Magic Bus
BY JOHN CLAUSEN l PHOTOS BY RIMAS ZAILSKAS
Because Norman Earle owns an airport and pilots an antique ’68 Beechcraft Bonanza airplane, you might naturally assume he’s the kind of guy who would drive a vintage Corvette or a Ferrari or some other testosterone sled.
But you would be wrong.
Earle’s favorite ride is a ’65 Volkswagen microbus…you know, the kind of vehicle associated with paisley paint jobs and hippie flower power slogans and bell-bottom jeans with needlepoint peace signs.
On a recent Sunday morning, the decidedly non-hippie Earle and his small, mixed-breed dog (by the name of Wasabi) took us for a drive through downtown Hendersonville and environs.
Wasabi, whose left rear leg was broken a few days prior during some ill-fated amorous adventure, braced his cast against a passenger and peered out the front window at the approaching world. An ideal vehicle for a small, curious dog, the microbus features a split front windshield that can be opened to let the breezes (not to mention the occasional flying insect) flow freely into the cabin.
Surprisingly, the open windshields don’t precipitate a hurricane situation. “When you get up to 50 or so,” Earle explains with pilot-like precision, “it pressurizes the cabin and your ears pop…so the wind doesn’t blow in your face anymore and you can hold a regular conversation.” If the windows remain closed, he adds, everything is fine. However, if somebody opens a back window, the vehicle turns into a complete wind tunnel.
The ten-passenger bus, dubbed “George” by Mrs. Earle, can achieve a blistering 60 mph, he says, “if there is absolutely no headwind.”
The motor — factory original just like the bus’ interior — is powered by a whopping 1,500 cc engine that produces 50 horsepower. Gas mileage, Earle suspects (he’s never calculated it), is probably somewhere in the high teens. Not that impressive in planet-saving terms, but not bad for a vehicle with all the aerodynamics of a concrete brick.
“The gas mileage isn’t that good,” Earle admits. “But I get a lot of smiles per mile.”
As we parade down Main Street, patrons at a local coffee shop point and gawk. Then, on the way back from downtown, Earle swings us through Jackson Park where a group of young softball players see Wasabi hanging out the front window and burst into a spontaneous rendition of the Scooby Doo theme song.
“That’s a new one on me,” Earle says, “I’ve never had anyone do that before.”
Earle knew the original owner in Florida. “Somehow it survived being in Florida all those years. The guy that owned it really took good care of it. It sat down there for 20 years,” he says. “It had bags of mothballs all over it to keep the wasps out.”
Earle bought the bus just four years ago, but he’d had his eye on it for a long time.
“I bought a runway from the original owner…I tried to negotiate the bus with the price of the airport but he wouldn’t go for it then. He told me if he ever decided to sell it, he would let me know. Then he let it go with another deal. I kept at the guy who bought it and he finally let me have it. I traded him some aircraft electronic equipment.”
Earle’s goal is to spend half his time running his airpark in Hastings, Florida and the other half living in Hendersonville. “I’ve been coming up here since I was five years old,” he says. His parents live full time on Flat Top Mountain.
With a wife and teenage twin boys at home in Florida, he says, that goal may be a ways in the future. His boys love living in Florida and they love the microbus. “In fact,” he says, “they were kind of mad at me for bringing it up here.”
There is something about the bus that draws people, Earle says. “Over in Asheville once, I had a bunch of kids chase me down the street on foot just to look inside and ask a bunch of questions. Everywhere I take it, I get a lot of smiles. The hippies like it, the surfers think it’s cool, the old hippies love it. It appeals to everyone.”
