Date:         Mon, 17 Jun 1996 13:51:37 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Ellis <jim@atcweb.atc.1dc.com>
Subject:      SOTO/Classic Weekend (Part 1~Friday-L)

Apologies to the list for the late report. An unusually busy week kept me
from spouting off up 'til now. Delete this now if you can't hang with silly
details.

My brother-in-law and I took off from Phoenix very early on Friday, 6/7/96.
We were blessed with the '83 Vanagon Westy because the Resto "Hell" bus was
not ready to roll. Seeing as the trip was a "bachelor weekend" we took a
side trip in an attempt to ferret out a UFO junkyard report instead of
directly blazing off down I-10 to the land of LA-LA.  A week previously, I
had called on a $1500 obo '56 Oval that was advertised in the local Phoenix
paper. The oval ended up being a bigtime basket case. The owner said that he
had just purchased an old Texaco station with an adjacent "Bates" Motel
which was half way between Pt. A and Pt. B in the middle of the Arizona
desert. The owner of the Bates Motel/Texaco was delighted to find out that
there was a junkyard just behind his new property (imagine that) which was
supposedly filled with tons of minicars, post war cruisers, and several old
Volkswagens. He reported a mid 60's single cab, and other "old buses," a 356
coupe, and other stuff. He also said that the Texaco station had a
significant stash of original older EMPI items still in the boxes. "Mr.
Bates" lead us to believe that there were literally stacks of
Messerschmidts, Isettas, Vespas, Split ovals, '45-'65 Chevies, tons of 1970
vintage big block Mopars, pre-war lowfats and "6-10 Model A's and Model
T's." I thought that the guy was pushing just WAY too many of the right
buttons to be for real. I had my doubts but am always willing to check out
leads that sound too good to be true... The bro and I couldn't resist even
if it turned out to be a mirage. 

Well... it was a mirage. We found the junkyard and there were glimmers of
truth to what he had told us but basically was another BS (bus story) tale.
The closest thing to VW that I found was one (partially complete) type II
headlight bucket. The 356 was a 911 Targa which had been rolled and burned
beyond belief and was left upside down in the dirt. I had passing toughts of
a James Dean wanna be eating it out in the Arizona desert. There actually
were piles of Model A and T fenders, a few old gas pumps which were begging
to be restored, a couple of T bucket roadster bodies, a couple of cool old
45-50ish American cars but no $200.00 Barndoor Deluxes. No evidence of
recent vehicle movement in the yard. It hasn't rained in Arizona since the
Nixon administration so the weather couldn't disguise any recent stealth
movement of "the good stuff."
Just as we were pulling out of the Bates junkyard/motel a local told us
about a couple of freebie buses that were abandoned up in those hills. He
pointed and gave appropriately vauge directions. "You can almost see them
from here if you had a telescope!" I thought to myself that you could
probably see the planet Uranus with a telescope but that doesn't mean that
it had buses on it. We took off to spend several hours in the blazing
Arizona heat, going where no 2WD Vanagon Westy ought to go and saw no buses.
We drove up and down some pretty hairy hills and followed some roads which
occasionally went right down the middle of some pretty sandy washes. The
freebie bus story was backed up by two other locals who we encountered along
the way. All the time I felt that the locals were all watching us with their
telescopes and getting ready to tell the next guy that there are *three*
freebie buses in those hills...
The major remaining part of that Friday was spent driving westerly right
into the sun and into the worst smog build up that I had ever seen! The
windmill hills west of Palm Desert could hardly be seen from the freeway! We
pulled into the Irvine Holiday Inn pretty late that night and crashed after
checking out the few cars that were in the parking lot. The number of cars
were down *dramatically* from previous years. Some young "guru" was holding
court beside his bus to a small group of folks who made me feel real old. It
was kind of refreshing to see some young folks asking newbie questions of
the sort that you and I would have taken for common knowledge. The questions
were handled by the "guru" with a relative soft touch. I think he was
enjoying his fifteen minutes in the spot light. I imagined future events
where "gurus" would simply stand around show photographs and explain what
buses really looked like before they were all exported.
I have camped in the parking lot for several years which has been fine to me
but the bro-in-law wanted a shower and a real bed. His business picked up
the bill. He had just fininshed a double 24 hour shift as a fireman and had
a rough day in the desert. I was to pick up breakfast. The next day would be
the SOTO meet. (Saturday and the SOTO = Part II)
-ellis\