Nobody in Fort Stockton realized the American family was in danger until the Chamber of Commerce received a magazine.
This was in 1991, when magazines still possessed the authority to frighten people several weeks after events had actually occurred. The publication had been left on a conference table at the Chamber office by somebody who had attended a regional economic-development meeting in Midland, and buried between an advertisement for fax machines and an article explaining why Japan would soon own everything was a short piece about the decline of the traditional American station wagon. Minivans were taking over. Chrysler had sold enough Voyagers and Caravans to establish that Americans apparently preferred their family transportation tall, square and equipped with a sliding door. Ford had the Aerostar. Chevrolet had the Astro. Even people who once believed a proper family automobile required a hood long enough to land a Piper Cub were beginning to surrender.
The article might have passed unnoticed had someone not underlined a sentence predicting that the traditional station wagon could disappear from American roads before the end of the decade.
Fort Stockton had survived droughts, oil busts, cattle prices, federal highway policy, three attempts to improve downtown parking and the temporary closing of a Dairy Twin ice-cream machine during Little League season. It was not accustomed to sitting quietly while an American institution disappeared.
Within forty-eight hours, the Chamber had formed a committee.
That was the first mistake.
The second was naming it.
By the following Tuesday, six people had agreed upon the Fort Stockton American Family Station Wagon Preservation Initiative, which sounded important enough to qualify for federal funding even though nobody had yet determined what it was supposed to do. The acronym, FAFSWPI, was abandoned after one member tried to pronounce it and appeared to swallow part of his tongue.
The mission, however, was clear. If station wagons were disappearing, Fort Stockton would preserve one.
Then somebody pointed out that simply parking a station wagon in a museum wouldn’t preserve the institution. A station wagon without a family was merely a long automobile with an unusually ambitious cargo area. What needed preserving was the entire cultural ecosystem: parents, children, luggage, road trips, arguments, grocery sacks, vacation maps, discarded hamburger wrappers and the peculiar American belief that five people who could barely tolerate one another at home would somehow become closer after spending nine hours together at sixty-five miles per hour.
Fort Stockton therefore decided to preserve a family.
There was precedent for civic enthusiasm regarding the institution. Mayor Goodman was widely regarded as one of the town’s strongest proponents of families, having created three of them on his own, although for administrative reasons nobody invited him to serve on the committee.
The Chamber began looking for candidates.
The Pritchards were selected largely because they met every requirement without being interesting enough to create complications.
Walter Pritchard was thirty-nine and worked for West Texas Gas & Electric in a position nobody outside the company fully understood. His wife, Linda, worked three mornings a week at the Pecos County Library and possessed the calm expression of a woman who had already raised three children far enough to understand that most emergencies could be improved by waiting five minutes. Their children were Jason, fourteen; Amy, eleven; and Kevin, eight. They owned a brick house with a two-car garage, attended church with reasonable regularity, took one vacation each summer and had never been mentioned in the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch except when Amy won honorable mention in a fourth-grade poster contest.
Most importantly, they owned a four-door sedan.
This meant they could be converted.
Frontier Ford-Lincoln-Mercury agreed to provide the vehicle, partly from civic pride and partly because a Crystal Blue Metallic 1990 Mercury Sable GS wagon had been sitting on the lot long enough for Roger to know the birthdays of the spiders underneath it.
The Sable was the sort of automobile that had been designed by people determined to prove the future would contain no straight lines. The front end was smooth and rounded, with a glowing panel between the headlights that made the Mercury appear to have been designed after somebody at Ford watched Tron. Inside were acres of blue cloth, split bench seats front and rear, a column-mounted automatic transmission selector, air conditioning, power accessories and a cassette stereo ready to play whatever evidence of poor musical judgment the Pritchards wished to preserve for future generations.
It also had a roof rack.
This would become important.
The presentation took place on a Saturday morning beneath a banner reading FORT STOCKTON PRESERVES THE AMERICAN FAMILY, which caused several passing motorists to wonder what exactly had happened to it.
Walter was handed the keys. Linda received flowers. The children were given matching T-shirts. Photographs were taken beside the Mercury while a Chamber representative explained that the Pritchards had been selected to represent “the enduring values associated with traditional American family travel.”
