Sometime back in 1977, what is generally remembered to be a white Jeep Wagoneer was parked in a garage in Truro, MA, near the tip of Cape Cod. That Jeep and the garage it was in were filled and covered in sand from a shifting dune, and have remained entombed, like the great Pharaoh AMCenaten, for four decades. On Friday, though, it will finally be free.
The Jeep’s owners, the Musnuff family, had wanted to free the Jeep for years, but for beach erosion reasons, the town would not let them remove the sand. Times change, dunes shift, and now the town wants to let the dunes shift to cover parking places near the Musnuff’s property, it was decided that the presumably rusting Jeep is an environmental hazard and needs to be removed.
I’m not exactly sure the owners are excited. According to the Cape Cod Times, Basil Musnuff, whose mother was the Jeep’s owner, had this to say:
“It’s probably going to fall apart like something out of Indiana Jones,” said Basil Musnuff. His mother owns the Jeep, which has been entombed for 40 years in a wind-blown and sand-filled garage at 135 South Pamet Road. “I’m not even sure it’s a Jeep.”
A neighbor with better recall seems to think it’s a white Jeep Wagoneer, and others seem to remember the Jeep driving on the beach.
The garage, which was originally a horse barn built in 1895, has a partially collapsed roof and hasn’t been offering the Jeep much shelter in decades.
With the Wagoneer being rusty and immobile for decades, I think the biggest thing the owners need to protect it from is our own David Tracy, who will probably materialize out of thin air when the Jeep is exposed, ready to whisk it back to Detroit, where he will spread its rusty parts all over his house.