Tracking Miss B.
It was June 1957: Elvis was King, everybody liked Ike, Robert Young was the father that knew best, the Russians were about to launch a dog into space and Dr. Seuss put a cat in a hat. In Little Rock, Ark., educational and racial barriers were on the verge of being smashed.
Some 300 miles west of Little Rock, in downtown Tulsa, Okla., Golden Jubilee officials were preparing to bury a new gold-and-white 1957 Plymouth Belvedere as part of a Tulsarama! time capsule that celebrated 50 years of Oklahoma statehood. The plan was to unearth it for the state’s centennial in 2007.
By now, Old Cars readers know how the 2007 unearthing turned out: “Tarnished Gold” blared the June 15, 2007, Tulsa World headline the day after the now-rusty Plymouth was unearthed from its murky concrete grave below the Tulsa County Courthouse lawn.
Sinking Feeling
Courtesy of the good citizens from 1957 Tulsa, we present to you our recap of the sunken “Titanic” — water included.
Experts surmised that, due to the vibrations of overhead traffic, a water main break on a nearby street in the 1960s, heavy rainfall in Tulsa — including major floods in 1973 and ’84 — and the fact that one little fissure in the concrete vault could cause a continental divide, well, you can imagine what happened, even if you didn’t read about it in Old Cars.
Buck Rudd, Deputy Chief of Building Operations for the Tulsa County
