COAL: 1966 Ford Country Sedan — Ten Years Is Too Long To Wait

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– Posted on February 7, 2024

The near-spitting image of ours: Wimbledon White with a red vinyl interior. This one wears 352 fender badges.

 

With our Pontiac gone, it appeared we were in dire transportation straits in the fall of 1972. But surprisingly, we had a utility infielder waiting in the transportation dugout. This player was the proverbial jack of all trades, which is just what we needed at the time. Not flashy, but consistently dependable and easily configurable for most any task: a 1966 Ford Country Sedan.

A foresighted acquisition

We acquired the Ford from Herbert and Ruth Wisner, our landlords, in a low-cost transaction most suitable to our circumstances. The Wisner family had moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1966 when Herb joined the faculty of the biology department at the University of Oregon. (Side note: Not long ago, I searched for Herb online and saw he died in 2022, a month short of his 100th birthday.) They made many trips back and forth between Eugene and Unadilla over the years in the Ford, and didn’t want to drive it back to Oregon. I think we paid $400 for it.

Your narrator, in an early display of his “gift” for automotive details, quickly noted that the “390” fender badges did not match the “352” on the air cleaner. I figured there were three possible explanations for this:

  1. Herb was a poseur and added the 390 badges to impress his neighbors (unlikely)
  2. An assembly line mistake gypped Herb out of his 390 (also unlikely), or
  3. The original 390 had either worn out or blown up (most likely)

All I knew was, it was “better” (by a factor of 38) to have the 390 instead of the 352, but this car no longer had it. To me, the smartest plan was to just never open the hood for anyone.

It’s tough living a lie. But when you’re five-and-change and car-obsessed, it’s practically blasphemous when the badging doesn’t match what’s under the hood.

The automotive philanderer

Now, full disclosure: We had the Ford nearly the whole time we lived in Unadilla. Looking back, I realized that I engaged in a sort of automotive polyamory during this period. While I first cooed over the Cadillac then later purred over the Pontiac, I simultaneously fawned over the Ford. It became, for the rest of the time we owned it, “my” car, in my mind.

The red interior was a plus in my book. A work colleague of my mother’s had a 1966 Mustang coupe, also Wimbledon White with a red vinyl interior. I spent many hours playing in his car.

 

I viewed it as my car partly because I used to “practice driving” in it. Now, when I say “practice driving” I don’t mean seated in a parked car by myself while I yanked the steering wheel back and forth, pushed radio preset buttons and made engine noises. I mean real driving here! Seated on my mother’s lap, I pseudo-competently steered the car; she operated the accelerator and brake pedal, provided more steering input when we turned, etc.

At the time, I was pretty sure I was doing at least 50% of the driving, when it was more like 0.5%. Also, while a five year-old is willing to “drive” in circles around our barn for, oh, at least an hour or so, my mother thought that five- to 10-minute sessions, held as infrequently as possible, were long enough, since I had another 11 years to go until eligible for a learner’s permit.

Ford’s ‘66 full-sizers were (and still are) a favorite of mine. Rear quarters look enormous compared to forty-plus years of front-wheel drive packaging.

 

A clean machine, for the times

Wisners must have bought the Ford either shortly before, or shortly after, they left for Oregon. For a mid-1960s car, the body was impressively clean — no rust-through and no rust, period. You wouldn’t see that in a New York car of the same age. It stayed that way for most of the time we owned it as it saw little winter use.

I loved that the instrument panel (the ubiquitous strip speedometer and numerous idiot lights) had a light labeled “COLD” that glowed blue when the car was cold-started, then faded as the engine warmed up. While not necessarily a “Better Idea,” it at least seemed like different thinking than the GM folks. A true example of a Better Idea was Ford’s Magic Doorgate.

In 1965, The Lovin’ Spoonful sang, “Do you believe in magic”; in 1966, Ford replied with the Magic Doorgate, which proved Ford not only believed in magic but also practiced it.

 

Hubcaps used to be so fun to look at; the OEMs worked hard to make stylish ones. I was a fan of these hubcaps as a child and still am today.

 

Time marches on

The Ford became our daily driver, and only driver, for about a year and a half. During this time, I survived kindergarten and started first grade, my father threw in the towel on talent management and booking bands, and Wisners decided to sell the Unadilla home.

Back in the early 1970s, Unadilla was such a charming village. My aunt and uncle, and cousins lived there. Our farmhouse outside the village was so idyllic, with land for exploring, woods for wandering, a creek for splashing around. The barn was full of antique oddities to examine. One was always on the lookout for arrowheads or other Native American artifacts on the property.

