Fondness for a family motoring icon A STORY WORTH TELLING
“Let’s leave town on a permanent vacation/ Lock up the house, pack up the station wagon.”
— Kenny Chesney, “Outta Here”
Station wagons disappeared from dealerships in the mid-1990s. For those of us whose first driver’s license predated man’s first landing on the moon, there’s usually a lingering fondness for the one-time icon of family motoring.
Two things likely paved the road south for true station wagons.
One is the demise of full-size cruiser automobiles that served as the station wagon’s platform: Caprices.
Roadmasters and Galaxies. The other was the introduction of minivans and the gussied-up domestication of truck-based work vehicles.
The term “station wagon” originated in the 1920s during the age of train travel. A wooden-wagon body mated to an automobile chassis served to transport people and freight at depots. Hence, a “station wagon.”
The wood look remained in fashion well into the ‘70s, even after metal forming was advanced. The last of the “woody wagons” were all metal, utilizing vinyl to obtain the popular faux wood look.
Old station wagons are cool today. I’ve long harbored a secret lust for a ‘55 Ford Country Squire wagon.
The subject of station wagons came up recently after a friend bought a sport-utility vehicle the size of a World War II Sherman tank.
“My father had a station wagon,” she said.
“I backed it into a pole and bent the bumper when I started driving.
Didn’t think he would notice right away. I was wrong.”
“We also had one,” I replied.
It was a 1958 Ford — beige, white and huge.
Dad traded a ‘56 Chevy sedan for the Ford wagon in 1960. Mom made frequent trips in those days from Mount Pleasant to Granny’s house in Pittsburg, checking on Dad’s parents.
My grandmother, bless her heart, could ruffle Mom’s feathers in a heartbeat.
One memorable day, Mom and Granny were engaged in another spirited conversation, I’m guessing over one of my grandmother’s critiques on child-rearing.
Granny meant well, it was just in her personality to be everyone’s life coach.
Mom, in tears, loaded us in the wagon and gave it the gas, headed south on Cypress Street to take us home. About the time the motor revved up to shift automatically, Mom took the column-mounted shift lever and threw it up into the second-gear position.
That would have been just fine had she still been driving the recently traded-off Chevy. It was a standard shift. What Mom forgot in her aggravated emotional state was that the wagon was not.
It was the first car Dad bought with an automatic transmission.
For anyone never having experienced this automotive faux pas, it’s something you long remember. Shifting an automatic transmission car from “D” to “P” at about 20-25 mph and still accelerating produces a series of memorable noises.
Loud and ugly grinding under the car is accompanied by violent bouncing when the rear tires stop rolling and start hopping.
Inside the car, three wide-eyed children were flying off the seats and onto the floor. This was before the seat-belt era. The car screeched to a sudden and unexpected stop, and my mother uttered one of her rare vocabulary words of frustration we sternly were forbidden to repeat.
Once the car stopped, Mom folded her arms on the steering wheel for a moment and started to cry. Soft sobs soon became subtle, muffled laughter. Mom had that quality about her.
She carefully moved the shift lever back into “D.” The big behemoth luckily still moved under its own power.
We arrived home without further incidents or subsequent strange noises.
The big wagon transported everything from groceries to bicycles to Christmas trees. It also took us on a memorable family vacation during the summer of 1960 when we stayed at the Rose Motel in Mena, Arkansas.
Still a year or two away from buying our first television, I was enamored watching the black-and-white set in the motel room, gazing at the news of John F.
Kennedy being tagged by the Democratic Party to appear on the ballot in November against Republican nominee Richard Nixon.
An old station wagon is still on my radar.
Maybe I’ll find that ‘55 Country Squire wagon.
Perhaps I’ll even offer my friend a ride for old time’s sake.
But I don’t think I’ll let her drive—not if backing up is required.
— Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@gmail. com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com