Walter thought they were getting a free car for a year.
Linda suspected there was more to it.
Linda was right.
The first regulations arrived eleven days later.
The committee had determined that authentic station-wagon preservation required more than simply driving the Mercury to work, school and the grocery store. Certain historically significant behaviors had to be maintained. The Pritchards were therefore required to take at least one family automobile vacation during the twelve-month preservation period. All luggage was to travel with the family rather than being shipped ahead. At least one paper road map had to remain in the glove compartment. Drive-through meals were encouraged. Children were expected to occupy the rear seating area in proportions consistent with traditional family usage.
Walter read the regulations twice.
“What’s traditional family usage?”
Linda took the papers from him.
“I think it means they have to fight.”
This proved correct.
A supplemental directive issued in May specified that station-wagon travel should include “historically representative interpersonal experiences.” The committee had interviewed several longtime wagon owners and concluded that children arguing over invisible territorial boundaries in the back seat represented an essential component of the American station-wagon tradition.
Jason was offended by the implication that his family needed government assistance to argue.
Kevin solved the problem by touching Amy.
The first compliance inspection took place in June.
A committee member appeared unexpectedly at the Pritchard home at 7:15 on a Tuesday morning and found Walter loading his briefcase into the front passenger seat.
“Cargo area,” the inspector said.
“What?”
“Briefcase. Station wagon has a designated cargo area.”
“I’m driving to work.”
“That’s still cargo.”
Walter moved the briefcase.
The inspector made a notation.
The program grew from there.
By July, the committee had developed standards for grocery transportation, sporting equipment, roadside picnics and the use of the roof rack. The rack had become a particular concern because Walter had not used it once. He explained that the Sable possessed enough interior cargo room that he had never needed to put anything on the roof.
This answer was deemed contrary to the spirit of preservation.
A resolution was passed requiring the Pritchards to transport at least one object on the roof rack before the end of the year, preferably something poorly aerodynamic.
Walter suggested a mattress.
The committee considered this an excellent example.
Walter had been joking.
The Pritchards took their required family vacation in August, driving the Mercury to Colorado Springs by way of Raton because Walter had convinced himself this was more scenic. A Rand McNally atlas was placed between the front seats despite Linda knowing the route. Two suitcases were strapped unnecessarily to the roof rack, satisfying the annual requirement and reducing fuel economy enough to make Walter complain through most of northern New Mexico.
By Trinidad, Kevin had asked if they were there yet seventeen times.
Outside Pueblo, Amy accused Jason of crossing the center seam of the rear seat with his left thigh.
Jason denied it.
Kevin announced that he was hungry.
Walter said they had eaten forty minutes earlier.
Kevin explained that this had occurred in another state.
Somewhere south of Colorado Springs, Walter reached backward with one arm and waved it blindly in the general direction of his children while continuing to drive.
Linda quietly checked a box on the compliance form.
The family returned to Fort Stockton six days later sunburned, exhausted and in complete fulfillment of Section IV, Subsection C.
The committee declared the trip a success.
The Pritchards did not.
By autumn, the Preservation Initiative had begun attracting attention outside Fort Stockton. A television station in Odessa sent a reporter. The Stockton Telegram-Dispatch ran a Sunday feature titled WAGON TRAIN: LOCAL FAMILY KEEPS TRADITION ALIVE, accompanied by a photograph of the Pritchards standing beside the Mercury looking like hostages who had been permitted outside for exercise.
Then came the Plymouth Voyager incident.
Linda had attended a Wednesday-night church supper and afterward accepted a ride home from her friend Carol, whose husband had recently purchased a burgundy Plymouth Voyager. Linda climbed into the front passenger seat without considering the political implications.
A member of the Station Wagon Preservation Committee happened to be stopped at the same intersection.
By Friday, Linda had received a letter.
The committee emphasized that no formal violation had occurred because Linda had not operated the minivan. Nevertheless, her presence inside a competing family-transportation format created what the letter described as “an appearance inconsistent with the objectives of the Initiative.”
Linda placed the letter on the kitchen table.
Walter read it.
“What do they want you to do?”
“I think I’m supposed to apologize for riding home from church.”
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
Walter looked at his wife and felt a small but unmistakable surge of pride.
