You may recall that I mentioned Fred's brother Tom was telling us about his 1966 VW Beetle when we met him and Ellie for lunch on Tuesday. Tom promised to send a picture, and it came this afternoon. Then he and Fred were talking on the phone tonight and pretty soon we got a couple more photos, this time of his first VW, a 1963 Beetle. Yep, and that's young Tom beside it. The bright green one is his second one, the 1966. Tom drove each of them to California and back when he was in school there. He said he traded the '66 VW in 1968 with about 50,000 miles on it. I think he told us it was one of the '1300 series.'

Those of you who know about these things will remember these little cars were quite a novelty when they first arrived here. In St. Johnsbury we used to marvel that just about every doctor in town drove one. They were economical - they had a 40 hp engine and got about 40 miles to the gallon on a good day with a tail wind. They didn't weigh much but they still seemed to get around in the snow pretty well, probably because the engine was in the back, over the rear wheels. As I recall, it was nearly impossible to get any heat in them in the winter (air cooled engine) so most people installed an auxiliary gas heater which I remember some folks thought would be very dangerous.

I found this rather interesting history of the VW Beetle on line: VW Beetle

Apparently Tom has always felt the call of the slopes because this photo of that first Beetle was taken at Squaw Valley. These days when you mention Volkswagen Beetle, lots of us immediately think "hippie." However, Tom is about as far from being a "hippie" as one could get, at least the Tom I know. What he was like in the 60's during his college years, I guess we'd have to ask Fred. On the other hand, here he was, obviously prepared to ski, and even now at the first sign of snow, Tom begins to morph into ski mode and he and Ellie head for the mountains of Colorado, so perhaps there's a bit of latent ski-bum-hippie-attitude under the buttoned-down shirt and polished loafers . . .