Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 23:28:20 -0700
Reply-To: Roger Whittaker <rogerwhitt1@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Roger Whittaker <rogerwhitt1@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: End of the list?
In-Reply-To: <CAEwp_cSa9Or2AS3uTvjQTCNdJ=fTBOyZvmGV0Rc1iU3R9zaRjw@mail.gmail.com>
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I don't know where its all going. When i first joined i saw the invitation
in the back of a car magazine.
Volkswagan rolls out new model, barked the headline, so I started to read
the sidebar advertisement.
Copy sandwiched between a pencil drawings of the venerable Type 2 and the
newest offering to be called *Volkswagen **Vanagon *Type 3, spoke of
Hanover's newest addition to a successful brand already leading the
marketplace. Come and see where you will find yourself going, suggested the
writer's carefully crafted message.
At the bottom beneath the radical makeover was an address and
encouragement to send a self addressed stamped envelope with $1.50
enclosed. Smart way to make an extra .50 cents i said out loud to my cat as
put two crisp one dollar bills into the envelope.
Two weeks later i received a certificate in the mail and like that I
belonged to the Vanagon Appreciation and National Owners Club of America.
VANOCA said the decal i was supposed to affix to the lower quarter of the
passenger side front window.
Those Germans, they are so precise.
The club policies described us as an owners group who could through the
convenience of the USPS, send letters to other Vanagon owners who would
share stories of their travels and tribulations along the journeys taken.
So i wrote to the first name on the list and told him i had a Vanagon and
we should try and meet up sometime.
Joe Franklin wrote back to me in less than a week asking where it was i was
located, how many vanagons did i have, did i like the new shape and style,
and what year my vanagon was. Yup all the stuff i forgot to include when i
first wrote him .
I told him i had a 1981 and that mine featured Westfalia Camper trimmings.
My house in Caribou, Main was well suited for me and my family as we
worked in the woods with a bunch of French Canadians who crossed the
boarder everyday to come to work. Sometimes in the summertime ii would load
the family into our vanagon and we would park out on the logging roads that
criss crossed the border lands between USA and Canada to look at sun sets
and watch fireflies dance in the twilight.
Joe Franklin wrote back that he was in Portland Oregon and he too liked to
drive up into the logging roads but he liked the ones around Weed,
California. And the week before he wrote me he was traveling along in his
1984 Vanagon with real honest to goodness, water cooling, and a stray
branch caught the waterline running from the stern mounted engine and left
him high and dry. They opened the door to their rolling cabin and spent two
days camping while waiting for Monday morning logging truck traffic to
bring him back to town where he sourced dome parts and headed back to
repair the broken vehicle.
Over the year following Joe and I wrote each other every month or so and
shared numerous stories about our travels and other Vanagon owners we had
met through VANOCA. His group of Vanagon related friends seemed much larger
than mine and it wasn't long before i started to think iI too should move
to Oregon. In 1985 after a particularly sour winter in the Maine woods i
sold our entire outfit to my French Canadian compatriots and chuckled to
myself that they would have fun explaining the soft wood to customs as each
truck load left the American woods destined for Quebec mills and American
cities as home building material.
I decided against actually living in Portland as i was still not likeling
cities too much dRoslyn Washington reminded me so much of Caribou that I
could go no further - No letters between Joe Franklin and I only took a few
days rather than the week we were used to and our correspondence began to
include stories of regular meet ups with other VANOCA members.
One night around the campfire one of the members complained that it took
him three weeks to get responses from other members on the list and soon an
argument broke out about USPS and because Tommy Knightly worked a s a
letter carrier he took the brunt o the discussion as if he ran the whole of
USPS. It did not matter that he was a letter carrier in New Denver, BC,
Canada. He was a letter carrier and every barb edged comment was directed
at Tommy with the intensity of a punch from a prize fighter. That explains
why we were all woke from our sleep in the middle of the night as Tommy
uprooted his camp and booked out with the familiar wrrrr of the little four
cylinder engine. Water coolling had done little to remove the distinctive
sewing machine sound form our little beasts.
Now when i returned home from work there were always two or three envelopes
in the mail box and each one as unique in flavour as the person who wrote
it.
It was sometime in late 1988 that we first heard about it. A new way to
communicate, via computer. A thing called the internet had been created
over phone lines and now letters were going to become passe'. One simply
had to turn on a computer and dial into the bulletin board and place a
question there.
To be continued ???
On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 7:37 PM, Marc Perdue <mcperdue@gmail.com> wrote:
> Facebook controls the photos that get uploaded in such a way that it
> prevents uploading viruses. It's much harder to do that on an email
> list like this one. Preventing the sending of attachments eliminates a
> lot of the spam and viruses that you could otherwise get. This is a
> good thing, really. I know, from owning my own email list, Banjo-L.
>
> Just saying, is all . . .
> Marc Perdue
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 9:37 PM, Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@mymts.net> wrote:
> > I find email very easy to sort, store and search. Much better than
> forums or Facebook. That being said I like seeing people's vans and it's
> great to put a face to a name even if it's only in an email.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Jun 4, 2015, at 8:13 PM, Karl Wolz <wolzphoto@Q.COM> wrote:
> >>
> >> Why would a forum type format not work? Not pushing for change, but it
> would allow photos, and it might be advantageous to divide discussions a
> bit by subject (travels, power train, etc.)
> >>
> >> Karl Wolz
> >> Sent from my electronic umbilicus
> >>
> >>> On Jun 4, 2015, at 5:21 PM, Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@MYMTS.NET> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> It's not an either-or decision. Both Facebook and the List have their
> advantages. The List is more technical and Fb more social. In my opinion.
> Doesn't mean we couldn't do more to make the list more functional. I keep
> harping about pictures as its a pain to host on a different site and post
> links. I prefer the list but there are times when Fb is just more fun.
> >>> Jeff
> >>>
> >>> Sent from my iPhone
> >>>
> >>>> On Jun 4, 2015, at 5:50 PM, Karl Wolz <wolzphoto@Q.COM> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> This sort of knee-jerk response has been an issue for as long as I've
> been involved with this crasy bunch. I believe that even the most
> mechanically inept is really trying to be helpful when he responds "Vanagon
> syndrome", even though the question was about a clicking noise from the
> radio.
> >>>>
> >>>> I love you all; even those I really dislike!
> >>>>
> >>>> Karl Wolz
> >>>> Sent from my electronic umbilicus
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Jun 4, 2015, at 10:44 AM, Neil N <musomuso@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> it seemed to me that
> >>>>> people would hastily post solutions like "fuel pump", "AFM", etc.
>
--
roger whittaker 604.414.6266
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