Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Station Wagons

This guy says that station wagons are done and semi-laments their passing:http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article03091101.aspx.  Great article.
Most every familia Americanas has had at one time or another a station wagon.  As a kid, I recall a '62 or '63 or 60 something Ford Fairlane station wagon, mostly because my dad seemed to cuss at it a lot, which was saying something because he was always mostly unhappy and using a lot of cuss words which I dutifully studied and admired for their nearly always perfect inflection and execution.  The station wagon was later largely replaced by his take on the SUV which was his mounting a real ugly ass camper in the bed of a straight six '67 Chevy pickup truck.  We took one of those Western vacations in it one summer, going to Yellowstone and all that and I rode 99% of the way in the camper, seeing actual hills and mountains as opposed to the flatness of H-town.  Only threw up once in it.  Later, at the urging (constant whining) of Mrs. Bulba, I succumbed to the lure of station wagon chic by buying a used '93 (I think) Volvo station wagon which was fine when it was running but it seemed to always have some sort of Euro engine tweek thing going and it longed for frequent labor stoppages and a correct chablis.  Then, like most of my fellow Red State trash, I opted for the pure SUV route, riding high on the road and making frequent trips to Home Depot.  That was about all she wrote for the station wagon era. 

Go ahead and Drive that Mercury Cruiser right up to the pool--the chicks dig it
The best thing about station wagons were the outstanding ad campaigns devised to extol their virtues--essentially that station wagons meant that anything was possible.  You could live in them, cook in them, sleep (notice I'm being polite here) in them, and haul all sorts of sporting equipment, animals (both living and recently shot), and loads of children large and small and their accouterments while seeing America and searching for clean restrooms.  By the way, please note for the record that we made annual trips to Alabama from Texas to see my mom's family and the restrooms in Louisiana from around 1960 through most of the '70s were about as horrific as I've seen and that includes the toilet scene in "Trainspotters."  But, I digress and Geaux Tigers and it's still a good policy not to have to take a dump in the Pelican State--wait 'til you make it to Hattiesburg.  Anyway, great photos of people experiencing the outdoors, courtesy of their Chevy land yacht, or in this photo, a guy in a suit driving up to his swimming pool--no better way to score babes than that.

2 comments:

Ruprecht said...

I do indeed miss my "raggin' wagon", as Greg Daniels referred to it. Of course, he had the "War Wagon", giving our fraternity a rather disturbing % of vehicles designed for families, not college students.

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