Automotive Nostalgia
I took a trip to Iowa last week, but it was also a trip back in time.
My travels were made in an automobile that was first purchased as a new vehicle on the day I celebrated my sixth birthday. For historical perspective, that was also the same week that the communists in Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive. Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States at the time. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were still alive.
The car is a 1968 Mercury Cougar, owned by my friend Rich. His father ran a Mercury-Lincoln dealership in Chicago for many years, and owning this car is not an indulgence as much as a connection to his roots.
You see a lot of classic cars that have undergone intense modifications. This car, however, is about as original as one can get. It still has the original Cougar floor mats, as well as the original Cougar hub caps. The previous owner took great care of this car, even repainting it the same original Mercury color of seafoam green.
Rich is insistent that the car stay as authentically 1968 as possible. At some point in the 1970’s, an in-dash AM-FM cassette player had been added. He removed it and replaced it with a late-1960’s Ford Motor Company push-button AM radio he found on eBay. Until he gave up on the experiment earlier this year, the Cougar was powered by an old-style battery that requires you to add water.
It had been a long time since I had sat in a car with windup windows. And longer since I had been in one that had separate seat belts and shoulder harnesses. (If memory serves, shoulder harnesses were still an option in 1968.) Other fun things I had forgotten about: adjusting the brights with a foot switch, car door windows that had the separate little triangle window at the front, and locking the car by holding the button down on the handle when you shut the door.
The Cougar gets a lot of looks. Passersby thoroughly scope it out. A typical conversation with a stranger at a gas station goes like this: “Hey, what year is that?” “’68.” “Sweet!”
Funny how a simple drive to the Iowa border becomes an exercise in automotive nostalgia. I imagined the original owner pulling up to a service station, sitting comfortably while an attendant cleaned his windshield and checked his oil while filling the tank with 35-cents-per-gallon leaded gasoline.
If only the original Route 66 were still around.
Aug 25, 2010 at 6:25 p.m.
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Makes me nostalgic for an '86 Yugo....or not.
Aug 25, 2010 at 12:56 p.m.
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The irony of this thread is that the Cougar's owner has driven "Historic Route 66" and loved it so much that he was a special Illinois Route 66 license plate on his primary vehicle. Now my interest is piqued even more to check it out for myself. But only if I can find a full-service Texaco. :)
Aug 25, 2010 at 12:16 p.m.
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Route 66 is alive and well, just marked differently. Almost 85% is still driveable, and it's full of automotive nostalgia. Lots of folks are opening or REopening old gas stations, garages, cafes, and motels along the Route. I have a '30s filling station in Afton, OK (on old Route 66) that I've turned into a Route 66 and antique vehicle museum. Come for a visit! Or, check it out at www.aftonstation66.com.
Laurel K.
Aug 25, 2010 at 9:56 a.m.
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We used to just call the little triangle windows vent windows.
Aug 25, 2010 at 8:18 a.m.
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I am on Route 66 between Kingman and Oatman quite regularly. It is a beautiful drive crossing over Sitgreaves Pass.
Aug 25, 2010 at 7:38 a.m.
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Thanks to my friend Upal who informed me that the small front windows were called "wing vents." I would have never remembered that term.
Aug 25, 2010 at 7:13 a.m.
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Jim, We had the same model when I was a new bride of 18 back in 1976. Ours was navy blue with a white hard top and white leather seats. It was a beauty and always turned heads. Wonderful memories. Thanks!
Aug 24, 2010 at 9:18 p.m.
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The notion that Route 66 no longer exists is inaccurate. More than 85 percent of original Route 66 can still be driven.
Aug 24, 2010 at 8:43 p.m.
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If only the original Route 66 were still around.
The original route was not for cars.
Though Route 66 is no longer a US highway, it is far from being the lost and vanished road I once imagined it was. Route 66 is alive today and along her winding cracked pavement I discovered America. It was the America of my parents and grandparents, an America that I thought had been lost to us. The people of the Mother Road proved otherwise. It's the people of Route 66, those that live, work and play along her corridor today that keep her alive. To those people I want to say thank you. None of this would have been possible without the help of you - the special people I met along the way. To the business people on Route 66 trying to eke out a living away from the Interstate, the historians, the authors and artists who can see the bigger picture, dedicated volunteers and preservationists that strive to preserve this part of America for our children, the Route 66 State Associations and Organizations who know that to lose Route 66 would be to lose a part of our American soul, and above all, you road wanderers that take the path less traveled and know that it's not the destination but the journey that counts.
Guy Randall 24 January 2004
Aug 24, 2010 at 7:53 p.m.
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All I want is to ride in Dad's old 64 Chevy C10. It's parked on HWY 11, just east of Kwik Trip. Oh how I want to ride in that again!
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