Full-size station wagons a remnant of past

I drove all over town Friday morning seeking a station wagon, an early and big one from the Station Wagon Era, not one of the current-day Subarus, VWs, Saturns, Volvos and others that don’t fit the bill as true full-sized boats. I wanted to find one like my first car, a long, 1968 Pontiac Catalina.

When a family adoption took my parents from one kid to three, this station wagon that could seat nine people was purchased to replace what I think was a Ford sedan of some kind. The car was blue, with a pointed chrome nose piece jutting out from the grille. It was brand new, and I thought we must suddenly be rich.

Years passed. The car drove our family, with my grandparents along so they could finally see the ocean, all the way to the California coast and back one summer, a U-Haul trailer hooked onto a hitch.

My sister and I rode on a bench seat in the rear that faced backwards, and that trailer is what I remember most as far as scenery along the way.

Some more time went by, and one summer I was taking driver’s education at the nearby high school. I told my parents I was going to get a job at the G.C. Murphy store at the mall, and I needed to have a car to drive back and forth. And I wanted to drive to school that fall.

They gave me the old station wagon. Neither the heater nor defroster worked by then, and the gas mileage wasn’t great, but $5 worth of 87 octane fuel took you a long way in the late 1970s.

I was reminded of the dearth of what I call sedan station wagons when a giant brownish-gold Oldsmobile station wagon with what appeared to be faux wood paneling turned in front of me a week ago. I should have followed it to get the story. A missed opportunity.

So I set out to find another one. To no avail. I scouted out grocery store parking lots, the south side YMCA, near westside neighborhoods. I saw some station wagons and can report that approximately 20 percent of all the cars in Bloomington are Subaru Outback Legacy station wagons. It’s true. They are everywhere. Even I have one. But they don’t fit the bill.

Then, as I drove in the 1500 block of West 12th Street, there it was. The back end of a maroon mid-1980s Buick Le Sabre Estate Wagon, complete with a wide metal luggage rack, a trailer hitch and a “Girl Scouts Rock” sticker on the back window.

I parked behind it and walked up to a nearby apartment door. The woman who answered said the car belonged to her neighbor, Mel. “She really loves that car,” she told me. Mel was not home, but the neighbors said I could take some pictures. I noticed the classy front grille and the Buick logo hood ornament. This vintage station wagon has some style. The body is in excellent condition, with just one piece of molding peeling away from the back bumper.

So in honor of these pre-minivan, family-hauling vehicles, I invite readers to submit photos, and stories, about their vintage station wagons. Nothing post-1990, please. I’m talking station wagons from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. The ones that are so hard to find these days that more than 40 years ago comprised nearly 20 percent of the American auto market.

Got a story to tell about a car or truck? Call 812-331-4362, send an email to lane@heraldt.com or write a letter to My Favorite Ride, P.O. Box 909, Bloomington, IN 47402