I had purchased a red Chevy van in Denver, Colorado in December 1981. I had traded in a worthless Dodge Omni that I had purchased a year before in 1980. I was very happy to unload that Dodge piece of shit. The Chevy van offered numerous advantages over the Dodge Omni. First, it had an awesome amount of cargo space because it was a cargo van. Second, it had a high-altitude carburetion kit that was designed for driving at high altitudes. Third, it had a 250 cubic inch, six-cylinder engine that produced twice the horsepower of the engine that was in the Dodge Omni. Fourth, it made better gas mileage than the Dodge Omni. Now that was the real shocker. The van had a bigger engine with more horsepower, but it made better gas mileage. How in the hell did that happen? Fifth, it had a longer cruising range on a tank of gas than the Dodge Omni had. It did have a couple of disadvantages when I first bought it. The biggest disadvantage was that the interior of the van was not insulated. It was just a metal shell. Driving in the winter with an uninsulated metal vehicle means that the cold radiates right through the vehicle. I didn’t realize just exactly how big a problem that would be until I drove to North Dakota in that van to visit my folks for Christmas in 1981. We packed our Coleman space heater in the van (that turned out to be a smart move), as well as several warm blankets and some sleeping bags. We packed all of the Christmas gifts we were taking with us, and we put a bunch of sodas in a cooler, but I didn’t bother to put ice on the sodas. I figured that cool temperatures would keep the sodas cool. That was understatement. Boy was it ever. We made sure that we took plenty of extra winter clothing just in case. We left for North Dakota two days after we bought the van. There was a winter storm blowing in across the Rockies, and I wanted to beat that winter storm to North Dakota. We left Denver at 4 o’clock in the morning traveling north on Interstate 25. The plan was to stay on Interstate 25 north until we reached Interstate 90 east. Once we reached Interstate 90 east we proceeded to Spearfish, South Dakota. You know how it is with a new vehicle. It takes a little while to get used to the operating range of the vehicle. Yeah. And there are also some growing pains. First, growing pain, I should have refueled in Spearfish, South Dakota. Well, that’s what I should have done. That’s not what I did. Here’s why. I had over three quarters of a tank of gas. When I turned onto Highway 85 north, I had no way of knowing there wasn’t going to be another place to fill the gas tank between Spearfish, South Dakota and somewhere in North Dakota. Oops. My bad. I relied on the map. And the map showed me that there were a couple of towns in between Spearfish and the North Dakota border. I figured at least one of them had to have gas. Wrong. I was wrong. Oh, they had gas. But only during the day. Those gas stations had banker’s hours. And the banks were all closed. And oh, by the way, so were the gas stations. It’s like those signs you see when you’re driving across the desert and your car is running on empty, “No gas, no services for the next two hundred miles.” When I crossed the North Dakota border, my gas gauge was showing less than an eighth of a tank of gas, and Bowman was the nearest town on the map. But Bowman was a-ways away. I had no way of knowing if I would make it to Bowman. Then I saw a sign that said Bowman was 20 something miles away. I was praying the whole way into Bowman. When we got to Bowman, everything was closed. They were on banker’s hours too. However, unlike South Dakota, North Dakota had this little unwritten rule. If you needed gas or emergency vehicle service after normal business hours, you could contact the donut patrol (the local police or the County Sheriff) who would in turn contact somebody who was on call. Go ahead. I know what you’re thinking. You have this question that you want to ask but you’re holding back. You want to know how I know about this unwritten rule, am I right? Well you see, in my hometown, I worked on the wrecker service that was on call, and Mister donut (a.k.a. the local cop) would call me when necessary. I had a friend who worked at a gas station that was on call after hours. We usually got three or four calls a month from tourists who needed gas or assistance with a flat tire. So, when I got to Bowman, I told my wife not to panic. I told her I was going to look for the local cop. Finding the local cop turned out to be pretty easy. There was only one all night diner in town. I figured that place also doubled as the donut shop. I hit that one right on the head. Right next door to that diner was a bakery. The bakery must have provided all the baked goods such as buns, bread, pie, cookies, and donuts to the diner. The diner had a display case that was pretty