The People's Car

I recently came across the "instruction" manual for the 1960 Volkswagon Beetle Deluxe Sunroof Sedan that I owned in the months before heading off to college. Like most of us who had one of these cars, (my first) there are good and bad memories. This was the summer of 1978. It was the perfect island vehicle with the sliding canvas sunroof and great for tooling around the back roads of Nantucket where I was working. By August however, things were starting to go... brakes, exhaust system and electrical gremlins. Back in Boston that fall, the first snowstorm brought a new reality. These cars were awful to drive in the New England winter. I'd have one hand out the drivers side window trying to keep the snow and ice off the wipers while freezing my butt off inside. By the following spring, I sold it for the $100 it was worth and my brief affair with "the bug" was over.