[FWDLK] Legend of the "Mystery Fury"

[Dave Stragand <dave.stragand@KETCHUM.COM>]

I've gotten a lot of questions about the "Mystery Fury".

After about three years of searching, I finally found the "Mystery Fury".

Here in Pittsburgh at car shows, people would always ask me, "do you know
that guy with the Fury... it only comes out on the 4th of July." For 4 years
I looked for this car to no avail. Finally, at the 1999 C@C I got the best
lead yet -- an approximate location. "Near a big cemetery & nursing home, by
Tarentum, in a concrete block garage with two windows."

That's a pretty generic description, I know. But for nearly a year I had
been driving around the Tarentum area looking for cemeterys with nursing
homes near by. It seems -every- nursing home has a cemetery near by, which
is depressing, but besides the point.

On September 19th, 1999, I finally found the right cemetery. Asking folks
who lived nearby yielded the answer, "White and gold with big fins? Yeah,
it's around here somewhere..." That was a start!

I found a man with a couple of hot rods, and asked him & he zeroed me in on
the house. He told me that the owner had died about a year ago, and he
wasn't sure if the car was still there, or even if the house was
still occupied. I did check it out.

The car was still there, and looked in fairly good shape underneath a nylon
car cover. The owner wasn't home, but I left a note, and planned to stop by
again soon.

I stopped by about every six months for two years, and a few weeks ago
finally found someone at home -- A VERY angry old man, who yells a lot and
doesn't make sense most of the time. He complains about everything, smells
REALLY bad, grabs his crotch a lot, and says "f**k" as every other word.

Due to a bunch of road construction, I couldn't find my way back to his
street this last time, so I asked at a local police station. Half an hour
later, and officer showed up and asked me to come speak to him by his
cruiser for a second. The officer said, "here's your chance to escape if you
want"...

He's -that- bad, that the local police try to rescue people from him.
Sigh... I hope to get a hold of his daughter so I can buy the car at his
estate sale at least. He's over 90 years old. I hate to say it, but his time
is due eventually.

I talked to a neighbor to try and get information on his daughter, and one
guy told me he had known of the car for years -- it was the angry guy's son.
The son had passed away, and left the car to the father. He swears it has
less than 4,000 miles on the clock.

When I went around to the back of the house to peek in the garage, I noticed
that the old guy had painted the windows over so no one could see in. He
claims that too many people were bothering him about the car, so he moved it
out to his farm, and parked it out in a field.

I could cry.

I have a friend who's mom works for the farm bureau trying to track down the
exact location of the farm so I can verify that. Hopefully, he was just
BS'ing me and the car is still in the garage.

And that's the story of the Mystery Fury.

-Dave