What Happened to the Station Wagon?

You are sitting in the back.  The third row.  The one that faced backwards.  you were seven years old and your knees were pressed against the tailgate and the road was urolling behind you and your parents were so far away in the front seat they might as well have been in another country.  That was the station wagon.

Station wagons went from three percent of all cars sold to seventeen percent. Nearly one in five.  The Ford Country Squire with the fake wood paneling was nineteen feet long and weighed five thousand pounds and got eight miles to the gallon.  Nobody cared because gasoline was thirty cents a gallon.  

1958 Country Squire 

You made faces at the truck drivers behind you and they pulled the air horn.  Your mother's arms was your seatbelt.  You fell asleep in the cargo area on sleeping bags and your father carried you inside at midnight.  The tailgate folded down at the drive-in, the Fourth of July and at Little League games.

The Dodge Caravan came out in 1984.  The boomers who grew up in their father's wagon bought minivans.   Then SUVs.  The Country Squire was discontinued in 1990 after forty years.  The last full-size American station wagons were gone by 1996.

The SUV is a station wagon that changed its name.  The station wagon was honest about what it was.  A family car with wood panels, nine seats and a tailgate.  It never pretended to be an adventure vehicle.  It just carried families and the family pet.

Station wagons hauled groceries, paint supplies, plants, wallpaper and lumber!

The lesson in this painting .. always tie a red flag to extended lumber!