The 1966 Mercury Monterey

 

Here's a big, powerful, red 1966 Merc. V8 automatic, 2 door hard top we bought in 1967.
A great cruiser for the highway. The picture shows a camper we pulled to an Ohio reservoir for a long weekend. We had our third son, Dan, by then and he taught us a few things about treking around with a baby who was just weeks old. Of course we were going to trek around in spite of that. Jim, shown in the picture, was 8 and our oldest, Rick, was 10 years old. Dan had to get used to pulling his weight at an early age.

The Merc introduced me to a new automotive device. I was traveling home from work a few days after buying the car when it began to rain.
I reached down and turned the wipers to "on" and nothing happened.
Just as I reached for the switch again the wipers went "swish - swish" and quit. I wiggled the switch and they went "swish - swish" and quit on me again. I was getting excited, thinking the switch was buggered when the wipers went "swish - swish."...... I had not touched the switch.
It finally dawned on me the wipers were intermittent and adjustable, a brand new feature to me.

The Merc had black vinyl seats and the front seat was a bench style, very wide and pretty flat.
Bev and I had been to a weekend dance with some friends whom we followed to a restaurant.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I pulled to the rear of the lot and decided to gun it a little. The only problem is I was in a 90 degree turn and I started sliding across that bench seat until I was about half way across. I had a little trouble hanging on to the wheel let alone steer and I could barely reach the brake pedal.
I missed everything and got it stopped ok.
I'm pretty sure that car had seat belts and that little manuever may have helped me decide to wear them. (We probably did have seat belts but again, no one wore them at the time).

By the mid-sixties it was apparent the lighting business was in transition. Consolidation was gobbling up most of the smaller companies. We were being pressed by larger fluorescent manufacturers who were able to automate and reduce labor content.
We purchased an incandescent lighting manufacturer to broaden our product line and began to develop interesting new products.
We also learned to blend in new workers and talents and worked hard to control costs.
By the early 70's additional changes came along that created new challenges for our neat little operation. More to follow.
Rich