Sue Arnold and her youngest, Joe, arrived in the night.
Mrs. Arnold had no clue how to find her new home on Sundial Court, where Mr. Tom Arnold and Tom Junior waited. It was their first time in Moab. In small town fashion the man at the gas station closed up his shop to show them home. The next morning, Tom Jr. startled Joe awake: “You’ve got to come see this!”
Joe Arnold stepped outside to discover heaven. It was 1969, Joe was 7, Tom Jr. was a high school sophomore, and the Arnold boys had no idea (“even in our wildest dreams”) that 55 years later they would be here, liquidating the most iconic car museum in the West.
“I mean, this town used to close up at 5 o’clock,” said Tom Jr. between questions from potential buyers scavenging through his father’s half empty car yard. The season’s first dusting of snow blanketed the mountains behind him. “There wasn’t a store– there wasn’t diddly shit open after 5, man. And it was quiet too. Except the 11 bars, they were always open.”
“This was a working town,” Joe agreed. The two brothers proceeded to paint a picture of before.
Before the Dollar General and Standard Plumbing, a roller rink and bowling alley. Before Arches National Park, an unpaved National Monument (“day trip to Delicate, no reservation”). Before the graphic tees and Kokopelli art, real clothing stores and local grocers. The water park over there on the hill, the drive-in theatre right down here. The one sheriff, one deputy, one chief, one patrolman, two city police. They shut down the street in front of City Hall every Friday night. The Live band and street dancing, the stock car tracks.
“When we first got here they were punching Eisenhower Tunnel through Loveland Pass,” said Tom Jr. “70 didn’t exist.”
Tom Senior, known as Tom Tom, moved his family here for work with higher education, teaching at USU’s first Moab education center. He had three master’s degrees under his belt, and experience as a professor and business consultant.
Volkswagens, at this point, were only a profitable hobby out of a small garage across from the old cemetery (the metal structure still stands at 850 Sand Flats Rd). Tom Tom conceived his big shop after severing ties with the university.
“They wouldn’t give him tenure because he wasn’t Mormon,” Tom Jr. said “So he leaned across the desk, flipped the dean the bird, and walked out. We bought this place and opened a business full-time.”
Purchased from Harvest International in 1973 for $15,000, Tom Tom Foreign Car began as a repair shop.
“It was kinda a forced into business,” said Tom Jr. With no other Volkswagen specialists in town, Tom Tom worked long hours on broken down VWs and dune buggies, often buying them off companies and travelers. Tom Jr. worked as his right hand man in the shop. “People broke down, dad worked on their cars and told them to see the country, and people would end up staying. You can talk to people in town who will say, ‘yeah, my car is in there!’”
The Bicentennial ‘Anything Can Float’ contest in ‘76 brought the Arnolds out front and center. They attached barrels to the bottom of an old buggy and won the Colorado River race from Big Bend to the big bridge, which benefitted multiple sclerosis patients and was sponsored by Budweiser.
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“Back then you could do anything, nobody was here,” said Tom Jr. on the fun of the 70s, which saw him on the river with Tex’s Riverways and part of the high school scene.
“We would water ski with Tom Tom too. We would get beer and go party on the beach. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody had a brother or sister two grades behind you. The cops would tell us to go home when they caught us drinking, and we would go home.”
“I remember pulling up to the Woody’s drive-thru window with my older brother,” said Robert Buckingham, Tom Jr.’s close friend and classmate. “With his help Tom and I would get a keg and take it down to our spot near the bridge for our keg parties. We were so into the scene. Sometimes Sue Arnold would have us watch Joe, who was younger, and we would just bring him down there with us!”
Joe recalled buggying on the extinct sand dunes up on Sand Flats Rd, now occupied by Lionsback Resort, and skateboarding on the Slickrock with his gang of five buddies, who were featured in Wild World of Skateboarding’s February 1978 issue.
Wild World of Skateboarding’s February 1978 issue shows “Moab Utah’s Million Acre Skatepark, which Joe Arnold frequented with friends.
“At least we got to see it before it was overrun, those of us who grew up here,” said Joe, alluding to the town’s evolution into recreational tourism in the 90s after a mining bust.
