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The boardroom smelled of wet wool, furniture polish, and the last six inches of a cigar that had outlived the man’s enjoyment of it. Beneath those lay the scorched smell of coffee left on a hot plate since lunch. Outside, South Bend was receiving a cold rain. Inside, Studebaker management was attempting to decide which part of the automobile could be removed without further damaging sales.

Nobody had yet suggested management.

The long walnut table reflected a row of ceiling fixtures, eleven water glasses, and enough worried faces to staff a reasonably ambitious funeral. At its head sat the Big Dog, whose charcoal suit had been tailored during a profitable quarter. His collar pin shone above a neck beginning to dispute the measurements. He kept one hand on the sales report, as though it might try to escape before he could explain it to the directors.

Across from him, Franklin Pruitt of Finance wore narrow spectacles and a navy suit with sleeves polished at the elbows. Pruitt could calculate the cost of a washer to four decimal places but had never successfully found the kitchen scissors. Walter Bixby of Marketing smelled of bay rum and peppermint, with cuff links large enough to be offered as dealer incentives. His tan had been acquired somewhere the company could no longer afford to send him.

Legal occupied the next chair in the person of Leonard Voss, a dry, folded man whose lips seemed permanently prepared to withhold consent. He had positioned his wristwatch where it could be consulted without moving his head. His wife expected him home for meat loaf. At Studebaker, this was becoming one of the few expectations anyone could reasonably fulfill.

Sid Nettleberry from Body Engineering sat beneath the clock. He wore a brown suit with a faint burn near the pocket and had arranged seven remaining strands of hair across his scalp with the optimism of a suspension bridge designer. A yellow pencil lay beside his legal pad. On the pad he had written SEALS, underlined it twice, and drawn a small rectangular box around it. He had attended enough meetings to know where a good afternoon went to die.

The company had once sold cars almost as fast as men could screw them together. After the war, America needed transportation, refrigerators, houses, and something to do with all those babies. A Studebaker with a bullet nose could pass for tomorrow, particularly if the customer had spent yesterday driving a 1937 Plymouth with a door tied shut.

But tomorrow had kept arriving. The low, lovely 1953 cars had made other automobiles look as though they had been designed during a disagreement. The 1955 President Speedster had been handsome enough to make a man reconsider his mortgage. The Hawk family followed, adding new names and frontal treatments to a shape that deserved better than being asked to support an entire corporation indefinitely.

There were sedans and wagons elsewhere in the line, and eventually the Lark came along like a small, sensible nephew arriving at a family reunion where every uncle had bought a longer car. In the wake of the 1958 recession, shortening the familiar Studebaker body into something economical had been a clever move. Dealers sold Larks. The factory worked. Men around this very table had exhaled so thoroughly that Mrs. Dickerson thought someone had opened a steam valve.

Then Detroit noticed.

Falcons, Corvairs, and Valiants appeared, backed by advertising money that could have purchased Studebaker’s advertising department, its furniture, and most of the adjoining county. Compacts became ordinary. Intermediates were coming. Studebaker’s head start had turned into a photograph of a head start.

Brooks Stevens had given the Gran Turismo Hawk a clean roofline and sufficient dignity to distract a buyer from the age of the bones beneath it. The Avanti was coming, a startling fiberglass promise that the company could still imagine a future. Both deserved admiration. Neither addressed the immediate needs of a father with three children, a payment book, and a wife who wanted the groceries inside the automobile.

“Families aren’t looking for expensive coupes,” the Big Dog said.

Eleven men considered this discovery. Outside the door, Mrs. Dickerson adjusted the coffee tray. She had two children and could have supplied the information considerably earlier, had anyone thought to consult a family.

Skip Sanderson waited until the silence acquired enough weight to hold him up.

