Epilogue

1967 Plymouth Fury Station Wagon 1973 - 2016

We purchased the 1967 Plymouth Fury station wagon at a government auction in 1973 for $650.00. It had been used by the Navy commissary in San Francisco, was painted a light battleship grey and had 30,000 miles on the odometer. At that time the government sold its cars after five years or 50,000 miles, whichever came first. It was a used car to the government but was like a new car for us. I found a postcard in the glove box that said I could send it in along with a couple of bucks to the Plymouth company to get a factory repair manual. I did that and the manual served me well over the years. The Plymouth wagon was our main car for a long time but finally became a hobby car that we drove to the beach and music festivals. The Plymouth was a big hit at the festivals and campers we met there year after year miss it.

Sometime during the late eighties the car was damaged while legally parked on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. A truck turning into a business driveway cut the corner too sharp and smashed the front of the left front fender. We didn't have comprehensive auto insurance so the body damage wasn't covered and we were stuck with a bent fender. The fender and other parts of the body needed Bondo repair but I wasn't up to doing body work so the car was in that condition for quite a while. I came home one day and Anne was sitting on the porch with the front fender on her lap banging out the dents. She had taken the fender off and put it back on by herself. When she finished with the body work she found a place to have the car painted eggshell blue. The paint shop offered Anne a job doing auto body work but she turned them down.

In early 2002 the car needed another paint job so Anne did the body work and got it in condition to paint. I told Anne that since she did the body work she could choose the color. We got estimates for the paint job from $400.00 to $20,000.00 from paint shops in the area. One painter looked at the car then just walked away shaking his head. We found a place that painted the car a fluorescent blue green color for somewhere around $1000.00. I remember driving home and seeing the freshly painted car setting in the driveway for the first time, I had to put on my sun glasses to look at it. My friend Gerry saw the car and said, “What bet did you lose to have to have your car painted that color?” The color mellowed after a few years, or maybe we just got used to looking at it.

Around 2014 we were returning from a festival at Grass Valley. When I pulled into the driveway I heard metal on metal when I stepped on the brakes; I realized I had work to do!  I decided to redo the entire brake system so I replaced all the flexible hoses, the master cylinder, all wheel cylinders and bought a new brake drum to replace the one that was scored. That project took me over a year but after I finished the car really stopped well.

In 2016 I had a hive of bees to deliver to Gerry so I put the hive in the back of the car and backed out of the driveway. I noticed white smoke coming out of the tailpipe but by the time I got to the end of the street it quit so I continued on my way. About five miles down the freeway the oil light came on so I pulled over and found water on the dipstick. It cost me $135.00 to get the car towed home so I should have taken the white smoke as a warning.

I thought about having the engine rebuilt but there were other things wrong with the car so I had a tough time deciding.  My grandson Christopher likes to work on cars so he came over and we pulled the heads to see if we could find the problem. I expected a blown head gasket but that didn't seem to be the case so decided there must be a crack in the block. I decided it would be a good time to find another hobby so I found a junk yard that would pick up the car and give me $100.00 to boot.

We owned and drove the car from 1973 to 2016 and had a lot of fun with it. The odometer read 60,000 but it had gone around once so the actual mileage was 160,000. We miss the car but made the right decision to retire it.