I had to take a break before launching car #9. To me, this one is the most significant of the group. It stayed in the family for 13 years, longer than any of the others. It chronicled years of turmoil in our culture as whole, my teenage years and early 20s, and dad's life during that era.
In 1962, dad had nearly departed from Penn State after interviewing for a job with the University of Illinois. The upshot was he stayed, and got promoted. In the process he cut a deal with devil (PSU) that I didn't fully comprehend until decades later, when I sorted through his files after he passed. Dad was given the opportunity to move out of management into the academic arena. Three different departments pooled their budgets to provide funding for the first class he taught in photojournalism. The plan was to move him into full time teaching in the Journalism department if he completed a masters degree, and if his initial course attracted students.
He completed the degree attending night school while he worked full time, easily putting in 100 hours a week to make it all happen. It paid off - he graduated number one in the graduate school class of '65 with a perfect 4.0 average. In 1967 he became a full time assistant professor, and took a pay cut in the process.
I acquired dad's work ethic, but never his affinity for school, slogging through it, but never connecting with the process the way he had. I always harbored a bad taste for Penn State, watching how hard dad had worked for what I considered meager financial rewards. One of life's ironies, was that dad was a business major who ended up with a career in academia, and I was an English major, who ended up working in business.
So in June of 1967, with his newly reduced paycheck, dad threw in the towel with the Wagoneer, and asked Bill Clark to provide him with a cheap new car.