Pair’S Classic Wagon Packed With Nostalgia

Spokane’s Jim Crouch doesn’t have to pack his bags to journey down Memory Lane. He need only take a stroll through his upscale North Side home.

There he can find his wife, Alanna, the girl he met in a junior year history class back in 1970.

Just off the rec room stands Crouch’s old high school locker, No. 1053. He rescued the steel cubicle some years back, when the old North Central High School was razed to make way for a new building.

And in a carpeted garage sits the centerpiece of the couple’s estate: an immaculate turquoise-and-beige 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon.

Jim Crouch’s first car.

A lot of people wish they still owned their first set of wheels. Crouch is one of the lucky few who refused to part with it.

How could he?

He bought the Nomad the summer after he met Alanna. The seller wanted $1,195. Crouch talked him down to the $495 he saved from his job delivering handbills.

The old wagon took Jim and Alanna to the movies. It hauled them back and forth to the Safeway store where they both got jobs. In 1976, it carried them away from the church where they were married.

“It’s gone through all my stages, from mild to wild,” says Crouch, a US West repairman. “It’s definitely better now than Chevy built it.”

Crouch had the wagon brought back to showroom condition just in time for the Chevrolet Nomad Convention, which begins today in Spokane. This is the first time the national club has ever met in Washington.

On Tuesday from 9 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to see the Crouch Nomad and dozens of others on display outside the Valley DoubleTree Hotel, 1100 N. Sullivan. For car buffs, it’s a chance to gawk at some of the rarest and most desirable of all Chevies.

Rare? Station wagons?

Believe it.

Although Chevrolet churned out 565,614 wagons from 1955 to 1957, only 23,167 of them were Nomads. These were sporty, two-door wagons.

At about $5,000, they were the priciest Chevs of the day, more expensive than Corvettes or convertibles.

The chrome-adorned Nomads, with ribbed roofs, curved glass and sliding side windows, defied the image of the wagon as family frumpmobile.

“A Nomad isn’t a station wagon,” says Skeeter Maxwell, the convention’s director. “It’s a station wagon with an attitude.” Maxwell and her husband, Jim, drove their baby blue ‘55 Nomad to Spokane last week from Phoenix.

Talk about attitude. This wagon has been modified into a gleaming hot rod with a bored-out, fuel-injected 350 cubic-inch engine. That’s one of the cool things about Nomads. They look great whether customized or in original condition.

“I’ve loved ‘em forever,” says Steve Gelhausen, the Spokane Nomad Club member who convinced the national organization to bring its convention here. Two years ago, Gelhausen bought a 1956 Nomad that had been stored in the Spokane area for 18 years. The wagon is in great original shape, barely the worse for wear.

It’s easy to understand why these people are so hooked on Nomads. Unfortunately, getting one for yourself isn’t so easy.

Expect to pay around $20,000 for a Nomad in good running order. Like everything else, the fancier the condition, the fancier the price. Last year, the clubbers say, a ‘57 Nomad was sold in an auction for $61,000.

All the more reason for Jim Crouch to hang onto his wagon. Money, of course, has nothing to do with the Crouches’ affection for their old car.

Next summer, they plan to drive it to their 30-year high school reunion.

“It’s so neat to say that I have my first car,” says Crouch. “It’s all about memories, don’t you think?”

This sidebar appeared with the story:

IF YOU GO

On Tuesday from 9 a.m. to noon, the public is invited to see cars from the Chevrolet Nomad Convention on display outside the Valley DoubleTree Hotel, 1100 N. Sullivan.