By the end of 1973, we had moved, or more accurately, moved back, to the Binghamton area. We settled for a while in Endicott as both my parents took regular jobs and I finished first grade. Once we were financially stable, my father went car shopping again. We came home with another Ford station wagon, one that I loathed as much as I loved our ‘66. We’ll examine that gem in our next installment.

I only have two pictures of our ‘66. Their shared and defining feature is how spectacularly terrible they are. Seven-year-olds with cheap cameras are not ideal chroniclers.

Summer 1974, behind our apartment in Endicott. Rust forming on the damaged area of rear passenger door. Also missing two of those wonderful hubcaps.

 

Note how F-O-R-D letters are present in this lousy picture of the tailgate. The importance of this will become clear in the next installment.

 

An inglorious end

After about a year in Endicott, spanning the second half of first grade and the first half of second grade, we moved again in late 1974. My parents had purchased a home in a rural area of Vestal in an attempt to recreate the pastoral charm of our Unadilla home. The ‘66 came with us, along with The Loathed Wagon (TLW) that will remain nameless until our next installment. I still told anyone who’d listen that the ‘66 was the car that I’d drive when I turned 16, which was still eight years away.

By this point, the ‘66 was sitting, unused, in the driveway. Our house only had a single car garage, which was used by TLW. One day, in early 1976, it was decided that the ‘66 would be sold. Some guy bought it for $150. It was there when I left for school and gone when I returned later that day. I don’t remember being upset or angry that “my” car was sold. Even then, I understood that the worst thing for a car was for it to sit, unused and neglected.

The shortest camp-out of all-time

When we moved to Vestal, there weren’t many kids my age to interact with on our road. Periodically, my parents would bring over my two Endicott friends, John and Alex, to take the edge off my solitude.

It always starts with an idea

On one visit, I had a brilliant idea: I’ll combine two of my favorite things (camping and the Ford); we three can camp out in the Ford! Surprisingly, my parents agreed.

Two important points to note here:

  1. Having never actually camped out before, I liked the “idea” of camping; I had no idea whether I liked camping itself.
  2. The Ford was parked at the top of our somewhat steeply graded driveway and depended on the Park pawl and (I assume) parking brake to keep it there.

Looking back, I’m amused (for several reasons) that my parents let us do it:

  1. “Camping” in an old station wagon parked at top of a steep driveway.
  2. Three eight-ish year-old boys outside, at night, unsupervised.
  3. Subsequent decades of sensationalist media coverage regarding child abductions.
  4. General parental disapproval of any child’s idea of fun was perceived as sketchy or too far off the beaten path. (See example at #1, above.)

In any event, they let us. The three of us got out there, folded down the second row seat back, got settled in our sleeping bags, locked the doors, and of course started talking. A few minutes of that and we had to crack the windows a little to clear the condensation.

The conversation wanders

Then, we started talking about scary stuff, like wild animals, rabid animals, kidnappers, insane people, ghosts, and (the clincher for me) UFOs. I’d read UFO stories, watched the UK-produced “UFO” TV series, thumbed through my father’s copy of Erich von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” and generally just absorbed way too much UFOlogy during this time.

The three of us risked ending up like UFO’s Captain Foster, abducted and forced to breathe liquid oxygen.

 

One thing I’d “learned” was that UFOs always landed in rural areas at night. So, I quickly deduced that, as long as we stayed in the way back of the ‘66 we were sitting ducks, just asking to become UFO abduction statistics.

Naturally, to save my friends (and myself) I played it cool and said something like, “I’m cold. It’s too cold to sleep in the car. Who wants to go inside?” I don’t remember whether there was any chatter among us about who was scared; what I do remember is shortly after my comment about being cold, the three of us agreed to go in the house. I bet we weren’t out there more than 40 minutes.

Surprises ahead

With the ‘66 gone, I had lost the last participant in my youthful foray into automotive polyamory. I think the flame had been snuffed out by that time anyway. I was focused on more “interactive” pursuits like the Evel Knievel Stunt Bike, Pit Change Charger, and Stick Shifters.

A ubiquitous toy during my childhood.

 

As a boy, these were in a three-way tie for “my favorite toy.” I bought the Stick Shifters toy shown here at an antique mall a few years ago for $15.00. When I first saw it, I actually made that startled, “quick-intake-of-air-through-the-mouth” sound like I’d found lost Inca gold, then chuckled to myself at my reaction.

 

The Loathed Wagon (TLW) had the driveway to itself, but not for long. My father had yet another plan, but I’m getting ahead of the story. In the next COAL installment, we’ll look at how TLW earned its belated nickname.