Way back in October 1988, we had just arrived at my grandparent’s Sheridan Lake cabin for Canadian Thanksgiving weekend; I had turned 19 that summer, my brother had his 18th birthday that weekend, and my sister was starting her grade 8 year in junior high.
The yellow leaves had started falling off the poplars and there were already slippery layers of leaves all over the ground. My parents’ 35 foot camperized 1959 MCI Courier 96 Skyview motor coach, originally a retired Brewster Gray Line tour bus from Lake Louise & Banff, was parked in a level area at the uphill end of the property near the road, so we had to carry the camping and cooking supplies downhill to the cabin near the lake shore. The narrow driveway down to the cabin is too steep and twisty for the bus to even consider trying, and almost impossible to use with just about any vehicle if there is any mud or snow.
We had just gotten the fire lit in the old McLary stove to warm the cold cabin when the dogs started barking. An unfamiliar vehicle was coming down the long curve of the driveway. We all went outside and saw our grandparents waving to us from the light gray van creeping its way down the steep lane and then effortlessly up the short tree-root crossed hill at the end of the lane to the cabin. “Syncro” was plainly written in black letters on the left side below the windshield. They had bought their first camper van.
But we soon learned from my Poppa, that this was not just any Volkswagen camper van, it was a, “vanagon syncro, a syncro”, he drilled. We learned about how it wasn’t very powerful, but how that didn’t matter so much because it had such a low gear for climbing up hills and all 4 wheels were powered! This was Poppa’s first four wheel drive vehicle. And because it was standard shift, it was even better; automatic transmissions seemed to him as inferior to manual gear selection and the working of a clutch the way he thought a clutch should be worked. Momma loved the functional interior of the Westfalia camper, and that four adults could sleep in it – she was the main motivator for the purchase.
Back to the present: just this summer, my Mom found an entry in one of Momma’s old checkbook ledgers that showed the purchase of this van:
At the end of that Thanksgiving weekend, after we had all packed up to go home, we witnessed the “syncro” make the steep climb up the curved dirt driveway in low gear. I remember the signature purr of that waterboxer engine as it appeared to idle its way up that hill.
But the funny thing is that at the time, I didn’t think much of the van. It looked cool and space-age in that ’80’s sort of way, but that was about it. After all, I was only 19 and thinking about other important-to-me things that were not Volkswagen. But for some strange reason, I clearly remember this particular October in 1988.
My grandparents would later come to have a not-so-wonderful adventure in that van, which led them to their next nearly identical “syncro”.