It's
such an ordinary car, this bedraggled 1959 Volkswagen Beetle, with its
dents and rust spots and an odometer that couldn't register all the
miles.
That ordinariness is a great part of its
charm, considering it belonged to world-famous aviator Charles
Lindbergh. He spent boyhood summers in Minnesota and donated the Beetle
to the Minnesota Historical Society.
"Most of
our visitors are amazed to learn that Lindbergh drove this sort of car,
considering the fact that he could afford to be driven around in a
limousine anywhere he wanted," said Donald Westfall, manager of the
Lindbergh historic site in Little Falls, Minnesota.
Lindbergh
preferred to travel without being recognised as a celebrity, and he
wasn't one to seek out physical comforts, Westfall said. Rather, "He
would appreciate the challenge of not being so comfortable." Lindbergh, a
tall man at 6 feet 4, even slept in the small car on trips to Egypt,
around the Mediterranean and throughout Europe.
The
gray VW is being prepared for display at the Minnesota History Centre
in St. Paul, starting in mid-July. It will return to Little Falls next
summer as a focus of a new exhibit at the Lindbergh House. It's not
being restored; the scrapes, dents and rust will stay. It's being
conserved; the Historical Society is trying to prevent further
deterioration and keep the car as well-maintained as its owner did. The
German VW engine is considered very well-built, and pilot Lindbergh, of
course, appreciated that.
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| Lindbergh's Trans-Atlantic ?Spirit of St. Louis? |
Added seat belts
Lindbergh
was 25 years old when he made his historic solo flight across the
Atlantic in May 1927. After the 1932 kidnapping and murder of his first
child, he and his family kept a distance from the public. They lived in
England from 1935 to 1939.
He paid about $1,000
for the Volkswagen when he bought it new in Paris in 1959. It came with
no radio, and he never put one in. He did add a ski rack and seat belts
and operated it under a French tourist license for several years. In
his book "Autobiography of Values," he wrote an anecdote involving the
car:
What is it like to live the life of a
Masai? Driving along a one-track dirt road in southern Kenya once, I
overtook two spearmen and offered them a ride. They accepted solemnly
and started to climb into my small Volkswagen, but their sharp-bladed
weapons were too long to take inside. Seeing their confusion, I switched
off the engine, walked around to their open door, and held out my hand.
Each man handed me his spear. I motioned one to the back seat and the
other to the front, then placed the spears, point forward, against the
side of the car. The man in front held them there, through the open
window. My Volkswagen must have looked like an armed knight as it rolled
through the dust and sand.
When he was 68, he
drove the Beetle to Little Falls from his home in Connecticut, stopping
at the Lindbergh historic site. John Rivard, then site manager, left
notes about the 1970 visit:
"Surprise was
expressed that he would drive all the way from Connecticut in this small
battered car. He said that he loved the car. It had been on four
continents, and he had even slept in it on occasions. When someone
seemed to doubt this possibility, he proceeded to take the right front
seat apart and set it up again in a lengthened-out position. He then
placed himself on it full length, like a boy showing off his toy."
The
next evening Lindbergh made a phone call and announced that he would
have to fly to New York to attend a meeting of the Pan Am board of
directors, on which he served. He left his VW in the tuck-under garage
at the Lindbergh house. Rivard noted, "He locked the car, being careful
to leave one window slightly open, then gave me the key for safekeeping
until he returned."
But he never picked up the
car. He donated it to the Historical Society in 1972, two years before
his death. He wrote in September 1972, "In signing the paper of transfer
for the Volkswagen, I am surprised at the nostalgia I encounter."
Save the dents
During the past few months, the VW has been transformed from simply a vintage vehicle into a museum artifact.
In
March 2001 the car was removed from the Lindbergh House garage. It had
been a popular feature of the house tours. (So is the Lindbergh family's
1916 Saxon car, in which Charles Lindbergh took his first driving
adventure. At age 14, he drove the Saxon to California as chauffeur for
his mother and uncle.)
From Little Falls, the
Beetle went to a VW specialist in Stillwater, where mechanics cleaned
the car's mechanical parts and removed the fluids.
Aaron
Novodvorksy of the exhibits staff said, "The car's running gear, drive
train and engine were completely disassembled, and the fluids were
replaced with Cosmoline wax." This is the process the military uses when
it "mothballs" vehicles, such as jeeps and trucks, he said. Although
the car has not been started since the 1970's, someday the wax could be
removed and the car made to run again.
Conservator
Paul Storch is working on the car in his Historical Society lab. (Next
to the VW is an 1880's horse-drawn buggy, once owned by former Gov.
Alexander Ramsey.) A rust inhibitor was applied to all concealed parts.
The car will be cleaned, hand washed and given a wax coating to protect
the finish.
Storch will save the little dents,
such as the one Lindbergh's daughter Reeve wrote about in her memoir,
"Under a Wing." Recalling her first visit to the Lindbergh House in
1975, she wrote, "I was amused to see our old Volkswagen, the one I had
learned to drive in, with a dent still in the left front fender where
I'd run into the stone wall at the curve of our driveway."
A
collection of items shows that he planned his trips carefully. He
carried maps with hand written notations. Inside the car were: two
suitcases, a flashlight, gas can, canteen, machete, inflatable air
mattress, whisk broom, small shovel, plastic canteen, miscellaneous
tools, wire, metal tubing, spoon and cans of dried beef, sardines and
baked beans. Under the Connecticut license plates, which expired in
October 1972, are European ones, probably French. The odometer reads
30,051, but Lindbergh said the car had about 130,000 miles.
"It's
an early-model Beetle, and in reasonably good shape, so a collector
would buy it," said researcher Paul Blankman. "But its real significance
comes from the fact that Charles Lindbergh drove the car on four
continents and personally donated it to the Historical Society.
