Station Wagons

I have just had this urge all day to blog about station wagons. What happened to them?? When I was a kid, our first station wagon (actually, I think it was our second) was a Gran Torino, light blue with navy interior. It was money! I can remember my little brother singing away with my mom to "Are You Ready?" playing on the radio while we all jumped around and played in the back. What a great car!

Our second (or third?) station wagon was much nicer. I can't remember what kind it was (I'll ask my brother - the car fanatic!), but I do remember it had air conditioning, "wood" trim, also blue outside and in. We took many fantastic road trips in that station wagon. We camped, drove to Florida and even drove across the country in that beautiful wagon. The beauty of it was really in is versatility. Actually, maybe the beauty of it was in the no seatbelt, no carseat laws era!! When we drove through the night, as my parents loved to do, we put all the seats down, the two in the "way back" and the middle seats and laid out our sleeping bags!! Can't do that anymore!

That one fateful vacation, on our very first leg of the journey through St. Louis in the middle of the night and onto Kansas (or was it Oklahoma??), we brought along my first dozen roses from my boyfriend. When you are in high school, a dozen roses the day you leave for vacation is so romantic, until your little brother wakes up the next morning with snot all over his face and his eyes glued shut because he's allergic to them! We also packed all our luggage on the roof in our brand new soft carrier, in our brand new soft duffel bags - black. That was the cool color.

We all slept soundly in our luxurious wagon, waking up to sunshine, but not before my father lamented about having to drive all night through rain. We finally stopped somewhere in Kansas or Oklahoma to find all our clothes ruined. Our wonderful soft carrier and new black bags were not waterproof. Hmm... not so luxurious anymore. The three of us kids, squished into the backseat for the rest of our cross country trip! ROFL!

That station wagon served us well. I learned to drive in it and my poor mom, she drove that thing with the soft, cushiony ceiling caving in on us for years. By the time we got rid of our precious power windows, power seats and power door locks wagon, we were ready to see it go. I don't think any of us realized, however, that we'd likely never see another station wagon like that again!

Just this year my mom purchased a Ford Freestyle. It's like a cross between an SUV and a station wagon! Why she bought it, I will never know. I mean, I'm thinking it might resurrect some painful memories of her three children moaning in the back, "Stop touching me!" Or maybe she might be reminded of my father driving while swatting at us and swerving all over the road (I remember that clearly!). Or maybe even still, the fact that our neighbor who had some very shady friends and our EXACT SAME station wagon managed to get his friends so mad they slashed all our tires by mistake!

I don't really know what has made me think about station wagons, and if my brother, the car expert, knew that I was even uttering those two words he would run for cover! Just so many memories of the past, things my children will never have to live through. Instead, they will have only memories of the minivan....

*Oh, and just in case you are wondering, 'snot' is not in the blog spell check dictionary. I thought you might want to know that!