives in a tent like the rest of staff. The director that year Beth, being a woman, had a tent to herself. Her position of authority and her good nature combined with the fact that she had sole possession of a tent made her domicile the target for a great many pranks. Often times she'd come home to find all of her furniture moved around, or outside. Brendan and Chris thought that it would be great to leave something for a change.

As commissioners, they had a lot of discretionary time available to them while the rest of the camp worked structured hours. Taking advantage of the fact that Beth would be at the weekly camp-wide games, they took their opportunity to strike and removed all the possessions from the tent, replacing it with the VW Thing. The light weight of the Thing made it possible to insert it onto the plywood planking of the tent floor without incident. It does not pay to fuck with people in power however: the maintenance director, a longheld friend of Beth's, took revenge in her name by putting the Thing on a sandbar in the middle of the river running through camp--perched on its own tires which had been removed and placed under the frame, like cinderblocks.

The Thing was to have one final hurrah before the summer was over. Every morning starts with a morning staff meeting at 7:40. Attendance is checked; a missing staff member causes the next meeting to be five minutes earlier the next time. Anyone late to that meeting adds another five minutes, and so on. If, however, one of the directors is AWOL, the meeting would get moved five minutes forward. This very rarely happens, however. It was decided that this could be manipulated in our favor with a bit of planning.

With a military-like coordination, a plan was hatched to move the VW Thing and a Toyota Landcruiser of the late 70's variety in front of both of the door's of the Camp Director's cabin (CDC), effectively locking him in the building. Routes were mapped out, code names assigned, rehersals done--this was a serious matter. Late one night, dressed in dark clothing and camo, a small band pushed the VW Thing down a narrow lane from the edge of the staff area towards the CDC. The Thing, being fairly light, was relatively easy to transport and made it to its new parking spot in fairly short order.

The 'Cruiser, on the other hand, weighed about twice as much and its large tires snagged on small stumps and rocks. The group, worn down from pushing the Thing, took a long time moving the 'Cruiser the several hundred feet to the CDC door, nearly giving up on more than on occasion. The task was completed, however, and the group slipped back into the blackness from whence they came.

The next morning, the group headed to the morning staff meeting expecting to see the director come in late to the meeting. Much to their chagrin, he was already waiting for them--in their caution they'd put too much distance between the vehicles and the front door, not wanting to make a ruckus. The camp director had been able to easily slip between the vehicles.

Further, he'd managed to get the final upper hand by hearing us coming: He'd been awake after taking some cough medicine that contained some sort of upper and witnessed most of the effort. This wasn't much of a surprise, however, since the group had been less than stealthy. You just don't move two vehicles through branches and twigs with absolute silence. The pranks with the car were at an end, and perhaps that was for the best.