Musical Perfection: Up, Up and Away, The Fifth Dimension

There is a context memory that makes this song very special to me. Both my grandfathers retired from the Chrysler machining and forging plant in New Castle, Indiana in the 1960s. So while I was growing up we had a parade of Plymouths, Dodges, and Chryslers in our driveway. The tradition had begun with my grandfather’s ’28 Chrysler 70 to the ’37 Chrysler Royal, a Plymouth truck, the other grandfather’s ’34 Plymouth, and a succession of Mopars after the war through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

There were no legendary cars, and unfortunately no 426 Hemis or Challengers or ‘Cudas, but it’s probably how we survived those years. Riding and driving big cars with Chrysler 383s under their hoods was good enough, even for me.