Skip had come north from Fort Stockton with an engineering degree from Texas Baptist Industrial Design in San Antonio, two decent suits, and a wife named Darlene who considered Indiana a temporary misunderstanding. At Jim Bowie High he had been remembered chiefly for attempting to weld brass accents onto an oak curio cabinet. The wood-shop fire had cost the school one cabinet, three window shades, and its willingness to let seniors express themselves without supervision.

His diploma emphasized practical applications. Fort Stockton had already seen one.

Studebaker hired him because he could draw, understood fiberglass, and accepted a salary that would not have persuaded a Detroit designer to relocate his desk. He had assisted with the 1958 Packard Hawk, whose broad fiberglass nose suggested a catfish receiving disappointing news. Skip’s own contribution, he maintained, had been inspired by something pulled from Lake Leon during a Scout outing. Neither the fish nor Packard survived long enough to dispute his account.

Nevertheless, people liked Skip. He told West Texas stories around the water cooler, remembered birthdays, and never embarrassed a superior by correcting him in front of witnesses. Darlene improved the Christmas parties simply by entering them. She wore her hair high, her dresses confidently, and her opinions without a fastening device.

Now Skip opened a portfolio containing a wagon sketch from the latest Stevens proposals. Brooks had supplied the design intelligence. Skip had supplied red arrows, a refrigerator, and the confidence to explain both.

“What we need,” he announced, “is a family car with a difference.”

Bixby nodded. Marketing could endorse that much without risking anything.

Skip turned the drawing around. The rear portion of the roof slid forward over the passenger compartment, exposing the cargo area to whatever God happened to be doing overhead. It was ingenious, economical to tool compared with an entirely new automobile, and sufficiently visible that an advertisement could explain it without mentioning the balance sheet.

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The men studied the drawing. Each wanted to ask why a customer would want that. Each hoped the question would occur to someone whose pension was more secure.

“A refrigerator,” Skip said. “You go to Sears, buy a refrigerator, and stand it straight up in the back.”

Pruitt removed his spectacles. “Sears delivers mine.”

“With this, they wouldn’t have to.”

Pruitt looked again. The proposal appeared to transfer a service he already enjoyed into labor he would perform himself, following the purchase of another automobile. He could not immediately identify the savings. But asking would invite the Big Dog to request his own product proposal, and Pruitt had none involving anything larger than a washer.

Skip described Christmas trees, nursery stock, tall furniture, and the immense recreational possibilities of an opening behind the rear seat. There were real uses. A florist might love it. A homeowner could carry a sapling without laying it across his children. The trouble was that Skip presented each occasional errand as though Americans had been lying awake for years, furious at their roofs.

“Think what it’ll do for family vacations.”

Voss pictured a father placing children in the cargo area because the brochure had shown a wholesome outdoor activity nearby. He thought about sunburn, standing passengers, and a lawyer somewhere with considerably more enthusiasm than his own. He glanced at his watch. Raising those matters would require minutes, perhaps a memorandum. The meat loaf would develop a skin.

He let it slide.

Mrs. Dickerson entered with fresh coffee, which smelled less like punishment than the previous batch. She wore a gray skirt, sensible shoes, and a pale blue cardigan with one repaired buttonhole. Her husband worked nights. She knew exactly what a refrigerator cost, how long one lasted, and who would clean the automobile after a potted tree rode home in it.

“How often do you gentlemen buy a refrigerator?” she asked. “We’ve still got the one we bought after the war.”

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She poured Pruitt’s coffee while he searched for an answer that would preserve the distinction between his professional authority and her practical knowledge.

The room cooled. Bixby straightened his cuffs. The Big Dog settled deeper into his chair. Nothing had unified them all afternoon until a woman questioned whether their expensive discussion had a point. Now several discovered a renewed appreciation for Skip’s proposal.

Mrs. Dickerson collected the old pot and went out. She had watched this process before. At home it usually ended with a lawn mower they couldn’t afford.

Sid tapped his pencil against the little box. A moving roof required tracks, latches, tolerances, and somewhere for water to go. Water was unlike a junior engineer. It did not become more cooperative when told the president had complete confidence in it.

