Got a call from the original owner

[Marc]

When I bought my '57 30 years ago, the seller handed me a stack of old registration slips dating back to 1958. I was a 21 year old kid at the time, so they were just mildly interesting to me and I stuffed them in the glovebox.
Fast forward to this past summer, I started poking around the interwebs to see if I could track down the original owner. Turns out he and his wife died a few years ago, but an online obit gave me the names of their children. I actually found one of them on facebook and sent a friend request.

Eventually he accepted the request, and I got a call from him the other day. When I told him about the registration slip I had with his parent's names, and showed him pics of the car, he was blown away. He was also pretty surprised to find out the car was now on the other side of the country.

It was a blast talking to him. He had some great stories about how he would race the car now and then, always hoping his dad wouldn't find out because his dad was apparently fanatical when it came to taking care of his vehicles. His dad used to pull a 16 foot airstream trailer with it, which explains the massive hitch I found welded to the frame when I bought the car. He's apparently quite a car guy himself, and owns a few old Fords including the 32 ford pickup he took his drivers license test in.

I promised to send him more pics of the car when I'm done putting it back together, and he's going to dig up old pics he has of when the car was new. 
All in all, it was a very cool conversation with a very cool guy. Glad I held onto those old slips.

[RICH MUISE]

Very cool!!

[gasman826]

so fortunate to have that documentation survive.  Usually glove box doco turns into mouse fodder.  Marty reports are very interesting on newer Ford models but nothing beats unique, individual research.

[Marc]

It was pretty cool to hear those stories from him. His dad owned the car for 20 years, and it was something he enjoyed and cared for during all that time.

[Limey57]

I love stories like this, it kind of adds a "personality" to the car.

[Jeff Norwell]

That's Awesome!