Tales from the Way-Back

PART ONE

We received so many responses to our station-wagon-themed special section in the May issue that we thought we’d publish as many as we could in two-part standalone features appearing this month and next. Here are some of the photos and letters sent in by Hemmings readers from all over the nation.

a nine-passenger station wagon with fake wood sides. I got the car bug when I was three years old. I was eight years old when my parents bought the car new on May 25, 1959. They had four boys, three younger than me, and this car afforded all six of us a window seat. I started cleaning our wagon during a cold bleak winter day when I was 12, when the car spent some rare time in our garage. I put some car cleaner on the front fender and found that the car was white and not dingy grey. I was hooked and from then on I kept that car washed and waxed. My folks offered it to me as a high school graduation gift in 1968 and I accepted. While the muscle car craze ensued, I was driving the ultimate nerd mobile to college and loving it. Fifty-two years later I still own this car. Now the kids consider it cool, as do all the folks who see it, because wagons were usually abused and few exist anymore. After driving through 13 Connecticut winters, it has spent the last 47 years in semi-retirement and has traveled a little over 200,000 miles. Almost everything on the car has been