0:00

A few months ago, which, let's face

0:03

it might as well be ten years ago. I

0:05

went out on the road to promote my Mobituaries

0:08

book. The names I was asked

0:10

most about famous first

0:12

brother Billy Carter, screen

0:14

legend, Audrey Hepburn, and the

0:16

original Siamese twins Chang

0:19

and Hang. I'm imagining a

0:21

wacky road trip with the four of them.

0:23

Now, if in some parallel universe

0:25

they were to take a road trip, I would

0:27

hope they'd take it in the vehicle that was

0:30

once synonymous with family

0:32

fund and adventure. Please

0:35

enjoy this mobid for the station

0:37

Wagon, which I recorded for the audiobook

0:40

version of the Mobituaries book, and

0:42

please enjoy the bonus on the back end

0:45

of this bonus, Death

0:51

of a Leviathan the

0:53

station Wagon to

0:57

two thousand eleven. My

1:01

family had a station Wagon for a couple

1:04

of years in the early nineteen seventies,

1:06

but I was only three or four at the time, so I

1:08

can barely remember it.

1:10

It was yellow, I think, or maybe

1:12

it was cream colored. Was it

1:14

a Chevy? What I do know is that

1:17

one afternoon my mother put my brother

1:19

in the back seat after a doctor's appointment,

1:21

and the car started rolling backward in the

1:23

parking lot allah Angie Dickinson

1:26

and policewoman my mother had to jump

1:28

into the front seat and pull the emergency

1:30

brake. This was reason enough

1:32

for my father to trade in the station wagon

1:35

for an Impoli sdan soon after,

1:38

and just like that, the one thing

1:40

that made us like TV's Brady Family,

1:42

and who were more all American than the Bradies,

1:45

was gone. For

1:47

a few decades. From the mid fifties

1:49

to the mid eighties, station wagons

1:52

like the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser,

1:55

the Chrysler Town and Country,

1:57

and the Ford Country Squire were

1:59

as central to the American dream as

2:01

the white picket fence and the basketball

2:03

hoop in the driveway. These

2:05

were the quintessential family cars.

2:08

If y I the Bradies had at least

2:10

two different station wagons, both of

2:12

them Plymouth Satellites, and

2:15

the bigger the wagon, the cooler the

2:17

family. By the nineteen seventies,

2:19

the Ford Country Squire was a nearly

2:21

nineteen ft long behemoth and

2:24

got a whopping eight to ten miles

2:26

to the gallon. You could cram

2:28

four or five kids into the back seat.

2:31

But that's not where I wanted to be anytime

2:34

I was lucky enough to ride in one, and

2:36

I'm sure I befriended some kids because

2:39

their families had station wagons. I

2:41

headed straight for the way back with

2:44

the seats folded down. The

2:46

freedom, the danger. I

2:48

loved being thrown against the side when

2:50

the car turned, all the better when other

2:53

kids were back there, all of us ricocheting

2:55

off each other after a pizza party at

2:57

Shakey's. Riding

2:59

in the way back gave me the same out

3:01

of control thrill I got from roller

3:03

coasters. Related thought, I

3:06

used to fantasize about climbing into

3:08

the dryer so I could just spin and spin.

3:11

It's probably a good thing I didn't figure

3:13

out how to turn the dryer on from the inside.

3:16

What gave these cars an extra flare

3:18

was the vinyl applicate wood grain

3:21

paneling. It made it feel like a

3:23

house on wheels. The paneling

3:25

was a throwback to the earliest station

3:27

wagons, which were made mostly of

3:29

wood. These wagons were d i

3:32

y affairs. The customer would

3:34

buy the chassis of say a Model T, then

3:36

ordered the wood body from a coach builder

3:39

or hire a carpenter to make it and bolt

3:41

it on. It was just much

3:44

lighter and easier to build the body out

3:46

of wood, says my friend Matt Anderson,

3:48

curator of Transportation at the Henry

3:50

Ford Museum. The technology

3:52

just didn't exist at that time to build

3:55

a large body out of steel. By

3:57

the nineteen thirties, these vehicles and

4:00

any where beauties were known as woodies.

4:03

The earliest station wagons were used

4:05

on farms or as delivery vehicles

4:08

and to transport passengers between

4:10

railroad stations and hotels.

