Rant, Thy Topic is Bus-Bus

For as long as I've been following other bus blogs, I've been lightly antagonistic with one of Big Blue's Drivers as pertains the grotesque phenomenon known as the bus-bus.
You see, when it comes to objects that are meant to be used in the real world, I'm pretty much a form-follows-function-type guy. On the other hand, designer jeans and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, for example, are all (or mostly all) about style and appearance ("Lookit me!") and little to do with purpose. Likewise bus-buses--they're all form, no function. There is no reason to build a bus-bus anymore other than to be able to say, "I made a bus-bus. Isn't it cool that I made a bus-bus?" None. So naturally I hate them.

And I'd hate them were they made with '70s-era Ford Econolines, or '80s-era Dodge Caravans, or '90s-era Toyota Previas, really I would. But of course the "classic" bus-bus (such that it is) adds insult to injury by requiring for its construction the ruination of a near-perfect example of form-follows-function design: the VW bus (1949-1979). Kind of like having Frank Gehry build a gigantic addition to your Frank Lloyd Wright home, you know, just because you can.

Unfortunately I must admit I haven't always been so jaded on the subject. There was a Summer, the Summer of 1993, when I was living back with my parents in small-town Nebraska after a year of college. I got my old cooking job back at the ol' bar & grill and the idea was just to make money. That, and, since my hours were 4-11, imbibing perhaps too much, too often.

That Summer an older SHS graduate I knew, who disappeared not long after his own graduation, resurfaced quite unexpectedly and I should say quite spectacularly: he left a fairly clean-cut kid but came back in full "hippie" regalia (scare quotes because, no matter one's intentions or philosophies or lifestyle, hippyism died in the late '60s; if you're under circa 55 right now, there is no way you ever were or ever will be a hippie, sorry). His crew numbered maybe six all told, and they arrived, as I said, spectacularly, in a full-on bus-bus.

This one, in fact.

I've written at excruciating length here about my hatred for bus-buses, and about that hatred's ironclad justification. I've written previously about my hatred for bogus painted "hippie" buses, so my dear reader can heave a deserved sigh of relief that I won't go into that again. Now for the confession: I helped adorn the above bus-bus with that paint job. The "hippies" stayed in Stanton for perhaps two weeks, waiting on a part for the school bus, striking camp at the fairgrounds. (Amazingly, given what went on there, they didn't run afoul of the law.) During this time I made near-nightly trips to Craig (the SHS grad and only one whose name I remember) and his crews' bus-bus, mostly with the intention of b.s.-ing, thumping the bongos, smoking Drum (well, I was smoking Drum), and tipping back too much of my drink of choice at the time, Shady Screwdrivers (Stoli and Sunny D). Their part came eventually and on one of their last nights they decided it was time to paint the bus-bus (it had arrived just blue). Most of my work was on the passenger side, so it's not in the picture, but it consisted of a similarly-centered crescent moon. All this was done organically, without fakery, false sentimentality, or deceit and so I stand by it without shame of contradiction.

I lifted the picture off Craig's facebook page. A comment underneath said it had a date with the crusher last Summer, which I took with a small pang of sadness, as it closed a minor chapter in my Lost Youth. Farewell and good riddance, bus-bus.