The situation worsened in November when Walter attended a utility conference in Odessa and rented a Dodge Caravan because the rental counter was out of sedans.
This time there were photographs.
Nobody ever established who took them.
The Telegram-Dispatch printed one on page three beneath the headline PRITCHARD SEEN WITH CARAVAN.
Walter was summoned before the committee.
He explained that the rental agency had given him the Dodge.
The chairman asked whether Walter had requested an alternative.
Walter said he had asked for a Taurus.
“Did you specifically request a station wagon?”
“No.”
There was a silence long enough to suggest that Walter had just admitted to something involving livestock.
The committee issued a formal warning.
Christmas passed under strained circumstances.
Jason began threatening to buy a minivan when he turned sixteen simply to see what would happen. Amy drew a picture of a Plymouth Voyager for an art assignment and was advised by Linda not to bring it home. Kevin, who had discovered that adults became irrational whenever certain automotive terms were mentioned, began announcing “Dodge Caravan” at dinner for no reason.
Then, in February of 1992, came the plywood.
Walter was repairing shelving in the garage and needed one sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood. He drove the Mercury to Rusty Hammer Hardware on Saturday morning, purchased the sheet and rolled it out to the parking lot on a cart.
Then he looked at the Sable.
Then he looked at the plywood.
Theoretically, it could be done.
The rear seat folded. The liftgate opened. The Mercury was, after all, a station wagon. But Walter had spent eleven months being lectured about preserving the car, maintaining the car, protecting the car and representing the car, and he had no intention of gouging the blue interior with a sheet of construction-grade plywood just to satisfy people who had never personally tried it.
Rusty Hammer came outside, assessed the situation and offered Walter the use of the hardware store pickup.
Walter accepted.
This was the moment upon which everything turned.
At 10:42 Saturday morning, Walter Pritchard, official male head of Fort Stockton’s designated Station Wagon Preservation Family, was observed driving east on Dickinson Boulevard in a pickup truck containing one sheet of plywood.
By Monday morning, Fort Stockton was at war.
The headline occupied most of the upper half of the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch:
STATION WAGON FAMILY CAUGHT USING PICKUP
Below it, in smaller type:
Chamber Calls Emergency Meeting; Pritchard Says “It’s Just Plywood.”
Walter would regret those words.
“It’s just plywood” became the central issue in what the newspaper soon began calling the Plywood Controversy. Letters arrived at the Chamber office. One writer argued that hauling building materials was precisely the sort of activity station wagons had historically performed. Another pointed out that his father had once carried six sheets of paneling in a 1972 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with the tailgate down and nobody had formed a committee about it.
A third letter merely said:
LEAVE THE MAN ALONE.
It received the most signatures.
The committee nevertheless scheduled a hearing.
Walter arrived expecting to answer two or three questions. Instead he found an easel.
On it was a scale drawing of the Mercury Sable.
A local engineer had been asked to determine whether a standard four-by-eight sheet of plywood could have been transported safely in the vehicle. Measurements had been taken. Angles had been calculated. Diagrams showed several theoretical loading configurations. One required the plywood to extend through the rear opening. Another involved lowering both rear seatbacks and advancing the front passenger seat. A third appeared to require removing a headrest and possibly one of the Pritchard children.
Walter stared at the diagrams.
Linda sat beside him.
Across the room, somebody whispered that configuration two looked promising.
The committee chairman cleared his throat and asked Walter whether, given the evidence presented, he still believed use of the pickup had been necessary.
Walter looked at the drawing.
He looked at the engineer.
He looked at the committee.
He looked at the citizens of Fort Stockton who had voluntarily surrendered an evening of their lives to attend a public hearing about plywood.
For eleven months Walter Pritchard had transported groceries in the approved cargo area. He had carried a road atlas he did not need. He had strapped luggage to a roof that did not require it. He had driven three children to Colorado and back. His wife had been investigated for riding home from church. He had been photographed at a rental counter in Odessa. He had submitted mileage reports, maintenance records and one written explanation concerning why the family had eaten breakfast at McDonald’s instead of stopping at a locally owned restaurant during the preservation vacation.
Something inside Walter finally achieved compression.
“It’s a car.”
Nobody moved.
Walter stood.
