The Street Van Man (Part 3) "Vantastic Voyage"

My 1975 Dodge Tradesman-100 was still a new vehicle, just two years old and sturdy.    I remember saying goodbye to my mother right in front of our house in Orange, New Jersey and driving off at around 3:00 p.m. on a weekday. There is a reason why we left so late, but that is another story. We made our way to Interstate 80 near Teaneck, New Jersey -where the Isley Brothers supposedly lived and our journey began. Our destination was Los Angeles, California so we headed west on I-80. There were just three of us trucking out of town: my friend Larry age 25, my brother Martin 24 and yours truly age 23.  This road trip out to the west coast would be the furthest either of us had ever driven –Two thousand, eight hundred (2,800) miles one way – and this was our first road trip in a 'Street Van.'

A street van is unlike an ordinary car or station wagon. It gave us awesome flexibility with plenty of elbow room to move about inside; two small beds; a small table and privacy to change clothes in and to sleep in overnight. It was very comfortable inside of my van even in some of the hottest parts of the country. The windows were tinted, we had AC and most of the windows could be opened. In a van like mine you also ride higher up than in a car and the front windshield was very large which gave us a great almost panoramic view. We could even change drivers without stopping! Okay, I tried that driver switching thing only once while moving and definitely not on the highway.

The California trip wasn't originally my idea.  It was my friend Larry who first proposed we take a road trip out to California to transport a guitar amplifier to his brother Romeo who had moved out to LA to make music.  The plan seemed feasible to me and as I was listening to Larry talk, I was thinking furiously, ‘I have the wheels, I love the road, I have vacation time off from work at INA, why not, why the hell not!?’ The three of us caught  road fever right then and there and I didn't hesitate to say ‘let’s go’ and that was the birth of our dream road trip to California.

The very next day, I started prepping my van for the voyage. The first thing I needed to do was to replace the horn. The Dodge Tradesman van had a very puny sounding factory horn that was a little bit embarrassing to blow. The solution was to install two used Cadillac horns I found in a junkyard. I attached the horns under the hood then wired them to a large push button I installed on my van’s dashboard. The new horn button was just to the left of the steering wheel column and within easy reach of my left hand. Now I had a much louder, manlier horn for my van that I thought sounded pretty cool.  Maybe not as cool as those air horns I'd seen mounted on the roofs of some other vans; but I had to save my money for the trip.

Next, I got together some cross country maps to plan with and my dad  helped us with some of the more technical aspects of our route.  My two travel companions and I wanted to make a few brief stops along the way to see some well-known sights -Chicago, The Great Salt Lake, The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Once we reached the west coast we would be touring and spending at least a week in both southern and northern California. Last but not least on my list, was to record some riding music. You just can’t have a great adventure without also having a great soundtrack, right? ‘Right on to the Max!’ After all we were going to be doing some Hollywood Swinging- and driving clear across the country.  I got right down to recording our cruising music on audio cassette tapes and this proved to be one of my best decisions. To this day whenever I hear a tune from that playlist my mind and my emotions can’t help but travel back to one of our finest hours; our California road trip adventure. This was the seventies so I had cassette tapes the long (120) minute ones loaded with music from The Commodores (blue album), Johnny Guitar Watson's A Real Mother for you, and mixed tapes of cuts like, Float On -The Floaters, Coco - Joe Thomas, Sassafras Girl - Pleasure, Free As the Wind - The Crusaders, some Fleetwood Mac - Dreams, Steely Dan - Royal Scam and Aja, Lowdown - Boz Scaggs, some Earth Wind and Fire cuts and so much more. Of course the music helped us to stay awake over long and lonely stretches of road as we traveled day and night to get to the coast without any overnight stops.  My companions and I would each take a four hour shift of driving while the guy riding shot gun also stayed mostly awake, to help the driver to stay awake. The third guy was lucky, he was able to get four hours of uninterrupted sack time if he wanted to.

To the right is an early photo of my Dodge van while being customized in 1976. You can see  in the photo that there was a day bed platform in the rear of the van and a side couch platform with enough room to stretch out on. The spare and jack were underneath the rear day bed platform which also left room for other things no taller than twelve inches tall. There was additional storage under the side couch and even more storage room for bulky luggage, coolers and whatever else we wanted to bring in the trunk space behind the rear day bed.  You could get to the trunk space either from the inside or through the outside rear doors.