4:13

That's how the vehicle got the name station

4:15

wagon. This is the kind of factoid

4:17

I love. By the time the baby

4:20

boom hit, the station wagon had caught

4:22

on with families. The first

4:24

real modern station wagon is Plymouth

4:27

Suburban, says Matt. It's got

4:30

an all steel body. The name itself

4:32

tells you how that vehicle was marketed. The

4:35

rise of the suburbs was a big factor

4:37

in the adoption of the station wagon. Now,

4:41

it's true that station wagons were an absolute

4:43

nightmare for any teenager learning to parallel

4:46

park. They were larger than the standard

4:48

parking space, the site lines were miserable,

4:51

and I'm pretty sure that rear defrosters

4:53

hadn't been invented yet. And of course

4:55

they were dangerous. The way back

4:58

was a death chamber. Are the more safety

5:00

conscious. There was a rear facing fold up

5:02

seat, introduced by Chrystler in seven.

5:06

It had seatbelts, not that you could ever find

5:08

them. It also had the benefit that someone

5:10

sitting back there could call out whenever

5:12

luggage strapped to the roof rack came

5:15

free and tumbled out onto the highway.

5:17

By the early nineteen eighties, the family

5:20

station Wagon was already beginning to acquire

5:22

value as kitch. We know this

5:24

for a fact because in nine Warner

5:27

Brothers released Harold Ramos's

5:29

National Lampoon's Vacation. The

5:31

true star of that movie is not the bumbling

5:34

Chevy Chase but the wagon

5:36

Queen Family Truckster, an

5:38

enormous hearst like vehicle that is

5:40

gradually gutted over the course of the film

5:43

due to a combination of vandalism and

5:45

incompetent driving. But

5:47

as the movie Vacation was celebrating

5:49

the station Wagon, its demise

5:52

was looming. There were warning signs.

5:54

The oil crisis of nineteen seventy three

5:57

made fuel efficiency a priority

5:59

for consumers. The ingenuity

6:01

of Japanese engineering was making it harder

6:03

and harder to stay loyal to American cars

6:06

that handled poorly and seemed in constant

6:08

need of repair. Then

6:10

came what car journalist Amos Kwan

6:13

has called the testosterone robbing

6:15

minivan, which Leaya Coca

6:17

introduced to Chrysler in with

6:21

better fuel economy, more headroom,

6:23

and best of all, a sliding side

6:25

door. The minivan was a hit among

6:27

practical minded car pooling soccer

6:29

moms. Mandatory car

6:31

seats rang the death knell of

6:34

the way back. The

6:36

station wagon belonged to the golden

6:38

age of the highway, the new system

6:40

of interstates built by Eisenhower and

6:42

Kennedy. Up through the eighties,

6:45

that highway system represented nothing less

6:47

than freedom itself, flight from

6:49

dreary routines of city and suburb,

6:52

access to all our nation's great beauty

6:54

and natural attractions.

6:57

But then, with traffic and suburban sprawl

6:59

getting worse and worse, those endless

7:01

highways were no longer our means of escape.

7:04

They became another part of what we needed to escape

7:06

from. And so after the

7:08

minivan, we fell in love with the four wheel

7:11

drive suv, the kind that, at

7:13

least in the commercials, could drive right

7:15

over a guardrail, plow through a rocky

7:18

river bed and scale a craggy mountain

7:20

at forty five degrees. Maybe

7:22

it was the renewed nuclear fears

7:24

of the eighties, or just a vague

7:26

sense of looming catastrophe, but

7:29

suddenly we all needed military grade

7:31

vehicles of our own, something that could

7:33

get traction on a glacier and stand

7:35

up to machine gun fire if needed when

7:38

the next blizzard, hurricane, or wildfire

7:40

hit. Local and state authorities weren't going

7:42

to save us. In two thousand

7:44

eleven, Volvo announced that

7:46

it would stop selling station wagons

7:48

in the United States. Sales

7:50

had dropped from forty to

7:54

four hundred and eighty in two thousand ten.

