Dennis Goodrich grew up in Goldendale with the rumor that there was a Model A Ford hidden under the floor of a Main Street business, but he didn’t think it was true until he saw the rusted cab of a car sitting in the alley last week.
“Well I’ll be,” Goodrich exclaimed.
A worker clearing debris from the burned buildings on the north side of the 100 block of West Main Street said he found the cab of the car in a subfloor room that once housed a sawdust furnace that heated several buildings at the end of the block. It obviously had been stripped long ago of all its essential parts.
Like Goodrich, and others who have lived a long time in town, the worker relayed this story told over and over in Goldendale’s pool halls and coffee shops for many years:
Back in the 1920s, someone owed money to the owner of the building that once stood at 105 West Main Street. The guy never paid, and when the building’s owner dug a hole behind the building to put in the furnace, he took the guy’s Model A, pushed it in next to the furnace, and sealed the hole shut.
Jim Farrer, who now owns all three lots where his work crew is clearing the debris from the Oct. 2, 2006, fire that razed the three stores that once stood there, said he didn’t have anything much to say about the car, other than “there it is,” as he pointed toward the rusted hulk.
I vaguely remember hearing something about a car buried downtown, but I never knew what it was all about. Now we know.
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