If you click on the picture it should eventually enlarge

 My parents and I had one of these only it was a turquoise blue. This was the car that I took my first driving test in 1964 at 16 in. Within one month I had bought my first car with money I had earned working in my father's business as an electrician on weekends and summers for 800 dollars. It was a 1956 Ford Station Wagon:

I tried to display a picture of a blue and white 1956 Ford Station wagon but it obliterated the whole article when I did this when I loaded it after running it through the auto encoder which automatically encodes HTML code.

If you were wondering why I bought a station wagon it was because I was a 16 year old surfer in Los Angeles then and I needed it to carry my 10 foot 4 inch surfboard and my friends surfboards too. We would drive down the freeway with these huge surfboards hanging out the back which was status at that time in Los Angeles for surfer dudes. Lemon juice in the hair made it lighter when the sun was on it too then. Different times than now! The Beach bunnies were great too! ((slang for surfer chicks (girls))

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 2010

Note: This is a reprint from about 2010 or 2011:

1960 Mercury Stationwagon

I read today that the Mercury Brand by Ford will be discontinued this year. It brought back memories of the 1960 Mercury station wagon that my family and I traveled all over the western states with between 1960 when they bought it and around 1965 to 1968 when it likely was traded in for something else(I think Mom bought a 1965 brand new Chevy Impala and Dad then bought a 1968 Ford truck F 150. He liked this truck so well he also bought a 1975 Ford Truck F 150 as well. But he liked the power of the 1968 better before they put all the smog stuff on it.

But in the 1960s before seatbelts I remember laying down in the back with the seats folded down singing, "Yellow Polka dot Bikini" with a friend after we almost froze to death in the Panamint Mountains in a freak October Snowstorm in October 1960 near Telescope Peak. My Dad had to hike out because when we got back to camp from the Telescope Peak Hike there was over 1 foot of snow over the dirt roads to get to the camp site and since we didn't have chains Dad had to hike out 5 or 10 miles to get a Ranger. The Ranger had a Jeep and put us in front of him on a chain with the Mercury Stationwagon so we wouldn't go off a cliff on the way down the dirt road. Next to us the drop off was 1000 feet or more.

Then there was the time at Castle Lake at about 6000 feet in the campground there near Mt. Shasta that my Dad and I were sleeping on a foam mattress in the Stationwagon there with the rear window  rolled down for air in the summer. A Buck deer with antlers stuck his head inside where our heads were and snorted  in our faces in the middle of the night and scared my Dad and I awake. It was one of the strangest experiences of both our lives. When we sat up he ran away. This was about 1962.

Ours wasn't white like the one below. Ours was light blue.

So when they discontinue the Mercury this year I will always fondly remember our 1960 Mercury stationwagon. It was a very comfortable car to travel in and not a bad place to sleep in either. It was the car I took my first driving test when I got my license at age 16 in 1964. I got a 100 on the written test.