“I’m afraid the damn thing will leak.”

The Big Dog smiled at him with the warmth reserved for assigning another man a difficult task. “We have complete faith in your ability to work out those details before production.”

Sid remembered the Packard fiberglass fittings. He remembered cold test sheds, revised seals, and a purchasing department that regarded rubber as a luxury. Then he remembered Darlene at Christmas, touching his sleeve and saying she had always admired a man who understood the art of the comb-over. Nobody had complimented his engineering that precisely in years.

“Probably can,” he said.

The pencil remained inside the box.

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Once the practical objections had been assigned to people absent or unwilling, the meeting moved to the important business of naming the car. Bixby suggested Surf & Turf. Pruitt said it sounded like something served at a convention, and they were no longer approving conventions.

Someone offered Pardon, picking up the old presidential theme. The Big Dog asked whether he meant President. The man said yes, although several thought his first choice had possibilities.

Howard Cresswell of Personnel proposed Robinson, after Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in Game Five of the 1955 World Series. Howard was pink-faced, earnest, and wore a tie his children had bought him. He alone seemed pleased to find an association with sliding that involved something Americans actually admired.

Voss mentioned licensing. Bixby worried about Southern markets. His delicate wording gave an ugly prejudice the appearance of a distribution problem. Howard lowered his eyes to the drawing. Jackie Robinson had already managed a considerably more difficult slide than this room was prepared to attempt.

“Wagonaire,” Skip said at last. “A wagon full of air. The final e gives it distinction.”

“All wagons are full of air,” Howard said.

“Not this much.”

Voss noted that Willys had a Jeep Wagoneer coming. The names might cause confusion. Outside, Mrs. Dickerson heard this through the partly open door and smiled. They had accepted a car built to collect precipitation, but a vowel concerned them.

The Big Dog closed the portfolio. With another item off the agenda, he looked almost cheerful. Sid looked at SEALS. Voss thought of supper. Skip began imagining his next Christmas party.

Mrs. Dickerson typed the minutes. She recorded the approval, the name, and the engineering action item. She did not record her refrigerator question. Nobody had answered it, and minutes were supposed to describe what had been accomplished.

The Wagonaire arrived for 1963. The roof slid, photographers stood tall objects in the back, and dealers demonstrated a feature none of the neighbors possessed. Some customers found it genuinely useful. Some found the leaks. Fixed-roof versions soon offered a solution so straightforward it could have been suggested by the woman carrying the coffee.

The sliding system used seals, channels, and drains. Properly kept clear, those drains had work to do; plugged with debris, they provided water with other opportunities. Sid had not invented rainfall. He merely became the name attached to its arrival inside the car.

South Bend automobile production ended in December 1963. Hamilton, Ontario, carried on, and the last Studebakers were built there in March 1966. The Wagonaire had lived through four model years, a small, inventive footnote in a much larger struggle. No single roof had killed Studebaker. No single clever feature could put all those men back on the payroll, either.

Mrs. Dickerson stayed in Indiana. Before the end, she sold her stock and took a job with the people making Southbend commercial ranges, a business descended from the Malleable Steel Range Manufacturing Company. Her new employer asked what customers needed, wrote down her answers, and occasionally acted on them. This required an adjustment.

She kept her refrigerator.

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Darlene came back to Fort Stockton ahead of Skip’s retirement and leased the chair beside Trixie’s at the Klip-N-Dye. There, amid warm dryer hoods, sharp permanent-wave lotion, and the sweet powdery smell of ladies preparing to leave looking younger, the history of American industry acquired details unavailable in annual reports.

Darlene told the boardroom story so often that several women began carrying umbrellas in cars with perfectly ordinary roofs. She knew about Sid because Skip had repeated his comb-over compliment at home, hoping she would find it funny. Darlene said she had meant it. A man willing to undertake that much daily engineering deserved encouragement.

