Wagon

Three decades ago, an east Texas singer named George Jones took on an impossibly melodramatic, shamelessly sentimental song about a man who desperately clutched at lost love until his dying breath. His 1980 recording of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" became one of the most revered songs in country music history. Singers Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were known for the poetically crafted lyrics of their country standards. But Jones' anguish-drenched vocals elevated "He Stopped Loving Her Today" above its soap-opera lyrics in polls of the greatest country music songs.

Harry Carey Jr., a venerable character actor who was believed to be the last surviving member of director John Ford's legendary western stock company, died Thursday. He was 91. Carey, whose career spanned more than 50 years and included such Ford classics as "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "The Searchers," died of natural causes in Santa Barbara, said Melinda Carey, a daughter. "In recent years, he became kind of the living historian of the modern era," film critic Leonard Maltin told The Times on Friday.

Don Grady, who sang and danced as a Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club," played son Robbie on the long-running family sitcom "My Three Sons" and later became a composer and songwriter, died Wednesday. He was 68. Grady died at his home in Thousand Oaks after a four-year battle with cancer, said his wife, Ginny. As a child in the Bay Area town of Lafayette, Grady developed a fondness for music and dancing. He told the Contra Costa Times in 2005 that he took clarinet and accordion lessons and later taught himself bass, guitar and the trumpet.

I often lament have left Los Angeles, my hometown, to live in San Francisco, especially now that I have a son. After Kai was born, we found ourselves making the trek up and down Interstate 5 at least once a month. On our third not-so-pleasant jaunt past the sea of cows, Kai began screaming and would not stop. Yearning for somewhere fabulous to stop so we could cuddle him without the stench of manure and diesel, we vowed to start taking the nice way. Three years later (after chalking up more than 100,000 miles)

Contrary to popular belief, the Corvette convertible the characters Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock drove on the existential black-and-white 1960-64 CBS series "Route 66" was not red and white. "The original ones were blue," said George Maharis, 83, who starred as the handsome, dangerous and hotheaded Buz, who set out to travel the country with Tod (Martin Milner), a clean-cut young man who had grown up in luxury only to discover after his father's death that most of the money was gone.

If anecdotal evidence gleaned from trips through L.A.'s moneyed coastal enclaves like Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Manhattan Beach is any indication, there's a new automotive trend for the outdoorsy yuppie. It's a station wagon. Too culturally sensitive to be caught in an SUV, yet ever mindful of the curbside erratum that is the minivan, those with an active lifestyle or projection thereof clearly seem to be finding solace in the 2013 Audi Allroad. The car is essentially a more rugged yet equally sophisticated cousin of the A4 station wagon (nee Avant)

The Flower Fields of Carlsbad, Calif., opened to visitors last week but rain and cold weather have kept the attraction's famed ranunculus from opening up. "Due to weather conditions we've been having lately, the flowers aren't fully bloomed," spokeswoman Shannon Moore said Wednesday. "Right now they're just buds. In about two weeks, they should be fully in bloom. " The working farm opened Friday and will remain open until May 12. The Giant Tecolote Ranunculus planted on 50 acres draws about 120,000 photo-snapping visitors to Carlsbad Ranch each year.

So much for the long-held notion that Americans purchase a new car and flip it every three or four years. People who buy new cars are holding on to their vehicles for a record amount of time, an average of almost six years, according to the automotive research firm R.L. Polk & Co. The recent recession has pushed people to hold on to their cars and pay off their loans. In the process, they discovered that their vehicles were more reliable than they might have expected, said Mark Seng, a Polk analyst.

Chastising a reportedly sober Ozzy Osbourne for refusing to denounce his drug dependency because he is a role model ignores the importance of being truthful to an increasingly cynical younger generation ("Just Saying No to Drugs Just Isn't Ozzy's Solution," Pop Eye, Oct. 20). Dr. Michael Meyers of Brotman Medical Center should know as well as anyone that alcoholics are so named because they love alcohol. Denial also takes place when a divorced man claims that he never loved his ex-wife.