When Larry Masterson hosted 10 longtime friends and acquaintances at his Lincoln home last month, they spent a cool Sunday afternoon doing something that was once wholly uncharacteristic of them as a group: They went nowhere. For 26 years, starting in the mid-1970s, these now-retired, mostly state employees prided themselves on getting to work on time every day, regardless of the weather or road conditions.
That may seem like a trivial boast. But the group commuted by white Dodge passenger van from Lincoln and Bristol, over the Appalachian Gap, to their offices in Waterbury and Montpelier, a trip of about an hour and 15 minutes in good weather. The Appalachian Gap commuter van — or ApGap van for short — wasn’t run by the state or a transit authority, but a bunch of former farm boys who knew how to keep a 15-seat passenger van on the road in snow, fog and freezing rain.
During its 26 years of operation, about 100 passengers rode the ApGap van, including, for a brief time, then-secretary of state Jim Douglas.
For the passengers, some of whom feared doing the white-knuckle drive alone through the Green Mountains in the dead of winter, the ApGap van was a lifesaver, one that forged lasting friendships. During its more than quarter century of operation, about 100 passengers rode in it, including, for a brief time, then-secretary of state Jim Douglas.
More than two decades after it was discontinued, in 2002 — by then, nearly all of the regulars had retired — some of the riders reunited at Masterson’s house to share funny and occasionally harrowing tales of their daily excursions. While a few hadn’t seen each other in years, others have been friends since, meeting twice a month for breakfast at Snap’s Restaurant in Bristol.
“I thought everybody was going to be early, because it’s the ApGap van and no one was ever late,” joked Trish Hanson, one of the early arrivals at the Lincoln reunion. A now-retired entomologist, Hanson rode the van to the state laboratory in Waterbury every winter from 1994 to 2001, because she wasn’t comfortable driving in the snow.
Today, ride sharing is fairly common. As of May, 18 vanpools were operating in Vermont with a combined daily ridership of 83 people, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation. In the 1970s, however, vanpools were virtually nonexistent. Then, in 1973, the Arab oil embargo created gasoline shortages and sent prices soaring in the U.S., from 36 cents per gallon in 1973 to 59 cents in 1976. Because the typical American car in those days averaged just 12 miles to the gallon, carpooling caught on as a cost-effective alternative.
Masterson, 84, is a former state director of financial operations who cofounded the vanpool in April 1976 with six other state employees, all of whom lived in or near Lincoln. For the first two years, the group leased a van through the state energy office. But when that became burdensome, Masterson recalled, “We took the bull by the horns” and formed a nonprofit: Appalachian Gap Commuters. They purchased a Dodge van, charged passengers $2 per day, and asked everyone to jot down their schedules in a spiral notebook to coordinate ride times.
From 1976 until 2002, Masterson served as operations manager. That’s a fancy way of saying he drove the van most days, changed the oil, installed the snow tires, and, when necessary, donned overalls and applied the tire chains. On especially slippery trips, when the chains didn’t provide enough traction for the rear-wheel drive van to make it over the mountain, Masterson would ask his passengers to move into the rear seats for added traction.
On one such snowy trip through the mountains, Hanson remembers the song that was playing on the radio as they crested the Gap: Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve.” “That commute was unusually exciting,” she said.
With Mount Abraham visible behind them, the guests at Masterson’s Lincoln house nibbled on cut veggies and dip, though no one wanted to be the first to cut into the ApGap cake that Masterson’s wife, Christine, had baked, using cupcakes for wheels. The reunion was actually her idea, prompted by her discovery of a box of vanpool files in the attic and remembering the stories Larry and his friends often told about it.
Bill Norton, 82, who worked in the state auditor’s office and was among the original riders, remembers one near disaster. Just as they came over the pass, “The van just took off,” he said. It slid off the pavement, up a steep embankment and nearly rolled over.
“I was riding shotgun, and all I could see out my window was sky,” Norton said. Somehow, Masterson managed to steer the van back onto the pavement and continued safely down the mountain.
On another trip, a large bull moose bolted in front of the van near the Long Trail, then trotted down Route 17 in front of the van for several hundred yards before darting into the woods.
