It would be a great vehicle to use for camping. Or fly fishing. Or, as one New Yorker used it for: surfing. He used to park it in the same place on West 11th Street near 7th Avenue. I’d walk by it and admire.

A Jeep Grand Wagoneer.

Great, that is, if I camped (haven’t since a family wilderness experience in April 2017, and that didn’t count; before that was 1985 after graduating college), or fly-fished (never; well…as a boy I’d go with my grandfather, but he’d fish while I ate Dunkin’ Donuts), or still surfed (I now live in south central Texas, but there is a man-made wave park in Austin that I’ve surfed). My point is that the Grand Wagoneer seems to be the ultimate sportsman’s vehicle (again, that is, if I were actually a sportsman and not a foodie who likes to use hair product from time to time).

Problem is: Grand Wagoneers are not cheap.

I’ve been driving by Wagonmaster on Memorial Boulevard for nigh 25 years since first coming to Kerrville, and when my in-laws lived over on the grounds of the VA Hospital (where my father-in-law was a surgeon), and have developed a growing and gnawing desire for one of these beauties.  To take camping again, to try out fly fishing with, and even to strap my surfboard to the roof rack and drive the two hours to Austin’s NLand Surf Park, the 17 hours west to Blacks Beach in San Diego, or the 25 hours east to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina (dang, I really do live in the middle of the country), and hit the God-made waves. But the lot’s inventory is a bank-buster. And it’s not that these vehicles aren’t worth it: the owners take low-mileage, well-kept autos, and they restore them.

Maybe I’ll go apply for a job there and see if they offer a 90% employee discount. That would bring one into my budget of under $6,000.