“This town almost blew away in the 80s,” Tom Jr. said. But the changing seasons missed Tom Tom. Not only did the garage expand, it evolved. “My dad’s place became a hangout.”
“People just loved to come in because my dad loved to talk to people,” Joe said. “He was a philosopher and a funny guy. This place transformed from a repair shop into an attraction. All the time I hear ‘I used to go to your dad’s shop.’”
“He was brilliant… he was so bright,” Buckingham said. People who remember Tom Tom describe his ease of approach, his gravity towards all types of people.
One of these people, Edward Abbey, influenced Tom Tom’s environmental awareness.
“My dad became a conservationist,” Joe said. “To me Ed Abbey was just this really cool bearded guy who drank and smoked with my dad… I learned to play poker from Ed Abbey!”
Tom Tom, a licensed pilot, also involved himself in a flying group, and owned two planes with several other men. He flew his family and friends, including Abbey, around the country.
“He hated stupid people,” Tom Jr. shook his head. The brothers bounced off of each other’s descriptions of Tom Tom as more men poked through their father’s now half empty yard. Stories of flying to see old friends and driving “clear down to Bullfrog” to help stranded drivers painted a spontaneous and generous image of Tom Tom. “He was very outgoing, open-minded, and liberal.”
“He always had the time of day to talk,” Joe said.
“And a collection of playboys,” finished Tom Jr.
Rhonda Gotway Clyde recalled Tom Tom’s uninhibited side while harvesting flowers at her farm, Easy Bee, in Spanish Valley.
“Everyone liked him, politics didn’t matter,” said Gotway Clyde, whose old Powerhouse Lane trailer still rests on her farm’s property. “He would come up to the trailers and check on everybody, and give us his raunchy jokes. I would laugh just enough to maybe shut him up, but he would keep telling them!”
As Moab folded over onto itself and ushered in a new industry, the shop continued to evolve. An aging Tom Tom pivoted his business model, coalescing his educational and mechanical skills.
“He came up with the idea that if people needed work done, he’d rent them the shop, tools, and expertise,” Joe said. “They would do it themselves, and he would teach them how to work on their VWs. This was the 90s, and people loved it. They bought in.”
Joe also experienced Tom Tom’s educational mindset as his son. “Drag it in,” is what Joe heard when it came his turn to drive; responsibility fell on Joe to select and maneuver his vehicle from the yard to the shop, and get it running.
As vintage Bugs further crowded the yard, peaking at a total of 420 vehicles, Tom Tom once again demonstrated his business prowess in the face of Grand County’s “junkyard” complaints. What officials deemed as junk, eyesore, or value decreasing, the Arnolds treasured. Tom Jr. traveled as far as Georgia to retrieve vehicles.
The loophole was simple. With a recategorization of the shop as a “Museum,” the county couldn’t do a thing. This shift allowed the yard to stay as it was.
“Nobody had a problem with it except the county,” said Joe, as proven by the increase in visitor traffic after a “Tom Tom’s Volkswagen Museum” renaming. “People came and wanted to photograph and send the pictures to my mom.”
“He was such a landmark,” said Buckingham to his desk at Grand County Cemeteries, where he leads operations as Sexton. It was end of day, and Buckingham had just finished with Lola Oliver’s funeral; she served Moab as the telephone operator when Buckingham and Tom Jr. were running around in high school. In April of this year, Buckingham buried Sue Arnold.
The brothers, who kept the shop up for 18 years after their father passed away in 2007, decided to sell the shop with their mother’s passing. Tom Tom worked at the yard until his death.
“We have a lot of memories here, especially Tom Jr., who helped start it,” said Joe. “It’s time to move on.”
Tom Jr. and Joe navigated their jungle of precious metals over the years, sometimes denting roofs along their way, with a father who modeled generosity. Now they stood examining the last of it all with a striking stillness.
Tom Jr. shows potential buyers around Tom Tom’s Volkswagen Museum on November 17th. Empty plot shows the Arnolds’ liquidation progress. [photo by nath kapoor]
