A Volkswagon Beetle and some harrowing memories
One particular special morning and one horrifying near-miss
My three siblings and I were born in Winnipeg, the capital of the province of Manitoba, which, on some days, is the coldest place in the world.
Our family lived in a little house on an acre of land bordering a large wheat farm. During the winter, the flat landscape was covered with snow and ice. The wind often blew from the North with nothing to stop it, and fingers and toes usually became numb on short walks home from school.
Volkswagon introduced the Beetle to Canada in 1952 and quickly gained ground with the “Silent Generation” nationwide. The used Beetles were eventually sold to young Baby Boomers, ready for cheap transportation and affordable gas mileage.
My parents bought a Volkswagen as their second car when my mother learned to drive in 1964 because it was inexpensive. The car’s heater worked well enough to keep us warm enough to unzip our parkas if the ride was long enough. On days that the snow had drifted over our long gravel driveway, we’d be lucky to get up the slight incline to the highway, which ran across the front border of our property and was the demise of several of our pets.
(Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery was difficult for me to finish.)
My mother worked weekends as a registered nurse at the Winnipeg General Hospital, and my father would put his three toddlers in the backseat of the Beetle and drive my mother to the hospital to start her shift on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
On our return home from the hospital one winter morning, my father pulled into the front of a general store and left us in the back seat. He went into the store to buy a pack of Rothman cigarettes.
He left the car running in neutral and pulled up the emergency brake before leaving us to shop. His reasoning was reasonable in 1965, as he was concerned about starting the car in the cold or wanted to keep the heater running for us.
What could go wrong, right?
Somehow, the car shifted into gear and started moving driverless across the store’s small parking lot. I squeezed my thin five-year-old’s body between the front seats and tried to push down the brake without effect.
A milkman heard our cries of distress and jumped from his truck. He ran to our vehicle, pulled open the door, and stopped the car.
I’ve never dwelled on the what-ifs associated with the incident, but I know that a Volkswagon’s thin metal frame is no match for a truck traveling at high speeds down the highway that was only meters away.
The little red Volkswagon will always have a special place in my heart because it brought home our baby sister.
My youngest sister came home from the hospital on a sunny day in March, and the little red Volkswagon Beetle delivered her safely and without incident to our home. The snow had recently melted, leaving only a few patches of ice and slush on our front lawn.
My younger brother, sister, and I rushed to the vehicle eagerly with anticipation. We waited as my mother smiled broadly and passed the well-wrapped baby to my father from her passenger seat in the Volkswagon.
(The Volkswagon didn’t have seat belts, never mind a proper infant car seat.)
My father gave me the equivalent of a football straight arm when I stepped forward and shielded the newest family member while he showed the baby to my sister.
(My father had made a promise to an “only daughter” concerned about the new competition. He might as well have kicked me in the nuts.)
My father finally introduced our baby sister Karen to her older brothers after my sister had been satisfied. The baby’s beautiful blue eyes were breathtaking, and I’m sure my memory is accurate when I say, “She smiled at us.”
My world has changed dramatically since growing up on the Canadian Prairies, but I look back on the chilly days of my childhood with fondness and a sense of bittersweet resentment.
There’s nothing we can do about the past, and if there’s any reason for reminiscing, it is often to remind ourselves of the lessons learned by observing our parents when they were young and trying to figure life out on their own.
Perhaps we can live better than our parents, and hopefully, with luck and our efforts, we won’t make the same mistakes.