7:57

Auto buffs immediately began to mourn

7:59

its path sing, But the truth is

8:01

that by two thousand eleven, the station

8:03

wagon was already long dead. The

8:06

Volvo wagon of the nineties was no more

8:08

a real station wagon than a barn

8:10

swallow was a real dinosaur. At

8:13

best, it was a stunted descendant

8:16

of the magnificent monsters that

8:18

roamed American highways during the late

8:20

Cretaceous period of American

8:22

automotive history. Don't

8:24

get me wrong, I'm a fan of auto

8:26

safety. A boy. If

8:29

someone gave me the keys to a nineteen seventy

8:31

nine Ford Country Squire, I'd

8:33

be sorely tempted to take a week off and

8:36

ride that beast to the Grand Canyon,

8:40

and other things from the nineteen seventies

8:43

that could have killed us McDonald's

8:46

collectible drinking glasses. Ronald

8:50

McDonald has been the mascot of McDonald's

8:52

ever since nineteen sixty three, when

8:55

he was first played in TV ads

8:57

by future Today weatherman Willard

8:59

Scott. In nine seventy,

9:01

a lonely Ronald was joined by the hamburglar

9:04

officer Big Back and the milkshake loving

9:07

Grimace in McDonald Land,

9:10

a spectacularly imaginative concoction

9:12

of ad agency Needum, Harper and Steers,

9:15

which seemed awfully similar to the

9:17

then popular kids TV show hr

9:20

Puffin Stuff. Google the images

9:22

of Mary mc cheese and hr Puffin Stuff

9:24

himself and you'll see what I mean. The

9:26

courts agreed and ordered McDonald's

9:29

to pay one million dollars to the show's

9:31

producers, Small Fries. Given

9:33

that the ad campaign had been so successful,

9:36

the McDonald land characters became

9:38

inescapable as a line of

9:40

plastic action figures, a complete

9:42

set of which goes for about six dollars

9:45

on eBay and as collectible

9:47

drinking glasses, each one brightly

9:49

painted with a different character. It's

9:52

a safe bet that a good half of the liquid

9:54

I consumed growing up was via those

9:56

glasses. But it turns out the

9:58

glasses themselves weren't so safe.

10:01

In July, the

10:03

paint used on the exterior was

10:05

discovered to contain led content

10:08

up to eighteen times the legal limit.

10:11

Although the company that manufactured the glasses,

10:14

Owen's Illinois of Toledo, Ohio,

10:16

declared that the glasses in no way present

10:18

a health hazard, regulatory agencies

10:21

weren't loving it. By that point, McDonald's

10:24

had given away as many as sixty million

10:26

of these i Q killers in various

10:28

promotions over five years. Under

10:31

pressure from the Food and Drug Administration,

10:33

they agreed to cease distribution.

10:36

Unfortunately, my family missed the memo,

10:38

and the glasses remained and now were covered up

10:41

until about three years ago, by which

10:43

point the images had faded to not much more than

10:45

outlines. My mother's response,

10:47

but the painting was on the outside. PS.

10:51

Let's all raise a non lead painted glass

10:53

to Willard Scott in the hopes that he

10:55

lives to announce his own hundredth birthday

11:00

Quayludes. The

11:03

pilot episode of The Brady Bunch, just

11:05

before they're married, Mike confesses

11:08

to Carol that he has a case of nerves.

11:10

Why don't you take a tranquilizer, asks

11:13

Carol. I took one, says Mike. Well

11:15

maybe you should take another one, says Carol.

