But spirit of ’57 still shines in Belvedere

Now we know what 50 years in a hole does to a Plymouth Belvedere.

The tires go flat. The paint fades. Hinges and latches stiffen, upholstery disintegrates, the engine becomes a very large paperweight.

But what the heck. None of us is what we used to be.

The Belvedere buried at the Tulsa County Courthouse a half-century ago and recovered from its vault on Friday turned out to be more artifact than memento. Displayed to the public Friday night at the Convention Center, its ruined paint suggested just about every color except the original gold and white. Corrosion bubbled the surface of the radiator.

The engine that hot-rod guru Boyd Coddington had hoped to start Friday night was just plain hopeless.

Yet even in her dotage, the old girl maintained a certain dignity.

The lines that characterized a generation that dreamed of rocket ships and believed that automobiles would be obsolete in 2007 still flowed beneath the rust and decay. The tires held air, and many of the names scrawled on their white walls 50 years ago were still legible. The hubcaps and trim shone under a coating of grime.

"We're here to see her regardless of how she's aged -- aren't we?" asked Tulsarama Chairwoman Sharon King Davis moments before the curtain was raised on the Belvedere.

"Maybe," she added, "they should have used Oil of Olay on her instead of Cosmoline."

All 7,300 tickets for the unveiling were sold in advance, and most of them were used.

Coddington, who came to Tulsa planning to start the Belvedere's engine by the end of Friday's program, led off by saying that that would not be possible but that the car "has a lot of personality."

Raising the hood, he said, "She's a mess. That master cylinder actually looks organic. But I love her anyway."

In contrast to the Belvedere, the time capsule buried with it stayed tight and dry, a 1957 Tulsarama bumper sticker still affixed to the inside of the end sawed off Friday night.

The time capsule provided one surprise. The entries for the contest to guess Tulsa's population in 2007 were not on microfilm, as had been believed, but on paper.

The winner of the contest gets the car and the proceeds of a $100 savings account, now worth a little more than $700. The winning entry will be announced June 22.

The first guess on the list was 389,000 -- less than 7,000 off the actual figure of 382,457.

Other items pulled from the time capsule included a 48-star American flag, a passbook for the savings account, a Tulsa Public Schools student-parent handbook and a bumper sticker reading "Made in Oklahoma by an Indian."

Most of the artifacts said to have been left in the car were unrecoverable. About the only thing to survive intact were two glass jugs of gasoline, a cigarette lighter and some thickly encrusted cans of Schlitz beer.

The beer, left in the trunk of the car by nightclub owner Clarence Love, managed to migrate to every nook and cranny of the interior, carried along by the water that inundated the vault sometime during the last 50 years, rotting fabrics and rusting metals.

The day began gloomily beneath heavy clouds and steady rain. Undeterred enthusiasts nevertheless began staking out views of the noon unearthing as early as 7 a.m.

At 9:30 a.m., Doris Leach, 81, and her daughter Billie Carr claimed seats front and center in the bleachers reserved for those who were present for the original burial.

Leach had watched that day while her husband, Bill Leach, who worked for the local Hudson dealer, helped guide the Belvedere into its resting place. Bill has been dead for many years, but Doris did not forget.

"It's all she has talked about for a long time," Billie Carr said.

The rain stopped shortly after 11 a.m. Several thousand spectators had gathered by 11:30, when a program emceed by John Ehrling and King Davis began with a recording of "Ridin' Into Tulsa," a song written by Broken Arrow's Ralph Blane for the 1957 semicentennial.

Lifted from its resting place by a 120-ton crane to Henry Mancini's theme for the 1973 movie "Oklahoma Crude," the Belvedere settled gently onto a flatbed trailer. People rose in unison to applaud, and many surged forward as if drawn to the shrouded object.

Hundreds gathered in the concourse and parking garage overlooking the Convention Center arena's loading area to watch nearly two hours of prep work. The Metalam cover was washed off, the car's tires inflated and the steel skid to which the car had been bolted in 1957 cut off.

Largely silent most of that time, the crowd cheered as the forklift bearing the Belvedere negotiated two pillars and a door at the north end of the arena and carried it inside.

Later, when asked if the Belvedere could be restored, Coddington said, "I wouldn't do anything to it. I'd just put her under glass in a museum and keep her just like she is."

Randy Krehbiel 581-8365
randy.krehbiel@tulsaworld.com