Dave

1956 Ford Country Squire. This was a great car. Just look at it! Fake wood paneling, roof rack, lotsa chrome. Is that a spotlight?!?! Just the epitome of successful 50s suburban life. Mom and Dad were really living the Mad Men dream then. It even had a cool green visor over the windshield. Not sure if we had the 6 cylinder or the V-8, but I can still remember the sound of that thing. We had this car in Highland Park and Winnetka at least. Not sure if it came to New Jersey with us, but it may have.

My main memories of this car revolve around a vacation trip we took up to some lake in Wisconsin, maybe in 1960. It was to a house or cabin that may have been owned by Mr. Sackett, Dad's boss at the ad agency. "Sack" was a legendary Chicago Mad Man, who scandalized the local trade when he was accused of embezzling the firm's money. The firm went bankrupt, and Dad told me later that its sudden demise was the reason the family up and moved to NJ when we did. Those were desperate times I guess.

Anyway, I only remember myself and Dan on this trip, but maybe a young Kate was on it too? We sat in the "wayback" with the window of the tailgate open, cruising up Sheridan Road and north. Mom and Dad had bought us some "non-comic" reading matter: Classics Illustrated (condensed versions of things like A Tale of Two Cities, Robin Hood, etc. - sort of pre-Mange) and, incredibly, then-new Mad magazine. I think Mad was considered pretty hip then, so it would make sense that Dad knew about it. Still, I think we were probably too young to "get it."

My earliest musical memory is from this trip. Fooling around with Dan in the back, while Mom and Dad had the radio on. All of a sudden I was paying attention to an incredible sound, which I later figured out was Roy Orbison, probably singing "Only The Lonely". It was the big finish: "but that's the chance (bop-bop-bop--bop) youuuuuu gotta ta-ee-ake!" Super falsetto. "if your lonely, heart breaks.... Only The Lonely - dum dum dum dum dee do wah..." I was stunned - what the heck was that sound? I guess it still took me a few years to pay attention to music again in a serious way, but I can still picture staring at the radio up front at that moment. That song was release in 1960, which is why I think that's when the trip happened.

Two other things happened on this trip that I recall:

We stopped to have dinner and stay overnight on the way, at a little hotel on a lake (of course, Wisconsin...) . Somewhere Mom and Dad had bought me a really cool wind-up speed boat toy that I was dying to try. It had a guy in the cockpit, with a steering wheel, fake wood paneling and a miniature outboard motor. After dinner while they were chatting I somehow went down to the lake with my boat. (Kind or amazing that they weren't keeping a better eye on me...)

I wound it up, set in the water and watched as it gradually went farther and farther out, till it was out of site and gone! I had forgotten (or not known) to turn the rudder so it would come back. Oops. It was long gone by the time Mom and Dad came over. I was crushed.

We finally got to the house/cabin the next day. It was a little walk down a trail from the driveway to the house, with bushes and trees in between. While the grown-ups were otherwise engaged and Dan and I were waiting for something to happen (maybe the car was being unloaded?) we passed the time by throwing stones into the bushes. Sure enough, one of us, me I think, tossed one a little too far. Crack! I hit the windshield of the Country Squire. Needless to say Dad was not happy. Why were we throwing stones? They had to go into town to find a place to get it fixed. Sorry Dad!

I have no other memories of the place, the lake or anything else on the trip.