Milo the Hippie was not exactly the type of individual that one would expect to find walking down the streets of Keister’s Ridge. Keister’s Ridge is the sort of town where even the mayor, Mayor Graft, can be seen in blue jeans and boots. In fact, when Mayor Graft would put on his gray suit and burgundy tie he looked more like the honored guest at a funeral than he looked liked the leader of a thriving small town. In short, even though he was short, Mayor Graft in his suit tended to stand out. And, by the same token, so did Milo the Hippie. Milo was about five foot nine inches tall. Like everyone else in town he wore jeans and boots. But his boots are suede and had fringe around the tops. They also came up to just below his knee caps. His K-Mart denim work shirt was ordinary, enough, but the embroidered flower over the left breastpocket was a bit unusual for Keister’s Ridge.
Milo was a displaced flower child. He was a suburbanite who, as a high school student, became fed up with life. He protested against one thing and another, and by the time he reached his junior year in college he
“dropped out”. Unlike other flower children nobody noticed he was gone. At State U Milo majored in English and minored in political science. He studied things like The History of Protest in America, Milton’s Influence on Modern Morality, and The Basic Philosophy of World Religions in Latin America. These were very “in” courses that were dropped when academe grew up. They were replaced by Basic English Composition, Introduction to Communication, Math: Introduction to Numbers, and Remedial Reading. Once those courses were taught by high schools, but now that high schools are filled with teachers who went to school with the likes of Milo the Hippie education has been back sliding a bit.
Milo left college to join a politically aware commune in the wilds of Rural America. Unfortunately, to become communally aware of politics a person had to get up at six in the morning to feed the hogs. Milo was not the type to get up at six in the morning to feed himself, let alone to feed a bunch of icky hogs. Suburbia and Milton prepare you for some things, but hog feeding is not one of them. So Milo left the commune and started to drift across the country.
Milo had drifted about thirty miles when, as luck would have it, he met his true destiny. Missy Theda Thompson was driving Route 33 towards Malcom Ott’s Farm and Feed when the throttle cable on her 1962 Volkswagen Beetle broke. Her car had glided to a stop on the side of the road. Missy Theda Thompson had raised the lid at the rear of her car and was looking at the motor when Milo, equipped with backpack, strolled by.
Milo peered into the engine compartment over Missy Thompson’s shoulder and with one of the most brilliant deductions of all time said, “Ah, it seems to be broken.”
Knowing about “those types” Theda skittered towards the front of the vehicle so as to put as much distance between the peculiar apparition and herself as possible. She allowed as how the car was indeed broken and that she had no idea how to fix it. Milo knew about Volkswagens. All hippies knew about Volkswagens. It was after all, their car in the late ’60s. He reached in, turned this, wiggled that, and using a bit of old barbed wire found at the side of the road made a nifty temporary repair.
A half hour later Missy Theda Thompson was telling Bart, the very-soon-to-be-ex-manager of the Keister Inn about the interesting person she had met earlier in the day. When Bart opened his Richfield Service Station it happened to be Milo the Hippie that he hired to be his wrench-man.
Unfortunately, Milo knew only about Volkswagens. Ultimately, this worked out to the mutual benefit of everybody. Torx Torvald was the local mechanic, and he could work on almost anything except Volkswagens. Whenever a busted Bug would pull into his garage he would practically shudder with despair. Eventually, an unspoken agreement was worked out between Torx and Milo. Milo sent American cars to Torx, and Torx sent Milo any VW that happened to drop in. The nearest Volkswagen dealer was in Miller’s Falls, and that was a fair distance away. Naturally, the locals who owned VWs started bringing them to Milo. In fact, when people in Miller’s Falls found out that Milo’s labor rates were half those of their dealer they started driving all the way to Keister’s Ridge to get their work done.
Eventually, Milo had so much business that he left Bart’s Richfield Service and rented an old distillery for a garage of his own. That became the Keister’s Ridge German Car Repair and Sport Car Garage, Milo the Hippie; Proprietor.
The term “sport car” often conjures up vision of low slung roadsters with numbers taped on the doors. But to Milo sport car meant something completely different. Tucked in the back of his garage was a secret weapon.
At first glance the secret weapon looked like an ordinary Volkswagen Beetle. But, on second glance the astute observer could see that all was not normal. The car was bright lime green. The body was strictly 1963 issue, but the motor was from a 1970 Bug. It had a Holly Bug Spray carb, Maxi-Flow heads, a German heavy duty clutch, and Bug-Mania Super Duct manifold. The engine turned out a lot of horsepower. In fact, there was so much power that Milo had trouble controlling it.
Early tests indicated that with all the modifications and addition of performance equipment that the power would never make it to the pavement. Milo bought racing tires and custom wheels. These helped somewhat, but the car still had the habit of fishtailing and trying to launch itself into the air. It was going to be a fast, very fast, car. That was what Milo wanted, the fastest meanest, sneakiest VW in the world.
Like all good secrets, the killer Volkswagen was kept under wraps and was tested only after dark. Milo was anxious to get the car finished and running. He had been working on the car after hours for weeks. It was fairly obvious that the Bug was going to be a real hot number, but even Milo didn’t know hot it would be. He spent several late nights getting it ready to run. He was tired, and while usually Milo was very careful about his work this time his anxiousness got the better of him.
The back of the old distillery was dark. The space had been reserved solely for the Bug and its assorted parts. A light socket hung from a cord, its bulb casting a shadowy glow on the dusty walls. Milo kept a fluorescent worklight handy. Against one wall was a work bench. On the bench, Milo had laid out his tools with operating room precision.
Milo worked on the Bug until late Thursday. The day had been spent replacing a smashed front end on a bright blue VW 411 owned by a school teacher. It was a tough job, and Milo was glad when he finished. He was more than happy to get to work on his own car. Friday, he did three tune-ups for customers and replaced a fuel pump on a Porshe that had died in the parking lot over at Fred’s Motel and Hungarian Restaurant. Rather that quit and go see a movie with Bart, as he had promised to do, he went to the back of the garage and crawled under the Bug. It was almost finished and he knew that he had only a few more hours work ahead of him.
But, alas, Milo ran into a few problems. A front-end tie bar bushing was bad, and he had to replace it. The bushing was old and stuck, and Milo’s pulling tool broke. He stayed under the car for hours, tugging, straining, and grunting, until the repair was completed. Milo was very tired, but somewhere he got his second wind. He kept going, and going, and going.
The back of the distillery had no windows, and Milo kept drinking coffee from his handy Mr. Coffee machine. Finally, Milo decided that enough was enough. and he figured the time had come to go to home, have a bite to eat, and salvage the last of his Friday night by catching Johnny Carson on the TV. Imagine his surprise when he stepped out of the garage and discovered that he had quite just in time for lunch on Saturday.
Being a reasonable person, Milo went home, had a shower, and popped by the Keister Inn for lunch, and promptly went back to the garage. By now he was determined to get the Volkswagen ready. The next twenty-four hours found Milo in the back of the old distillery working on the Killer Bug. Once he fell asleep under the car.
Despite the long hours, he was eventually done. The car the plate glass window of the police station. Milo managed to hide the car in the garage before the sheriff figured out what had happened. Later he ruminated on the benefits of doing a job one step at a time with no short cuts and getting plenty of sleep. A nice little moral to a nice little story that Milo was never able to tell anybody until the statute of limitations was up.