The cow on Atwood Avenue has her thinking cap on.

What's she thinking about? It looks like she wants ideas for how to dress up for the next holiday season.

Plenty of suggestions seem to have been given to her. She's showing quite a few of them off for us to see.

What they'll settle on next seems to be anybody's guess, though.

I'm on tenterhooks.

Spotted outside Schwen's auto parts shop on Monona Drive on Thursday afternoon, this old-school Volkswagen microbus.

It doesn't have the safari windows but it does have the split wind screen and sliding side windows. The cargo door's split, too, not sliding, and the air intakes are louvers in the lower half of the body instead of the big, open scoops VW would put in the upper rear wings later on.

The headlights are recessed and the big, silver VW on the front is smack dab in the middle of that iconic dart. I'd love to have one of these in my driveway, but I'm pretty sure I don't make enough money to buy one even in this condition ... which is pretty good, really. Patch up the rust and it'd be gorgeous.

Although some of the softer stuff has been lost, most of the really important things are there. It wouldn't take too much to make this over into a like-new Veedub that would turn heads, not that it doesn't already.

I was a little surprise to see the the bucket seats. I expected something this old-school to have a bench seat in the front.

See? Still in great condition! Well, except for that passenger seat, but the driver's seat looked fine. It was all I could do to keep from slipping into it, just to get the feel of the wheel again, for old time's sake.