The first time I met the Red Van Lounge, I actually only met her engine.  I lived in the same dorm (for a week) as Chris Oken, the van’s previous owner.  As I walked down the hall to my room, I ran into Chris.  He was skating up and down the hall on a skateboard, zooming in and out of the open door to his room.  He came up to me, flipped his head to get his stingy blond hair out of his eyes, and said, “Hey, man, you like the Grateful Dead?”

I had never heard the Grateful Dead before.  I had merely heard of them — usually in the context of “Devil Rock that will eat your brain and soul,” but I had never actually heard any of their music.  I listened for a minute to see if I actually like them.  It didn’t move me, but these guys were too cool to blow off.  I don’t know why I wanted to impress them, but I did.

While listening to the music, I looked at their room.  A wreath of barbed wire hung on the wall, encircling a strange blue and red scull icon.  Right in the middle of the floor, on a dirty woven cloth rug, sat a VW engine.  Chris’s brother, Bob, sat hunched over the greasy mess with a box-ended wrench in his hand.  He had blond hair, too, wavy, and he wore little, round-lens glasses like John Lenin.

You’re taking too long to reply. Quick, think of something snappy, I told myself.

“As long as they stay that way?” I responded.

Bob looked up, chuckled, and went back to his engineering.

“Right on, man,” Chris said.  He slapped me on the shoulder and then zoomed off down the hall.

I went back to my dorm room, unable to imagine the places that engine would take me in the future.