“It’s a car. It’s a Mercury Sable. We put gasoline in it. We drive it places. Sometimes we put groceries in the back. Sometimes the kids fight. Sometimes they don’t. Linda rode in Carol’s van because Carol was going to our house. I rented a Caravan because it was the car they had. And I used Rusty’s pickup because I didn’t want to tear up the inside of the station wagon you’ve spent a year telling me I’m supposed to preserve.”
The committee chairman attempted to interrupt.
Walter raised one finger.
“And it was one sheet of plywood.”
The room remained silent.
Then someone in the back began clapping.
It was Rusty Hammer.
Others joined.
The Fort Stockton American Family Station Wagon Preservation Initiative ended seventeen days later.
Officially, the Chamber announced that the program had successfully increased public awareness and had therefore fulfilled its original mission. This was how organizations announced that something had become ridiculous without admitting they had been the people making it ridiculous.
Frontier Ford-Lincoln-Mercury offered the Pritchards the opportunity to purchase the Sable at a substantial discount.
Walter declined.
Linda surprised him.
She wanted it.
After everything that had happened, after the inspections and regulations and newspaper stories and the humiliation of the plywood hearing, Linda had become attached to the Mercury. It had taken them to Colorado. Amy had spilled a chocolate milkshake beneath the rear seat. Kevin had lost a plastic Tyrannosaurus somewhere in the cargo area and remained convinced it was still there. Jason had learned to change a tire beside it. There was a small scratch near the tailgate from a motel luggage cart in Raton and a stain on the front passenger carpet that nobody could explain.
The committee had spent a year trying to preserve a station wagon by preventing ordinary life from happening to it.
Linda understood that ordinary life was what made it worth preserving.
They bought the Mercury.
For years afterward it could be seen around Fort Stockton performing none of its former official duties. It hauled groceries without documentation. It carried Little League equipment without historical supervision. It went to church. It went to school. It went to funerals and birthday parties and dentist appointments. Jason eventually learned to drive in it, although Walter privately considered this a more serious threat to the vehicle than plywood had ever been.
The station wagon did what station wagons had always done.
It disappeared into the family.
Eventually the children grew up. The Sable got older. Somewhere along the way the great American station wagon really did begin to vanish, only nobody in Fort Stockton called a meeting this time. Voyagers and Caravans multiplied. Explorers arrived. Expeditions followed. Families climbed higher off the ground and station wagons quietly slipped out of school pickup lines, church parking lots and motel swimming-pool vacations.
Nobody noticed the exact moment they became old-fashioned.
Nobody ever does.
More than thirty years later, a remarkably preserved 1990 Mercury Sable GS wagon appeared for sale on an internet auction site. It was Crystal Blue Metallic with blue cloth upholstery, split bench seats, a column-shift automatic, cassette stereo, roof rack and the glowing front panel that had once looked so futuristic that Mercury apparently expected the twentieth century to end several years early.
People studied the photographs.
They admired the interior.
They discussed the mileage.
They commented on how rarely these cars survived.
Somebody remembered riding in one as a child.
Somebody else’s mother had owned one.
Another person recalled vacations spent in the back seat of something almost identical, staring out the window while his father drove across Kansas.
Men who would not have accepted a free Mercury Sable in 1998 were suddenly fascinated by the survival of one in 2026.
That is the trouble with ordinary things. Nobody knows they’re important while they’re still ordinary.
Fort Stockton had once spent an entire year trying to preserve the American station wagon through regulations, inspections, committees, mileage reports and one public hearing involving a professionally prepared diagram of a sheet of plywood.
It hadn’t worked.
Time accomplished the job without forming a single committee.
And somewhere, in a kitchen drawer or an old box in a closet, there may still be a photograph of Walter and Linda Pritchard standing beside a blue Mercury with three children between them, all five wearing matching T-shirts and looking mildly embarrassed by the entire affair.
The car was never the important thing in that photograph.
Nobody understood that at the time, either.
For the official record, the Fort Stockton American Family Station Wagon Preservation Initiative remains the only known municipal preservation effort to have been destroyed by a four-by-eight sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood.
And after thirty-five years, despite the diagrams, testimony and engineering analysis, the central question of the Plywood Controversy remains unresolved.
Nobody ever did determine whether the damn thing would have fit.
