The Butterbeans’ winter weekend

Since everyone who has any kind of media outlet whatsoever is busy reviewing the past year or decade or whatever, I thought I would dredge up an old story and review it. Actually this audience hasn’t read it before, so it is older than a year by a bit. It does hail from sometime in the last century; I have forgotten when.

Here it is just as I remember it:
In case you haven’t realized it by now, Butterbean is synonymous with Griswold—you know, those people in European Vacation, Christmas Vacation and various other screen idiocies.

I can say that and get away with it because it is impossible for the Butterbeans to look down their noses at the Griswolds.

So for your amusement, I thought I would show you a few scenes from the The Butterbeans’ Winter Weekend. (If anyone is interested, I will sign for the movie rights.)

The Winter Weekend is a road trip made by the Butterbeans, or part of them, in the legendary VW Bus, alternately called The Pop Can, The Tylenol, The Peace Wagon and as of late, The Ice Box.

(They announced in church last month that someone with a white VW bus had left their headlights on. In unison, everyone in the congregation turned and looked at us. Would we leave our headlights on? Well okay, but our bus was at home in the driveway with a burned up alternator.)

The bus has two problems. Well, okay again, it has more than that, but these two are the most obvious during a mountain road trip made in January.
One is that you will never get a speeding ticket in it. (I have learned to appreciate problems like that.) In fact, we have been pulled over for obstructing traffic. The good news is that they don’t ticket you for driving too slowly if you can’t help it.

The other problem with the bus is that you will never be warm in it in winter. In fact, without taking precautionary measures, you could become an incident.

The first time we stopped for gas and hot chocolate which was after a long time and a few miles, I was embarrassed to get out of the bus dressed in boots, thermals, polar fleece, gloves, ear warmers and a sleeping bag. I relaxed a little when I noticed another vehicle full of skiers who were dressed a little like us.

Hey we look like we are going skiing! Let’s all talk loudly about lifts, powder, Park City, etc. Before I realized that we could be confused with skiers, I was afraid that we might be identified as transient, homeless or both.

The Bus does have a heater. At least it has levers that you switch to the “on” position, and even one down by your feet that you pull up to turn on the defrosters. I think that the problem is that the engine is in the back of the bus and the heater vents are in the front.

By the time the warm air reaches the outlets, it is no longer warm. But then, it is several degrees centigrade warmer than it is when it reaches the back of the bus again. The air that blows around back there is positively Arctic.

I had the best seat in the house. It was my job to plug up the wind tunnel—the vortex between the two front seats on the x-axis, and between the front and the back of the bus on the y-axis. It felt a little bit like sitting in front of a campfire. The front of me was a little warmer than the back.

The rest of the occupants crawled into sleeping bags and went to sleep, which didn’t really represent comfort but blessed oblivion. When I looked back to check on them, I could count the still-breathing; it looked like a stove full of teakettles back there.

The other option for keeping warm is was to sit very close to the heater vents. When five of us were sitting in two bucket seats, I began to feel less like a skier and more like the dispossessed again.

There were a couple of upsides to the trip. I am proud to say that while going uphill, we passed one other vehicle on our trip. (We all cheered.) It was a three-trailer tractor rig possibly loaded with shotgun shells. Going downhill, we passed two.

At one point we asked the kids to get out and push, but they said it was too cold.