Adventures with the Green Van - I

Pick-up Artists

My old pal Audie once had a green 1974 Dodge Tradesman van.

He had bought it new; a stripped down model. It did have a radio, however, and a passenger seat, a side window on the sliding door, and two windows in the back. Those were the extent of its options. He had bought it for use with his band, a group I would help out with from time to time. It wasn’t what you would call a “chick magnet” although on one night it did rise to the occasion.

Audie and I were out and about, as Chuck Berry once said: “With no particular place to go.” We were in Northeast Minneapolis when we were hailed by a distraught young woman. Audie stopped and I asked her if she needed a ride. She nodded so I let her in to the passenger seat and I took to the floor in the back. She was upset so we talked to her, tried to calm her down and see if there was anything we could do. It was boy trouble, evidently she was in a bad relationship and things had come to a head. We drove her around for about a half an hour until she said that she was alright. She told us where to drop her off.

It was one of those things, we concluded, and never found out what happened to her. I don’t know if it was more common then; there seems that there is always a constant pattern of abuse from a sizable minority of men to women (and vice versa, in a different way.) The green van was, for a short time that night, a haven. There are more stories in the history of the green van—some mundane, some life-changing—but those are for another day.