Boogie Man 2

I had picked the VW up in Stuttgart three months ago and then explored the Bavarian forest, driven in an eye-blink through Lichtenstein, crossed the Alps and checked out Northern Italy in this little wonder.  I glanced over at Jonesy and excitedly looked forward to driving my pride and joy on my first ever visit to France. 

I picked up Fritz, my beautiful brand new shinny VW Bug in Stuttgart three months ago while I was on my way south in a rented car from the Frankfurt am main to the small village of Villigen, straight south 200 kms into the heart of Germany;s Black Forest, (Schwartz Wald)and then explored the Bavarian forest, driven in an eye-blink through Lichtenstein, crossed the Alps and checked out Northern Italy in this little wonder.  I glanced over at Jonesy and excitedly looked forward to driving my pride and joy on my first ever visit to France. 

Jonesy held the folded map up in one hand and the Four Roses extra large size jug in the other, and his dark face lit up with the happiest bright-eyed smile I think I’ve ever seen.  “Well Jonesy, we’re off!  But before we hit the road,” I pointed at the bottle in Jonesy’s hand.   

“Right man, let’s do it!”  Jonesy took a swig, then handed me the bottle, I pulled one back and we studied the map, accidentally christening it with a dollop of whiskey, and charted our course.  

We were in the medieval town of Villingen deep in the heart of Southern Germany’s Black Forest, and on the map it looked like a fast shot on fast roads into France and then around what looked like low lying hills, direct to our destination.  Looks are sometimes deceiving, and if I’d known how deceiving, I may have called the whole thing off.  But ignorance is bliss, so I rev’d the 1300 cc Beatle to life, glided into first, and we were off, slipping and skidding down the glistening cobblestone. 

Four stone arches at each compass point carry daily traffic into and out of the walled town and as we slipped and slid our way through the western arch I felt a sudden joy.  We were out.  We were free!. We were on our way to Paris!

Jonesy and I passed the bottle back and forth, didn’t talk too much, and got into the rhythm of the road as orange sky faded into a star-filled night that grew brighter as we climbed higher into the rolling French woods.   The road followed a stream winding first right then turning sharp left then … It kept up like that until we made another left and  suddenly two dim street lamps appeared in front of us on the right side of the street with an orange-yellow blinking construction light across the street.  “Yoh Davey man.” Jonsey pointed to a squat double width telephone booth-like structure on the sidewalk directly behind the yellow blinker. It was was completely empty and had “Poste de police 49” printed boldly across its glass curb-facing side was —  Maybe this was our salvation, we could ask for help from the people in the booth and I hopefully drove directly across the deserted ‘Main” street towards it and pulled up to a stop at the side of an unfortunately deserted glass and aluminum structure, and noticed a message tapped to the window . Even though neither of us spoke French it seemed to infer that this booth would open in around 9 hours at 7AM.

A half dream-world where my consciousness is focused down the high beams and my subconscious is where coherent thoughts float to the surface and …”Where the hell are we Jonesy!”  I was scared and pissed at the same time, actually mostly worried and yes, scared.up 

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