Dad’s Woodie – The Classic Surf
Mobile
by Felice Prager
According
to everyone who knew him at the time, there were four things wrong with
Dad’s Woodie. First, the radio in it only played one station, and though
my dad liked Montovani, Sinatra, and Dean Martin, when we were in the back of
the Woodie, all we did was complain that Dad had bad taste in music. That was
in between fighting over who sat where. We had never seen a car with so many
rows of seats.
The
second thing wrong with Dad’s Woodie was that it had a severe case of
termites in the wood, very common in Woodies which were not cared for well. Dad
had bought his Woodie second or third hand, and we did not have it very long,
so my guess is that the neglect predated Dad’s ownership.
Third,
and you might think this was the worst problem, Dad’s Woodie would only
drive in reverse, which caused a major scene in our neighborhood when Dad
eventually backed it into the woods behind our apartment complex and could not
get it to go forward to get it out.
However,
the fourth and worst problem to everyone, especially my mom and the
superintendent at the apartment complex, was my dad’s refusal to part with
it. He had it towed from the woods into a parking space where he let it sit and
rot until the city finally towed Dad’s Woodie away. We never actually
knew who made the call complaining about it, but I am sure if we had a lie
detector test available, my mother would fail.
To
those who remember the uniquely styled vehicle, the Woodie evokes images of the
beach and surfing. My husband, who grew up on the
The
Woodie was carryover from the days of wooden wagons of the 1800’s. Wooden
construction of automobiles predates the Woodie era, as wooden bodies were
around long before the Woodies we know of today. Until the 1920’s,
Woodies were station wagons that provided transportation of goods and people to
and from the railroad station, as trains were the most common and reliable form
of transportation from town to town in this era. Thus, it was nicknamed the
Depot Hack.
Until
1929, Woodies were not a part of automobile manufacturers' regular catalogs of
body styles. Woodies were sold as work vehicles, primarily as trucks. In 1921,
Ford broke new ground when Henry Ford opened a lumber mill in
After
World War II, the Woodie was recognized and sought by the masses, even though
the automotive industry could not produce enough vehicles to satisfy the
demand. Sales of Woodies peaked by the early 1950’s, by which point, the
wood on the vehicles was becoming simulated. The Woodie Car Club of
In
the 1960’s, Woodies saw a rebirth in popularity through imitation and
salvage. The wooden bodies of most Woodies had been neglected and had fallen
into a various stages of decay. Wooden bodies require meticulous care in order
to preserve them, including refinishing the wood every year. Owners rapidly
lost interest in vehicles requiring so much care, and a surplus of
rotten-bodied vehicles became available. Surfers requiring large vehicles to
haul their boards found great deals on abandoned Woodies, thus creating a classic
vehicle as seen in the beach movies of that era. Imitation extended the life of
the Woodie even longer, every time a manufacturer attempts to introduce wood
accents on vehicles. It is not uncommon to hear potential owners of vehicles
say to a car salesman, “I don’t want wood on my new car. Remember
the Woodie?”
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