Author: Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett Rev History Rev .00 - 06/01/2009 Rev .01 - 12/01/2014 Rev .02 - 03/08/2022
One van to rule them all and into family drive them…
Just after he married my mother, Donny bought a 1986 Chevy G20 Mark III Hightop conversion van. Blue–bright and navy–THE VAN had 3 silver pin stripes and large tinted windows on the sides and in the back. It had four bucket seats with a table between the two in the middle, and a plush bench seat in the back that folded down into a bed. THE VAN even had cup holders.
I was going on nine and–as we drove off the used car lot–for the first time in my life I thought about the relationship between movement and identity:
The Family Car.
Before “the house”, THE VAN was the first material symbol of group identity that was forming between my mother, me and this man whom still felt too much like a stranger.
- When and how did THE VAN acquire this this developmental signifier in the relationship between people looking to materialize the relationship of family?
- Can the rebirth of the family voyage really be traced back through its linguistic roots to the word “caravan?”
- Or was this inference a diabolic yet brilliant ploy by the Ford company of the 1960s to usurp the defining family vehicle away from the Volkswagen Microbus?
American Nazis supplanting German ones had become a common theme for over a decade, but perhaps the answer to all of these questions lie not in corporate influences but in sub-cultural ones.
Hippies had claimed the Microbus in their delusional vision of “conquering the open road,” along Eisenhower’s racist freeways which inevitably plowed through vibrant urban communities-of-color in order to pave the way for sundown-suburbs to spread out in radials of hate from city centers. This left white-flight folks striving for middle-class respectability to look for a new vehicle capable of transporting their growing families back and forth from the daily locations that were no longer within walking distance of home. Chevrolet borrowed heavily from Volkswagen in the designs of its 1961 Corsair platform, which was the Americans first attempt at a fully enclosed utility vehicle with cargo space that could be easily converted to extra seating. As American cities redefined themselves around their expanding interstates, building wider and wider automotive-centric streets, the compressed nature of the microbus made less sense outside of Europe and the East Coast. Both Ford and Chrysler joined in the up-sizing revolution that summed up the illusion of prosperous growth of Baby Booming USA.
Regardless of the convertible van’s roots as a vehicle of a white supremacist expansion of US Imperialism, frustrated and disillusioned Rock n’ Rollers took back over the counter culture from the hippies, slam dancing punk into the late 70s and early 80s. They said “Fuck You, DAD!” And stole his ride with them, as the conversion van was the perfect vehicle to fit your band, and their equipment into whatever arrangement was necessary. The full-sized conversion van had to be cut loose by the respectable families of white suburbia as it was painted with Heavy Metal wizards and unicorns. By this time the auto industry was already happy to have a new version of suburban bliss ready to sell in the form of the soccer mom minivan, a clean cut respectable vehicle to neutralize any threat to nuclear family/waste management.
By 1988, Danny’s Big Blue conversion van would have been out of place as a white family vehicle anywhere outside South City St. Louis. Souf City, too urban and poor to fit the resurgent vision of the not-so-black and entirely-white Beavers, nuclear families here were relegated to the toxic sludge of Ninja Turtles. In this light, it perfectly understandable how THE VAN became Donny’s relationship to the family he was trying to create. THE VAN, which he would drive through seasons of soccer games and family vacations would also be the implement of his and our undoing.
One morning, before heading into work, Donny received a call from a work buddy of his at the brewery. Buddy was working the M-for-Midnight-leg of the MAD shift rotation, and wanted to let D-for-Day and Doped-up Donny know that his upcoming shift was getting hit with “random drug-testing.” Out of sick-days and vacation, Donny weighed his options in the parking lot looking for a way out less costly than another failed drug test. He settled on “accidentally” slamming the door on himself hard enough to break his left arm.
In the end, THE VAN died before our collective dream of family a few years later. Another warning that we failed to understand until it was long too late. THE VAN, gone missing with no explanation from Donny, was found by the police in a parking lot, left running, interior stripped, smashed and torched to oblivion. The cops figured it had been stolen for a joyride and then abandoned and set on fire after the thieves crashed it into a few too many dumpsters and brick walls. “The Thieves” were never going to be found.
A-sher na-tan’ la-sech-vi’ vi-nah’ le-hav-chin’ bein yom u-vein’ lai’-lah.
Who gave to the rooster understanding
to differentiate between day and between night.