Do you have the right kind of wife for a VW Microbus?

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Can your wife bake her own bread? Can she get a kid's leg stitched and not phone you at the office until it's all over? Find something to talk about when the TV set goes on the blink? Does she worry about the Bomb? Make your neighbors' children wish that she were their mother? Will she say "Yes" to a camping trip after 50 straight weeks of cooking? Let your daughter keep a pet snake in the back yard? Invite 13 people to dinner even though she only has service for 12? Name a cat "Rover"? Live another year without furniture and take a trip to Europe instead? Let you give up your job with a smile? And mean it? Congratulations.

Tumblr Ltcax9Dnpc1Qz5Hh4O1 400 BUT WAIT! Can she sharpen her own pencils? OK -- Congratulations.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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niktemadur

FINALLY you can sharpen a pencil? You’ve come a long way, baby!

http://pzrservices.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/09/1989_v_slims_ad.jpg
nancy bee

30 years ago I trained as a offset press operator. The guy who trained me was not happy I got the job and let me know by wearing a tshirt that said “If god hadn’t meant women to suck c*ck, he wouldn’t have given them mouths”. Those were indeed the bad old days.
- dlauri
  
  Interesting. I hope you pointed out that he had a mouth too.
tylerkaraszewski

Perhaps strangely, based on the ad, it seems that I *do* have the right type of wife for a VW bus. Hmm…
- whoster69
  
  I was thinking the same thing but about my wife :P
Vanwall Green

Needs Safari windows. Wife qualifies. Sharpens her own pencils.
Romeo Vitelli

If a wife can do all that, what does she need you for?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  If a wife can do all that, what does she need you for?
  
  To pay for the VW so she has someplace to meet her lover.
adamacus

Is she the kind of gal who can make you a nice dinner even though she no longer has use of her lower body due to a front end collision in a vehicle with no crumple zone?
xzzy

Hopefully my wife has the kidneys I’d be willing to give for the bus pictured in that ad.

A bus in that condition is the holy grail for fans of the type 2.
TheOmbudsman

A neighbor of mine obviously does have the wife for that, as he’s got a beautifully restored VW bus just like that one in the photo, except with the safari windows to boot.
Guest

Me: no, no, yes, yes, yes, oh hell no, no, yes, yes ,yes, yes, and no.

Him: no, *faint* hell no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and no.

Note which is the ‘agreeable’ one. I tried to talk HIM into a VW pop-top camper.
http://twitter.com/criminalcrafts Miss Demeanor

let me tell you where to put that pencil…
bbonyx

The MicroBus
The Wife
John Rust

Yes, she would even buy it for me…in lego form:

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Volkswagen-T1-Camper-Van-10220
Teller

One great feature of that model is the hollow curtain rod separating the cabin from the back which can hold a lot of hash in small tin foil wraps, I’ve heard.
JohnnyAstro

We had a WV bus when I was little, and one of the things they should add to the list is “Can your wife get out and push while Dad pops the clutch to get it started, and then run to jump in the still moving car?” Still, I can’t think of another vehicle that I had so many fond memories of, including the above incident at Hershey Park when I was 8.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Can your wife get out and push while Dad pops the clutch to get it started, and then run to jump in the still moving car?
  
  Can your wife use a fire extinguisher when she tries to drive it up a steep hill?
http://twitter.com/txhoudini Eric

I miss the days when “the Bomb” was capitalized.
RobDobbs

I misread that as:

Made Only By
B. A. Dick Company
- David Rogge
  
  A. B. Dick. Could the B be for Big?
GregS

I remember the days when we all expected to be incinerated by The Bomb at any moment. Good times…
- Felton / Moderator
  
  “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…”
AlexG55

Just like to point out that a woman taught me to sharpen pencils with a knife, which I still occasionally do if I can’t find a sharpener.

Miss DeLacey, you were an awesome art teacher.
adamrice

The VW ad is fascinating. It was definitely avant-garde for the time in terms of ad copy (not talking about the vehicle itself). I’m sure it was also very progressive for the time in terms of the image of womanhood it was projecting. Of course, we view it through a different lens today.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

I thought for sure that last thing would be a joke about http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521240745 Ryan Griffin

Ah, Ol’ Bee Dick. Quite the innovator, he was. Made up for his..short comings.
http://www.facebook.com/sarah.shevett Sarah Shevett

Why are so many ads, movies, signs, songs, directly solely towards men?
I don’t get it. It’s as if capitalism is only for males.
- Mujokan
  
  It’s because it’s from 1963. Here it is in context: http://books.google.com/books?id=00sEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA1&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=true
  - penguinchris
    
    Thanks for that link. I’m not sure it proves anything, though… the first article is about a woman cosmonaut, and seems to question why the US wasn’t the first to send a woman in space by providing a list of empowered women who would be suitable.
- slab99_99
  
  I feel the opposite when I watch TV. Like I don’t have to wash dishes, do the laundry, or buy feminine hygiene products. Oh wait.
robotnik

Is the VW add from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce?
BarBarSeven

Sharpen your own pencil? Is that something like tossing one’s own salad? I don’t understand modern slang.
http://www.facebook.com/lharden1 Laura Harden

I can sharpen my own pencil and yours too, while I am at it.
snowmentality

I can only sharpen a pencil if it’s got some lead in it, nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean.

(Couldn’t resist that one.)

Also, I would like to note that my mother-in-law bought two late-60s VW Beetles, rebuilt them darn near from the ground up, and drives one or the other of them every day. Except when she is hauling lumber so she can re-frame the second-story windows, in which case she drives a ginormous old Chevy van that is like driving a truck.

She hasn’t gotten a VW bus yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time.
Aknaton

Does it contain shovels and rakes and implements of destruction?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BZPUF2EASKRBUSDXMNN4IRB5GA dahlia

hey, *i* want that wife.

and i’m too pretty to sharpen pencils, i make my brother do it for me.
pjcamp

I thought the right kind of wife for a VW microbus was one that lay there like Frankie Doodle Dandy and came with her own bong.

Was I misinformed?
Miss Cellania

I was 5 or 6 years old when my Dad brought home a ’63 Microbus. It was new. Mom was really upset, not so much that it was a Microbus, but more that he didn’t discuss buying a new car with her at all. It was the LAST time he made such a big unilateral decision! But it was not the last Microbus we had. It’s what I learned to drive on.
jeligula

I am a commercial artist with a pencil fetish. The quality of my pencils is every bit as important as the point I put on them. This means that I am very particular about the sharpener that I use. When I saw that ad for the Planetary Pencil Pointer, I just had to research it. This led me to the Early Office Museum and a new hobby. Now I must track down and attempt to purchase the rotary abrasive sharpener we used in drafting classes in high school. Thanks, Mark.
Melinda Owens

Wait, was it a normal thing for a 60′s housewife to stitch up a kid’s leg on her own???
Kaleberg

This ad reminded me of another “wife” ad that probably wouldn’t get published today. It was for KLH speakers and sound systems with the tag line of the form: How much would you pay for your wife? (It was actually a bit less crass than it sounds. The point was to get the men, who were likely to buy the hi fi system back then, to think about what was important to them. Then again, maybe it was that crass.)
wrybread

A friend I’ve known for years has an injunction against roadtripping in a convoy with a VW van in it. It took me years to understand.

Now I, too, won’t roadtrip in a convoy with a VW van in it. Or I’ll at least let them know from the outset that if their van breaks down, I’m calling AAA for them and going on my way.

Old Dodge vans ftw.
Howard Dickins

Lucky me. I have the right wife. And a VW van too.