The Mayfield Belle

It was the late ‘80s and I needed a truck.

When I learned that a friend’s sister had a non-running ‘71 VW van for sale for $100, I thought to myself, “Why not?” I drug my girlfriend (now wife of 23 years) halfway around the Atlanta perimeter, and found a very rusty and forlorn Campmobile sitting in the driveway, rear bumper adorned with “Take it Easy” and other various ‘hippie culture’ bumper stickers.

Money changed hands (the first of a rather large sum associated with this vehicle) and girlfriend was given a quick course in how to tow a vehicle with a chain (around I-285, no less): we were off.

My second purchase - like the one so many other VW owners had made before me - was of a copy of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive ~ A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. After scratching my head at John Muir’s quirky writing style (and liking it), I poked around in the engine compartment and eventually discovered the points were closed up. Ten minutes later, I had a living vehicle on my hands.

Since this was a Campmobile, and what I needed was a truck, I spent the next weekend gutting the van. Everything behind the front seats went out to the curb, including the gasoline-powered heater (dumb, dumb, dumb!) and the usual assortment of flotsam and jetsam that accumulates in these types of vehicles (you can probably fill in the blanks on what the bulk of this consisted of).

I used the van infrequently for hauling trash and other bulky items, including cleaning up the dead car parts pile out beside the carport (over a ton of old engine blocks and the like went in one single trip to the scrapyard). My brother then drove it for a while, followed by an admin at work who borrowed it while she had her ‘67 Mustang restored one summer. When it came back, we had just sold one of our two Honda Civics (baby coming - need cash!), so after a back-lot engine rebuild, the ’bus became my daily driver.

Fast forward a couple years, and one of my three closest college friends was getting close to his wedding date. We had established a tradition among the four of us of producing a home movie to present to the groom at the bachelor party, and this year’s “target” was a spoof of the film The Memphis Belle, only with the name changed in honor of my friend, and the ‘nose art’ for the B-17 stand-in patterned off a local dairy company logo.

So, $100 worth of olive drab and grey paint later, my ‘bus became The Mayfield Belle, complete with fake .50 cal. machine guns menacingly protruding out the windows and rear door.

The movie was a huge hit, and after “demilitarizing” the Belle, she continued to soldier on as my daily driver like any good veteran would do.

She was now, however, attracting a lot more attention in war paint than she ever did while in mufti, especially from the local constabulary. While I never received a single ticket in eight years of driving the Belle, I was sure pulled over more times than in any other car I’ve owned.

For example, one late night while driving through a small North Georgia town about one in the morning, a local squad car pulled out and followed me a couple of miles before switching on the blues. I pulled over, hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, and politely answered all questions and provided the required documentation. I happened to have a lot of computer equipment in the back under an old army blanket (to keep road grit out of everything), and one of the officers finally couldn't contain his curiosity any longer and asked “You got drugs or guns back there, boy?” I explained my cargo, and said I’d be glad to slowly (!) pull the blanket back, at which point they were satisfied with my story.

When you drive a beater for eight years, you tend to accumulate a lot of stories and memories, and both our sons spent many hours of their early boyhood playing ‘bomber run’ in the Belle. We made one particularly memorable family trip from Charlotte to Boston and back late one fall, too. Memorable, primarily because the small U-haul trailer we were towing, or rather the bumper to which the trailer was attached, separated from the car just north of the Bronx about 10pm at night. That was memorable, for sure.

The Belle came to a rather inglorious end one late summer in Central Illinois, not too far from where we currently reside. We were on our way to Peoria to stay with friends, and from there, us guys were heading on up to Oshkosh in the Belle for the big airshow. Not too far past Bloomington, the Belle simply gave up. Power dropped rapidly to nothing, and after running all the normal checks and procedures, it was obvious she had “gone west.”

As there was really no point in trying to save her at this point (we were far from home, and rust and age had pretty much already won the battle), our friends were called in for a Search and Rescue mission; tears were shed by the boys (and maybe a few myself); and we then towed the lifeless hulk to the nearest gas station with instructions for them to call a nearby junkyard on Monday to come haul it away.

I’ll always miss the Belle - she carried me through five jobs in three states and gave me some great memories. She was also the first in a still-growing list of Volkswagen vehicles to grace our curbsides and driveways over the past two-and-a-half decades.

So long, old gal…