The 1956 Green Pontiac

The green 1956 Pontiac station wagon was a beast. My mom insisted on a big V-8 and a three speed manual transmission on the column . She had to wait an extra 8 weeks to get it. In 1956, every car out of Detroit it seemed came with automatics. My mom would often take me with her to run errands, visit a friend, or just go for a ride. At age four and five, I didn't care why, I just wanted to ride in that car. It was big and it was the first car I remember.

I do not remember ever sitting in the front seat. The reason escapes me now sixty some years later. Was my back seat status voluntary or some parental rule laid down for my safety or their sanity? Whatever the reason, the back seat it seems is where all memories in that car come from.

Mom always made plans for our local trips. Dire warnings to come home clean so we could go here or there always preceded our journeys.  By age four I had definitely developed a keen ability to find and wear any dirt, grease or grass stains within a 10 yard radius of wherever I was at the time.  It is habit I have yet to break. Some trips were canceled in what I assume was retribution for failing to live up to the clean clothes directive. More than once I can remember watching sadly as the green Pontiac disappeared down the driveway going on some grand adventure without me. This never went over well with my brothers either. Me home but without a parent in the house meant I had to be cared for and any stupidity they had planned was ruined and it was my fault. They were after all, aging teenagers who had no interest in caring for a kid brother whose only use in Life was to complicate theirs.

In that station wagon I would sit on my knees so I could look out the side window, the front window, any window I wanted. Back then, seat belts were not on anyone's radar, least of all mine.  But threats of bodily harm from the front seat kept my most rabid activities to a minimum.   And yeah, I can remember well what it felt like to crash face first into the back of the front seat as  Mom avoided a variety of collision catastrophes.

Watching the world zip by at fifty miles an hour just seemed so cool. When it was warm, I would hang my arm out with my hand flat and pretend to be a jet airplane. I would move my arm like a snake and feel the wind pressure change against my hand and arm. I would gaze into the woods and fields daydreaming about being a cowboy on the trail herding cattle, fighting rustlers, or being the Lone Ranger and saving Ole Lady Grigsby's  ranch from the evil land agent and his gang of pony ridin cut throats.

At age four through age eight or nine, the world beyond my house and yard was a wonderful mystery to me.  In the Green Pontiac, some of those mysteries were resolved, while many more teased me from around the next corner or over that horizon.  That 1956 green Pontiac station wagon was my first grand introduction to the wide world waiting for me to make a mess of.

Yeah, I loved that car.