A Woodstock icon recreated, The VW “Light Bus”

From CBS News:

What’s psychedelic, went from zero to 60 mph in less than 40 seconds, and could pack in a touring band AND a sizable audience? A Volkswagen Type 2 microbus, or at least one very special example of it.

In August 1969 a VW bus which had been painted in colorful fashion by Dr. Bob Hieronimus was immortalized by an Associated Press photographer, who captured it at the mass of humanity known as Woodstock.

The bus, a 1963 11-window Deluxe, was covered in symbols and languages, with a dollop of astrology, a sphinx, heavenly bodies, and the Hindu diety Vishnu, conveying messages of hope and enlightenment. The image became as representative of that towering counterculture moment as any musical act, while VW buses would become synonymous in the public imagination with a hippie, anti-establishment, off-the-grid aesthetic.

But the Woodstock VW, which came to be known as the “Light Bus,” fell off the grid itself. After its use as the workhorse of a commune, it was traded in at a mechanic’s shop, and then lost to history.

Read the full story by David Morgan for CBS News.