I jokingly say to folks today that I've been into VW's since day 1 when I was brought home from the hospital in a 1981 VW Rabbit. It's not a joke though, it's entirely true. That was the start of bigger and better things to come in to my life. Growing up I had asthma, and being your typical little kid, I had a hard time sitting still to take treatments for it. Since I loved cars, my mom rented a copy of one of the Herbie movies (on Beta to boot) in hopes that it would keep me still long enough, and boy oh boy did it ever work. I became obsessed with Herbie, and all things VW Beetle for that matter. So much so that my parents had to sell the VW Beetle they had at the time because they couldn't get a baby sitter that would sit in the garage with me when they would go out. I was so upset, but my dad kept promising that one day I would have a beetle of my own.

Fast forward to the early 1990s, and we drove past Billco Volkswagen and saw a baby blue 1972 Super Beetle parked on their used car lot. We stopped and bought the car on the spot. I was 12 or 13 at the time, but I finally had a beetle I could call mine. My dad and I took the car to cruises and shows everywhere we could. It was one thing I could share with my dad that we could both enjoy. We agreed to sell the car a few years later as that one beetle led to us owning a few more, and the 72 wasn't getting as much use from us. It broke my heart, but I understood what we had to do.

A few years later I was 18 years old, I bought my true first new car, a 1999 New Beetle (which I still have) and I showed that car at cruises and shows too. I went to a cruise on the other side of Pittsburgh from me and when I pulled into the lot, I saw a Super Beetle like mine. So I parked and began walking over to the car. As I got closer I kept saying to myself how it looked like my old car. When I go up to the car, I noticed the decals in the windows for the VW Clubs I belonged to and knew it was my car. I was blown away, I couldn't believe it!

What I had completely missed in my excitement was the for sale sign on the front windshield. I started talking with the couple that had the car, and they remembered buying the car from us. They also told me that it was the first time they put the for sale sign on the window. I of course told them to take it off, cause I was buying the car back. Which I did. About a year after I got my beetle back I was involved in a hit and run accident that nearly totaled the car. I was again heart broken thinking that my poor beetle gave its life to save mine and wouldn't be worth fixing. But I proved everyone wrong. It took nearly four years, but I restored the car to like new condition. I used only the best parts available, and even tracked down original or new old stock parts whenever I could.

One thing is for sure, after all of this, and the way fate brought my first car back in to my life, I won't make the same mistake twice. There will always be a place for this member of the family. The one that sleeps in the garage.

Albert