It started with the car

Another chapter in the Schulz family memories series

Growing up in Green Bay, vacations were interesting. Usually, they involved traveling to a nearby state. Camping. Tourist attractions. Museums. It was the one time my mother could be sure we had my dad’s full attention. A week and a half to two weeks every summer.

One year, the plan was to travel east to visit the grandparents. My parents decided we needed a new station wagon, so one was bought just before the trip. Green. Three row of seats. Nice interior. A floor demo model with all the bells and whistles that existed at that time. Air conditioning. Power seat. Power locks. Power windows.

I think for my sisters and I those last two were the most interesting. We didn’t play with the switches, but we did find the idea intriguing. (Remember, this was the 1970’s. Power locks and power windows were fairly new technologies.)

The day for the trip arrived like so many other Green Bay days. Warm. Muggy. The luggage was split between the carrier on the roof and the back half of the car. We all took our assigned seats. Off we went. My older sister had navigator duty for the first part of the trip, so she was in the front seat with my dad — map in her lap. Mom, younger sister, and I were in the second seat. Books and such came out to keep the three of us busy. After all, this was to be the beginning of a several day drive to Ohio and Pennsylvania.

An hour down the road, the windshield wipers came on. You read that right. My dad didn’t turn them on, they came on. He decided to drive on to the next gas station, where he planned to stop and take a look. A little while later, the radio went off. Then it came back on. Then the air went off. Then it came back on. Then things went really random and they all came on at the same time.

Along with all of that, the front seat started to move. On its own. Now, my dad is six foot four — moving seats usually mean squishing his legs. Not fun.

But the car wasn’t done having fun with us. To quote my older sister, “…after the electrical system went nuts, the car started to overheat. Turned out this was the fatal stab for the wagon. The filings had never been vacuumed out of the radiator — and they melted onto the bottom of…

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