MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. (AP) - Sam Schaumann is 67 years old. His lifelong friend Dave Kaucera is 68 years old. Both men live in Billings, Missouri. The only tie they have to the Twin Lakes Area is they came down for a car show recently.
So why is a newspaper that’s supposed to write about local happenings writing about two men who live so far away and have only one brief tie to the area?
The answer is simple. It’s because they have a good story to tell and sometimes stories are just too good not to tell once you hear them.
The Baxter Bulletin reports that Sam and Dave grew up in Billings though at first, despite living close to one another, didn’t spend much time together. That changed when their parents started socializing.
Then, two local schools merged and the men ended up attending the same high school. At the beginning of their senior year, the pair made a plan for a road trip following graduation.
“We hadn’t been out of our little town much and we wanted to see something of the world,” said Dave. “We wanted to see the mountains. We somehow convinced our parents to let us go on a road trip.”
On Sept. 2, 1967, Sam and Dave packed a few clothes, a couple of cameras and loaded it all into a 1957 Volkswagen Bug owned by Sam’s parents.
“We knew we wanted to see the Rocky Mountains,” said Dave. “That’s really what drove us.”
So on that day, the pair took off. They each had $150 in their pocket. Gas cost 25 cents a gallon. The men had no highly detailed plan other than drive to the mountains.
“At 18, you don’t really worry much about anything,” said Sam, smiling at the memory of the lack of a detailed plan. “We never thought twice. We weren’t the least concerned about any kind of mechanical problem.”
Of course, a 1957 Volkswagen Bug might encounter some difficulties on a road trip of several hundred miles. A road trip that included a climb of the infamous Pike’s Peak.
If you don’t know much about cars, just ask your mechanic about the advisability of such an adventure and watch his face. That should be sufficient to make you understand the blind optimism of 18-year-old boys.
Top speed for the car was 60 mph on the flat plains of Kansas. When they hit the mountains, the chugging bug would slow down. Quite a bit.
“We just took off,” said Sam. “It was completely random. We knew we were going west. We went across Kansas and spent the first night in Garden City, Kansas,” Sam recalled. “The next night was in Canon City, Colorado which is in proximity to the Royal Gorge.”
That was the first big thing they got to see. Then they worked their way north, seeing Rocky Mountain National Park and other Colorado landmarks.
On their return trip, they traveled through Cheyenne, Wyoming. They spent a night in Nebraska with Dave’s grandparents. The next they went through Kansas City on their way home.
All told, the pair spent eight days on the road covering approximately 2,000 miles in a 1957 Volkswagen Bug. Their teenage optimism regarding the iconic car’s reliability was proven out.
“The only spot where we ran into a problem was on Pikes Peak,” Sam said, to the surprise of no one who knows the mountain and its reputation breaking cars that aren’t prepared for the low oxygen level at the 14,114-foot summit.
Turns out though, it really wasn’t the bug’s fault.
“We had no choice but to slow down because of how windy the road was. Also, there was a lot of traffic,” said Sam. “At the top of the mountain, a car in front of us stopped. We stopped and the car stalled.”
With traffic behind them, it was a dicey few moments before they were able to start the car and get it moving again.
After the trip, the two men moved into adulthood, their careers taking them to different parts of the country. They did keep in touch through various means as technology advanced throughout the decades.
Sam ended up on his family’s farm in Billings after retirement. When Dave’s parents’ Billings home came up for sale, Sam shot him a joking message saying Dave could buy the home.
Dave had just retired and decided that’s exactly what he was going to do. The two men renewed their friendship at close distance.
One day, sitting around talking about the old days like codgers are prone to doing, Sam said the 50-year anniversary of their trip was coming up. He told Dave they should take the trip again.
And in the same car. Yes, you read that correctly, the same car.
Turns out after their teenage trip, the bug was passed among Sam’s family members, eventually ending up with his dad who used it for several years to check on cattle on the family’s farm.
At some point, Sam’s dad parked the Bug in an outbuilding and there it sat, waiting.
Dave liked the idea so the two men set about doing what needed to be done to make a 1957 Volkswagen Bug that had been sitting in a Missouri outbuilding for decades, ready for a 2,000 mile road trip.
The first thing to be done was to make the car mechanically sound, a chore taken on by a local mechanic who specializes in such projects.
For the rest, it was Sam and Dave and their families who painted the car and refreshed the interior, along with the hundreds of other minor details needed to make the car worthy of the trip.
As they went through the project, Dave built a Facebook page called Sam and Dave’s Great Adventure Part II. On the page, he chronicled their progress as well as shared before and after photos of the bug.
The page has drawn far more attention than either man expected. Both from Volkswagen fans and those who love the idea of recreating a favorite road trip from their youth.
“It’s been a lot of fun working on the bug. It’s brought back a lot of memories for both of us,” Dave said. “We’re definitely looking forward to this trip.”
Sam had praise for Dave and his work on the Facebook page.
“Dave really did a great job with the page. It was a surprise to me to see how much interest there was in what we’re doing,” said Sam. “Not only from around our hometown but literally from across the world.”
The highlight for the trip may be the Royal Gorge. In their youth, they were able to drive the bug across the bridge spanning the gorge. For several years, the bridge has closed to vehicle traffic and can only be crossed by foot.
However, thanks to Dave, the bug will once again chug across the fabled bridge.
“I got in contact with the folks who run the park,” Dave said. “When they heard about our trip, they gave us special permission to cross the bridge in the car.”
When the pair take off on Sept. 12, they’ll be posting updates about their trip on the Facebook page. Follow their page Sam and Dave’s Great Adventure Part II to see how two old men and an even older bug fare on a classic American road trip.
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Information from: The Baxter Bulletin, https://www.baxterbulletin.com
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