All of that storage space in my van would come in handy on our long road trip.  We would need to bring along sleeping bags, towels to wash up with and lots of clothes of course.  We were going to need our clothes to go hang out in California discos and to make the right impression in diverse situations. We were even prepared for going on job interviews so my brother and I brought along a suit and tie just in case. As for food provisions we didn't store up any food in the van because we were going to live off the land and eat fast food. What did we care, we were young.  Food however, latter proved to be a major drain on our money. 

Our road trip westbound out of New Jersey had a few notable brief stops. The first was a  thirty minute stop in Chicago Illinois. We arrived very early in the morning about five AMwhen the city was just waking up I mentioned that three of us rode out to Los Angeles. Larry, Martin and me. However Larry flew back to New Jersey from LA and it was just Martin and I that continued on up the coast to San Francisco and Oakland and stayed for a couple more weeks before returning to New Jersey.  It was during this Northern California segment of the journey where we had the most fun and experienced the most interesting situations.  We met people and made friends in Oakland and at UC Berkeley. We truly lived off the land in my van, parked it overnight on streets to sleep in, hung out in Oakland parks for fun during the day and there were kind hearted people who took care of us two brothers from New Jersey. Some  showed us around and some even brought us food. Still others let us wash our clothes at their apartments and let us take showers. 

More about our finances. I remember that my brother and I had to hit my dad up for some additional funds not twice but three times before we made it back home to New Jersey. The first Western Union cash received from my dad was while we were in Los Angeles California. A week later we were in Oakland CA and needed more money because we wanted to stay out there a little longer. The third and last time we hit our dad up was while we were finally on our way home. We ran out of money on the way and  had to stop in Omaha, Nebraska and asked him to wire us some more money. I think he felt sorry for us and did not complain. He just wired us some more money since as he put it; we were right dab in the middle of the country without a dime to get home. Thank you dad I know you loved us and wanted us to get back home safely. 

After leaving Omaha we made it all the way to Scranton, Pennsylvania where our cousin Lin Marie and her husband Chester Horn lived. We arrived there early in the morning and they fed us breakfast. Chester asked us how we were doing for money and we admitted that we were dry so he gave us enough gas money to fill our gas  tank one last time. At this point in time we were only 107 miles away from home. We got going after that but we faced one more unplanned obstacle. There was a one dollar toll on the Delaware Water Gap Bridge on (I-80) between PA and NJ but unfortunately we were literally broke as we approached the bridge! As Lady Luck would have it, I had one Silver Dollar coin that I had won from a slot machine in Las Vegas. We had made a quick stop in Vegas on our trip out to California. We got there after midnight and checked out one of the casinos and I won a silver dollar coin. I flipped my lucky coin over to the toll booth attendant and we crossed over the border and kept going. We only had two more hours to go before we reached our home in Orange NJ some time around 1:30 PM. I think it was was either on a Saturday or a Sunday. 

My brother Martin and I were really inspired by our road trip and we would never be the same. We were wiser and fearless and also learned that we had to be much more responsible with money. Also we had seen the whole country from coast to coast and we loved the land and we had become California Dreamers. Now that we had seen more of what this country has to offer, there was no question in our minds that we would leave New Jersey to go back out there to meet our destinies. That is what we did the very next year however we detoured to Houston, Texas instead of going to California. Years later we are still living in Houston but I have no regrets. I found love head over heels, in Texas and got married to my soulmate and we had two children and put down roots. Martin did too and neither one of us has moved to California.  I have been back there to visit many times over the years and that is enough. Each time I've been back it has been fun; but as the words in the Sade song say; "It's never as good as the first time."

That's me in the dark glasses having fun in my van just days before my Cali road trip in 1977.

Here I am posing with my van cigarette in hand while doing some sight seeing in the Los Angeles foot hills, travel bug screen still installed on my grill, New Jersey plates.   

Pacific Coast view out my window

Oakland California friend admiring the inside of my van

Two Oakland friends with the Street Van man

 (The Street Van Man will return.)