11:18

Nothing doing, says America's dad. I

11:20

want to be calm for the ceremony, but there's

11:22

the honeymoon to consider. Look,

11:25

I have no idea how much of the Brady Honeymoon

11:27

was fueled by synthetic drugs, but

11:29

the fact that the quintessential family show

11:31

of the era was promoting double doses

11:33

of tranquilizers makes you realize

11:36

how mainstream these things were. Queludes,

11:39

the brand name for methoon, began

11:42

as an insomnia and anxiety treatment

11:44

and soon became a recreational drug, easy

11:47

to get from a doctor who didn't ask too many

11:49

questions. It fast became a

11:51

popular club drug, sometimes called

11:53

a disco biscuit, Highly addictive,

11:56

even lethal when taken in large doses

11:58

or mixed with alcohol. Coludes

12:00

were finally banned in the United States

12:03

in a

12:07

law in

12:09

Apple A day keeps the doctor away,

12:12

right, not if it's sprayed

12:14

with demeanor'side. The plant growth

12:16

regulator, manufactured from the sixties

12:18

through the eighties by the Uni Royal Chemical

12:20

Corporation and sold under the brand

12:23

name A Laar A Laura was sprayed

12:25

on apples and other fruits in order

12:27

to keep them on the tree longer, aiding the

12:29

ripening process and most important,

12:32

cutting down on labor costs for big

12:34

fruit producers. But evidence

12:36

that a law causes cancer emerged

12:39

during the nineteen seventies, and the

12:42

proof was overwhelming. A federal

12:44

band finally passed Congress in A

12:47

laar is still found all over crossword

12:50

puzzles. Shag

12:53

carpeting Okay,

12:56

I can't prove that shag garpeting huge

12:58

in the free love era of the nine sixties

13:00

and seventies, ever killed someone. But

13:02

according to a two thousand one piece in

13:04

the British newspaper The Telegraph,

13:07

carpets function as toxic sponges,

13:09

soaking in all kinds of pollutants that

13:12

we track in from the outside. Now

13:14

imagine the billions of hippie micro

13:16

organisms teeming inside those deep

13:18

plush piles of looped yarn that make up

13:20

a shag carpet. Trillions of the shag

13:23

carpeting was inside a van. I'm

13:25

not a licensed to pediatrician, but I bet

13:27

that encouraging a baby to roll around a shag

13:29

carpet from the nineteen seventies would build up

13:32

all sorts of immunity. Jarts.

13:38

Jarts, also called lawn darts

13:40

or javelin darts, were weighted metal

13:43

darts about a foot long that people

13:45

used to toss around the backyard trying

13:47

to get them to land inside a plastic ring.

13:49

If you threw them high enough, they could really gather

13:52

speed as they plummeted to earth. Kids

13:54

loved charts until the government,

13:56

citing several injuries and at least one

13:59

death, tried to banned them in After

14:02

pushback from several dangerous toy lobbying

14:05

groups, the Consumer Product Safety

14:07

Commission agreed to a compromise charts

14:09

would be allowed only in sporting goods

14:12

stores. Then,

14:15

seven year old Michelle Snow was tragically

14:17

killed by a misthrown chart. Her

14:20

father, David campaigned tirelessly

14:22

for an outright ban, and eventually

14:24

the CPSC voted two to one

14:26

to prohibit their sale. I got to

14:29

wonder about that one no vote electric

14:33

blankets. On

14:36

a cold winter night. During the Carter administration,

14:39

there was nothing like curling up under a

14:41

soft, cozy blanket laced with thick

14:43

electrical wiring. Before

14:45

safety features like an automatic shutoff

14:47

became mandatory in two thousand one. Exposed

14:50

or damaged wiring made electric

14:53

blankets a serious fire hazard. We

14:55

got rid of the two we owned when my father started

14:57

worrying we could be electrocuted. Even

15:00

today, the American Pregnancy Association

15:02

warns that the heat from an electric blanket

15:05

can decrease a mail user's fertility.

15:08

Fun fact. In the vintage sci fi invasion

15:11

film The Thing from Another World, the

15:13

monster is freed from the block of ice

15:15

in which he is encased when an electric

15:17

blanket is casually tossed aside, melting

15:20

the creature's prison and loosening him upon

15:22

the world. You

15:25

Fee you fee

15:28

spelled u f f I

15:30

was a kind of expanding foam insulation

15:32

sprayed into walls and crawl spaces.

15:35

As a kid, I thought it looked kind of pretty like

15:37

ready whip topping. The problem

15:40

was that one of the f's in u F stands

15:42

for formaldehyde, which, when

15:45

sprayed into the air, poses a cancer

15:47

risk. When you fee's use became

15:49

a cause of concern, manufacturers

15:51

protested that symptoms of exposure

15:54

were limited to watery

15:56

eyes, nasally irritation, wheezing,

15:58

coughing, fatigue, red or blotchy

16:01

skin, severe allergic reactions, burning

16:03

sensations in the eyes and throat, nausea,

16:05

difficulty breathing, headache, malaise, insomnia,

16:07

and orexia. Loss of libido. I'm running out

16:09

of room here.