Some of my earliest childhood memories involve me and my family "going on vacation" to resorts in the Pocono Mountains the last week of August coming home on Labor Day. Living a stone's throw from Kennedy Airport and traffic being what it was and still is there, we didn't go far, hence, the nearby Poconos. Seriously, the task of just getting off the Island and getting through The City could take two-and-a-half to three-hours. The traffic and being shoehorned into my father's 1961 Rambler Classic, the 125- or so mile traipses to some resort in the Pocono Mountains in northwest Pennsylvania felt as though we had driven to Europe.
One year we stayed in our home state and traveling roughly the same distance, we stayed in a motel and partook of the amenities of several of the Catskills' staple resorts that were straight out of "Dirty Dancing"; again, we didn't stay at those resorts we just visited them. Nice to see how the "other half lived" and all. The highlight of the trip, for me at least, was a dark blue Plymouth station wagon my father rented for the trip that was just like this dark red 1967 Fury III wagon I found on Facebook Marketplace recently. Asking price is $4,500. Are we there yet?
I couldn't have been more than five, maybe six at the time so my memories of the big Plymouth are mostly random flashes. I do recall being all alone out back waving to folks in traffic and being delighted when they'd wave back. Some did not. Perhaps they were like, "who the hell let's their kid bounce around in the back of a station wagon with a rear facing jump seat?" And with no seat belt on to boot.
Through what I construe are adult lenses, I find it somewhat humbling to realize that the staple of familial hauling as we came to know it was not even twenty-years old when this big Plymouth rolled off the assembly line; you grow up with something you think it's always existed. Like how my twenty-something sons view the internet. "Station wagon" had been around for years before The War but they didn't really gain traction in this country until after it.
The Big Three quickly tapped into the market potential for car-based utility\family haulers and Chrysler had a large part in pioneering them with their series of wagons across their Chrysler, Dodge, Desoto and Plymouth divisions. Their 1955-1975 Imperial division never got one. Wagons become so popular that for 1967, Plymouth had three succinct lines of them - there were these full-size Fury's in I, II and III trim levels, the somewhat smaller "Belvedere" line, can't call them truly mid-size, and the compact "Valliant".
I can put two and two together now and surmise that big Plymouth was the impetus for my father purchasing the 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon from Hertz that would be the familial chariot of my woebegone wonder years not long after. Difference was, the rental Plymouth was equipped decadently whereas the Ranch Wagon was as bare bones as a Conestoga Wagon. Rear jump seat? Nope. Just a flat, steel floor back there. Roof rack and air conditioning? Please.
I blame my parents both being children during the great depression for the reason why they were unscrupulous penny-pinchers. The last night of that Catskills trip they took us to an all-you-can-eat "smorgasbord". Arriving late, the place was closing but my mother was able to coerce the staff to let us eat, we were the only ones in the place. The food had the unmistakable texture and taste of stuff that had been under heat lamps for hours and in the middle of the night and by the next morning, we were all violently ill. I don't recall waving to any one in traffic on the way home the next day. That trip even longer than the trip up there due to frequent, ahem, rest stops.
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