sizable as soon as you walked through the front door. And you’ll never guess who was seated at the bar near the cash register at the front of the diner. Any takers? Do you give up? The local purveyor of donuts, of course. My wife and daughter sat down at a booth to order something to eat, and I walked over to talk with the police officer. I said, “Excuse me sir.” The officer looked over at me and grunted and asked, “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?” “Oh yes sir. I noticed that you’re as busy as the local cop back in my hometown usually was when he was eating donuts and talking the ear off of the waitress.” “Oh yeah? And what hometown might that be?” “Carrington.” “Carrington? Hey, I know the guy over there. Matthews or something like that.” “That’s right. Used to harass the hell out of me.” “What do you mean?” “Well, I went off and joined the Army a while back.” “So, you still haven’t told me why you’re bothering me.” “Oh yeah. Over in Carrington, we had this arrangement where we could have a guy on call to pump gas after hours if tourists and out-of-town folks needed gas. Do you have somebody like that, here?” “As a matter of fact, we do. Let me finish my coffee, then I’ll give them a call.” “Okay. I’m just going to be right over there with my family. Thanks for your help. And take your time eating your donuts.” “Listen, smart ass. I ain’t eating donuts. I’m just having a cup of coffee.” “Yeah. Sure. And it ain’t snowing outside. And those aren’t donut crumbs around your mouth.” Then, the waitress started giggling and said, “I think he got you honey.” The cop’s face turned red. He immediately got up from his barstool and threw some money down on the counter. He stomped out of the diner in an angry mood and came back in a few minutes later. He walked up to me and said, “Okay. You can take your vehicle to the Cenex station down the street to get your gas and pay the guy in cash. He can only pump even dollar amounts of gas.” After we got gas, we checked the sodas in the cooler. Some of them had gotten so cold, they froze. When the cans of soda froze they ruptured inside of the cooler and made a god-awful mess. I wondered how cold it was. I just knew that it was freezing cold. Ice had formed inside of the van on the walls of the van. When we got to Interstate 94, we proceeded east on Interstate 94 to Bismarck. I decided not to take any more chances with the fuel situation, so I refueled in Bismarck. By the time we got to Steele, North Dakota, we were driving in near blizzard conditions. Snow was blowing and drifting across the road so bad that I couldn’t see the lanes on the freeway anymore. So, I exited the freeway and took Highway 3 north to Highway 200. I drove most of the way without headlights so that I could see the road. When I had exited in Bismarck to fill the tank with gas, I had also started up the portable space heater for my wife and daughter. They had put on extra clothes, and they had wrapped themselves in blankets, but they were still cold. Firing up the space heater certainly helped to keep them warm. By the time I turned onto Highway 200 east, the snow was coming down pretty hard, and the blowing snow that was drifting across the road was forming finger drifts that were getting to be pretty sizable. By the next morning, those finger drifts would be impassable. I was just barely beating the winter storm to North Dakota and to my parents’ house. When I arrived at my parents’ house, and we opened up the back end of the van and turned on the cabin lights, the whole interior of the van was glazed in ice. When my folks saw the coating of ice on the interior panels of the van, they were shocked. They asked, “Didn’t you turn on the heater?” I replied, “It’s really important to understand that the heater in the van is just a heater. It is not a jet engine with thrusters and turbo boost that can automatically blast the ice off the inside of this van. There is no insulation in there to hold the heat. I might as well have been driving an open-air sled. Cuz the metal on that van is as cold as the outside air temperature. If you don’t believe me, go fetch one of the sodas out of the cooler. I even had a space heater on but that didn’t help much. My first major project on this van is going to be to insulate the interior of the cargo space and to add front-to-rear, ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall carpeting. Another thing I’ve gotta do is put a roof vent in it to allow hot air to escape. Those modifications will make this thing a great cruising machine. The maiden voyage of the Chevy van had proved its mettle, but it also revealed a couple of disadvantages or rather design flaws that had to be fixed. It wasn’t an exercise in futility, but the maiden voyage had proved to be a learning experience.
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