- By Bill C.
First, thanks for the
compliments. But I cannot pass up this chance to share my twist on history…
or twisted history, as it may be. After all, you have to wonder what brought
me to this place. But I will have to be brief because there’s a newsletter
to put out!
Like
a lot of other teens, I grew up drawing pictures of my favorite dream hot
rods. Even in elementary school, I was known for my renditions of ’32
high-boy roadsters. By Jr. High, I was making a few bucks a week knocking
out Roth Rat Fink & Village Idiot style graphics on sweatshirts and Blast
Jackets (a.k.a. Army Surplus Arctic jacket outer shells). It was barely
enough to pay for my supplies. But, hey, I suddenly had a lot of (cheap)
friends! I idolized both of my big brothers. Bob was a Chevy mechanic; Denny
was an electronics technician and semi-professional artist. He introduced me
to oils and acrylics. I loved painting in them. But they take a lot of time
and require a lot of space & patience. Now, I mess around on computers
instead, have VWs for a hobby, and don’t get to be as nearly artistic
(freehand) as I would like to be. Besides an electronics background, I have
had considerable experience in written communications and technical
documentation; a little “Creative Writing 101”, and a lot of lie telling.
With that, though, everything has been mostly coincidence.
I got involved with our newsletter not too long after the club copier broke in early 2000. At the time, our member list was a manageable 30 newsletters or so. Bobby was looking for somebody to just make copies. So, yes I did volunteer to make copies, even to have them all stapled on the copier. Herschel would fax (to my PC) the originals, I would use the computer to touch up any fax marks, dots & paste-up shadows and sometimes re-type text that didn’t come through on the fax too good, while trying to mimic the original. Then it was time for making copies. I believe my first month was March 2000. (find them, in part, on our web site)
Finally, I would drive the copies to Herschel and they would be addressed, stamped and mailed. It didn’t take many months of 15-20 mile round trips before I got tired of it & volunteered to use MS Word’s mail-merge feature to print the labels, stamp, staple, and mail them (in less time that it took for my trip). So I started keeping a member database to create the labels.
I really got radical in March 2001. It was our first edition with “VW of the Month.” It was Bill & Necky Tschumy and their white-on-red ’79 Beetle Convertible. We were doing 59 newsletters, plus club courtesy copies. This was Bill & Necky’s last month before their Navy reassignment to PA.
At some point Bobby asked me to do our finances. So it was a fit for me to collect dues too. (Are you bored yet?) I won’t talk about the web site and the on-line membership applications. I can see your eyes getting droopy. So yhadda yhadda… At the peak of membership, due mainly because of New Beetles, we were pumping out nearly 160 copies a month.
In January ‘04, I thought it would be fun to focus more on the member, the person. So, “VW of the Month” became “Vdubber of the Month.” We now average about 120 mailed copies, plus nearly 20 emailed copies. Our hobby is good.
Oh, and I won’t tell you about having a copy of every newsletter since I joined, all filed in 3-ring binders. Because, you might think I’m sic or something.. ha. It IS fun to look at the change over the years, much like a family album full of old photographs. I guess, when you think about it, though, we’re sort of like a family.
Wow… that’s twisted…. history. Air Bill