Years later Skip found consulting work around General Motors. By the time GMC offered the Envoy XUV for 2004 and 2005, he was elderly, well compensated, and still able to draw a refrigerator with remarkable conviction. Nobody outside Fort Stockton could prove how much influence he had. Darlene said she’d seen the sketch. The powered sliding roof and drainable cargo area were real enough. So was the speed with which the model disappeared.

At the Grounds for Divorce, Chad regarded that sequel as reassuring evidence that experience remained valuable. Angus regarded it as evidence that nobody cleaned out a file cabinet anymore.

Then a tan-and-white Wagonaire actually came to town.

It parked outside the diner one October morning, a handsome square wagon with four headlights, a thin bright spear of side trim, and a white roof that looked perfectly innocent until its owner slid the back portion forward. Through the windows, Lucinda saw a rectangle of West Texas sky where upholstery-minded people generally expected steel.

Earl went out first. Angus followed. Hairless brought his coffee, and Chad joined them with the proprietary interest of a man who supervised refrigerated inventory. The owner cranked the tailgate glass down, lowered the gate, and pointed out its integrated step bar. The wide cargo floor and black wheel housings looked ready for work. The open roof made the ordinary wagon suddenly fascinating.

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Earl admired the fifteen-inch steel wheels and covers. Angus read the Cooper Trendsetter lettering on the 205/75 tires, then examined the tow hitch. Inside were black bench seats, a two-spoke steering wheel, and a speedometer optimistically prepared for 120 miles an hour. Temperature and fuel gauges covered the two matters the driver was more likely to need.

Under the hood sat the later Canadian-built car’s Chevrolet-pattern 283 V8, factory rated at 195 horsepower and 285 pound-feet through a two-barrel carburetor. A three-speed automatic spared the owner any additional handwork after operating his roof and rear window. Power steering and power-assisted drum brakes completed an automobile far more agreeable than its corporate circumstances had been.

The owner liked it. He used the opening. He kept the drains clear. Standing beside the car, he spoke with the particular pleasure of a man whose unusual possession had earned both its upkeep and its place in his life. Angus listened. It was easier to ridicule a boardroom than a fellow who plainly loved his wagon.

Darlene arrived from the salon while they were still looking. She stood beside the tailgate, one hand on the chrome, and recognized the drawing that had followed her husband through half a lifetime. For a moment she remembered Indiana snow, Skip coming home excited, and the little apartment where they had believed every raise was the beginning of something permanent. She smiled before telling them what he had said about refrigerators.

Back inside, Lucinda brought coffee. Delgado’s biscuits arrived warm enough to melt butter on contact. Darlene recounted the meeting while the men watched the wagon through the glass. Across the street, RUSTY HAMMER HARDWARE was receiving a delivery. A truck stopped. Two men unloaded a tall carton on a hand truck and rolled it through the door.

“Refrigerator,” Chad said.

Darlene looked out and laughed. After all these years, there it was, delivered by somebody whose roof had stayed put.

Lucinda had listened closely to the story of Mrs. Dickerson. She set down the pot, glanced at the regulars, and let the silence settle until it resembled the boardroom’s. Then she asked how many of them had ever bought a car to bring an appliance home.

Nobody volunteered.

Outside, the Wagonaire’s owner returned to his car and closed the roof with an unhurried, practiced hand. He had enjoyed his breakfast. He had enjoyed talking about the wagon. There were worse things than owning a car that made strangers stop and ask questions.

“Skip ever buy himself one?” Angus asked.

Darlene spread butter across the last half of her biscuit. Skip’s ideas had survived four model years at Studebaker, two at GMC, and considerably longer in salon conversation. She had helped him pack for every move. She had ridden beside him through all of them.

“No,” she said. “But he bought me one.”

Lucinda stopped pouring.

“What’d you do when it rained?”

Darlene took a sip of coffee, pleased that someone had finally asked the useful question.

“Took his car.”

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