Bussy McBusalot

In our family, the summer trip to Disney World in 1984 is forever burned into our dna. I've probably recounted this story more times than you've had hot dinners, and here's one more...
The entire trip revolved around the problems that our VW Bus gave us. On the drive from Toledo to Orlando, the starter died just north of Cincinnati. It would only work when the engine was cold. This doesn't happen very often on a long summer trip. So we became very adept at the 'push start' procedure, which was needed every time we stopped and the engine was shut off. When we'd pull off into a rest area or wherever, the driver would reach for the key out of habit. If someone didn't yell "Don't turn it off!" in time, it was up to us. I can only imagine how many people still tell the story of the family they saw pushing their VW Bus out of the rest stop.
( I learned a couple years ago that VW Buses starters were prone to this type of failure - on long drives, heat would build up and prevent the starter solenoid from working. But a lot of good that did us on the road.)
The rest of the trip passed by(Disney was just kind of a break from car pushing), and we were on our way home. It was late, and raining, and we had just pulled off the road in Savannah Ga to find a room. As the rest of us half slept, dad went into the lobby of the hotel we'd stopped at.
A few minutes later, dad came flying out, jumped in the driver's seat (he had left it running this time) and drove off like a bat out of hell, without saying a word. we found another hotel a couple exits up the highway. He later told us that while he was standing at the hotel counter, two people in there started an argument, when one pulled a knife, slashed the other person's arm, and ran out the door. The hotel manager's reaction was to lock the doors. Dad screamed at him that we were out there, along with the attacker. The manager let him out, and off we went.
The next morning, we came out to discover a flat tire. (I always wondered if dad ran over the knife!)When we started the job, right away we noticed the jack, which had never been used before. VW had made it out of what seemed to be heavy-duty aluminum foil. But dad said they must know what they were thinking. So, my dad, George and I jacked up the rear of the bus. We were parked on a very slight incline. This wasn't an issue until we had the van up, and had taken the flat tire off. Right at that moment, the jack decided it had done enough work for the day and bent itself in two. Somehow, we jammed the bad tire under the fender before the whole thing came crashing down on the ground. Dad ran off to quickly borrow a jack from a nearby garage, and we just leaned our weight into the van and prayed. He retrieved a jack, and we finished the job.
The rest of the trip home was relatively uneventful, peppered with push starts at every stop. But we will never forget that trip. My parents got rid of the Bus a few months later.
At any rate, this is my little recreation of the VW Bus at the center of it all...enjoy.
(The paint finish is, well, rough. I wanted to see how the colors looked, and was so stoked after the first trial coat that I had to put up a pic. It'll get better, really.)