Up until I was around eight years old, my father worked as an executive in the Manhattan office of Burlington Industries, a fabric making company based in Greensboro, North Carolina. At least once a month, often times more, he would travel down there for meetings. He'd be gone early Monday and not return until Friday evenings, sometimes Saturday mornings. Sad thing is, I can't say I actually missed him, we were not close, but when he was away, there was relative peace in my house because my parents wouldn't be at each other's throats. That and his homecomings usually meant dinners of Coke and pizza. Also, he'd bring the pizza home in what he referred to as "company cars" which I came to learn were more like "company paid for rental cars". One time he came home in a car that sort of resembled his 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon but it, for certain, was not my father's Ranch Wagon; it was 1968 Ford Galaxie coupe like this red convertible Galaxie 500.
I was not a fan of the Ranch Wagon. Story goes that when my father's wretched '61 Rambler cracked its engine block, he replaced it with a blue, 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon from Hertz Used Car Sales. Figures since he spent so much time at the Hertz counter at JFK and LaGuardia that he'd pick up a used rental. His car was light blue like the Ranch Wagon in the foreground in this photo from a 1968 Ford brochure is. It didn't have a roof rack, nor did it have side chrome moldings. Ford "dog-dish" or "poverty" hubcaps finished off the sorry, spartan, no-frills "Grapes of Wrath" motif. At first, I thought it just another "company car" until he started putting the damn thing in the garage.
.
Meanwhile, across the narrow street from us, neighbors with kids around my age had a 1968 Ford Country Squire like the one pictured above from another brochure. Power-everything and facing rear jump seats. Jump seats - the dream of every kid born between say 1960 and 1975. That Country Squire made my father's Ranch Wagon have all the industrial charm of a school bus.
So, when I saw that Galaxie, I was smitten. Although the car had nothing in common with my father's Ranch Wagon from the A-pillar back, I thought it the most fascinating car in the world. Mind you, it was a hard top coupe; I may have burst into flames seeing a hedonistic convertible like our redhead here. Although, coming to know the man who was my father, playing catch with Joe Namath in my backyard was more of a possibility than us ever owning such a car.
In hindsight, I've come to the realization that my father's Ranch Wagon was the embodiment of the man, we are what we drive, after all. Or whom we wished to be seen as. More Willie Loman than the swaggering, confident John Wayne meets Frank Sinatra I wished he was, my father was a simplistic, blue-collar guy caught in the crossfire of the executive mumbo-jumbo and posturing of "Mad Men" era New York City. That show pegged those guys dead on; my father told a tale or ten of the consequences of liquid lunches. And the car he chose to replace his hoary Rambler with was a carpenter\plumber\electrician's special rather than an executive express like Don Draper's Cadillac. Pick a lane, old man. And stay there. He just didn't get that.
Sadly, my father lacked the intrinsic mechanical aptitude, skill and work ethic of his immigrant father making him a wannabee in two very different universes and not particularly good in either. He changed jobs frequently. Throw in a most difficult homelife and his self-medication to deal with his miserable life and you might be able to at least start to appreciate my taking solace in the small things like his not being around, Coke and pizza and of course, cars. My father and I were like two orbs occupying the same space barely acknowledging each other. Not unlike the way my dog and car interact with each other. A benign, listless and at the end of the day harmless coexistence. I didn't ask for anything more than he could provide. Which wasn't much.
For model year 1968, Ford offered twenty-one variations of their quite good, new-for-1965 full size car. And who knows why too although GM did the same thing. Chrysler to a somewhat lesser degree. Did they really need two different types of two- and four-door models? Two different Country Squires as well if the only difference between the two is one has the, literally, killer rear jump seats and the other doesn't. Oh, look. You could also get the jumpers in the Ranch Wagon.
It's been said that one of the reasons for the shoddy build quality of domestics back then was because there were too many different ways an automobile could be configured. Our Galaxie 500 drop-top here is near the top of the second row. Not too near the top and certainly a long, long ways from the bottom of the lineup.
For my money, I'd opt for this car back then rather than splurge for an XL convertible. Especially stuffed with Ford's "FE" (Ford-Edsel), 390 "4V" (four-venturi, sounds better than nozzle) "Thunderbird" V-8 engine. Despite single digit city fuel economy. Can't be that much better on the highway. The front end on these cars is cleaner and simpler and isn't bogged down with the fussy headlight doors of the XL convertible too. Not quite sure the Ford mags were available on these cars and the raised white letter tires for certain were not. But they look marvelous with the rims on this car. Why spend more than you have to?
I found this memory machine on Facebook Marketplace for sale near my home in Cleveland, Ohio with a price reduced ask of $12,500. It's a North Carolina car which means it's going to be pretty free from rust, which is so important on an older car, especially really old cars. NADA pegs this average retail at $18,100, high retail at $29,400 so the seller might be looking to onload this rather than store it for the winter. Finding relative bargains like this another reason I love car shopping this time of year up here. No, I'm not going to go for it, but it is nice to think about. You get this closer to ten-grand and I'll writhe with jealousy.
As for my father's Ranch Wagon, he traded it in during the summer of 1977 on a 1970 Buick Electra 225 four-door hard-top I steered him towards after my mother decided it was time to get rid of the wagon. All of thirteen at the time, I had no idea how pretentious it may have seemed going from the Ranch Wagon to the Electra, but I didn't know better. Not that I cared, I just loved that car. And after my father was left to his own devices after the Rambler croaked, I wasn't going to take any chances.
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