Karen Lueders started riding the ApGap van in 1986, after she got a job with the Vermont Supreme Court. Soon thereafter, she got pregnant, and morning sickness made her commutes uncomfortable. Another passenger who usually rode shotgun relinquished his seat so Lueders wouldn’t get carsick.
When brothers Don and Dave Lathrop, both of Bristol, showed up at the reunion, the group greeted them warmly, though a few guests admitted that they still couldn’t tell the twins apart. The “Lathrop boys,” as they were known, often boarded the van dressed in similar shirts, hats and jackets, as if they’d coordinated their wardrobes the night before. Fortunately for the reunion guests, some of whom hadn’t seen them in years, the brothers weren’t dressed alike.
“I always remember you guys sitting together, and you talked like you hadn’t seen each other for months,” Lueders said. “And it was every morning.”
“I don’t remember that,” Don said.
“I don’t remember that, either,” Dave added.
More stories emerged as the afternoon rolled on. No one could remember the name of the rider who often fell asleep on the shoulder of a neighboring passenger and once fell out of his seat. But everyone was certain it was the same guy who spilled a jar of pickled beets in the van, to general chagrin.
Al Karnatz of New Haven arrived late for the reunion, because he had bicycled there.
“Hello! It’s been a few decades,” he announced with a smile when he walked in.
Karnatz, who rode the van during the seven years he worked for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture in the 1980s, would commute to Montpelier in the morning with his bicycle strapped to the back so he could pedal home in the afternoon.
“I remember seeing him in the rearview mirror,” Lueders said. In some spots, “He was almost as fast as the van.”
In the thousands of miles the commuters traveled over the decades, the ApGap van logged only one speeding ticket, in Waitsfield, while Masterson was trying to make up for lost time after a particularly slow drive through the mountains. Norton remembers pointing out the cop as they passed him, but Masterson just nodded and sped on. The police cruiser had trouble catching up to the van because it kept sliding all over the road.
“I thought he was going to run into the back of us,” Norton said.
Another time, the van got stopped by a state trooper in Middlesex, though not for a moving violation. One of its usual passengers, a woman from Bristol, had missed her pickup for the commute home. Evidently, she knew the trooper, flagged him down and convinced him to pull the van over so she could hop in.
Mostly, the group remembered minor mishaps. Norton recalled riding through Lincoln one bitterly cold morning when, he said, “I heard a bang and thought someone was shooting at us. And then I heard one or two more,” he said. He realized the popping sounds were exploding bottles from the case of beer they kept in the van for passengers to share on their ride home.
Though nearly all the riders worked in state government, no one in the group could recall any conversations about politics. Which is not to say they didn’t have strong opinions.
“We were coming home one time, and there was a certain politician walking along the road. Something happened to his car, and we held a vote whether to stop for him,” Hanson said, to peals of laughter. “We picked him up.”
Despite the group’s diligence about running on time, the ApGap commuters sometimes had a very casual attitude about their schedule. Hanson remembers one trip when the van stopped at the top of the Appalachian Gap because the International Space Station was visible in the sky.
Another time, after the van dropped Peter Ryan, a Department of Education employee, at his house, Norton asked the remaining passengers if he could run inside and get a quick haircut from Ryan’s wife, Pat, a hairdresser. They agreed.
Ryan, one of the group’s founders, didn’t make it to the reunion. Pat had died of cancer the night before.
Vermonters who drive to work alone each day may find it hard to understand why these people stayed in touch so many years after their last commute. Even the riders acknowledge that most of their commutes were uneventful, and almost none remembers anything they talked about. But as several explained, their bond was about more than just the 15 hours they spent together each week.
“It was a really big deal for all of us. It surely changed my life,” said Hanson, who still exchanges holiday cards with a fellow commuter who moved away years ago.
And, as Ryan put it later, “We had a common cause and purpose — and it was a good one.”
To learn more about carpools and vanpools in Vermont, visit connectingcommuters.org.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Van Life | More than two decades after the retirement of the ApGap commuter van, some of its riders are still friends”
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