posted 06-13-2007 09:53 AM                  

By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer
6/13/2007

People from as far as England have shown up to see the unearthing.

So begins the great pilgrimage.

The first wayfarers arrived at the shrine of the buried Belvedere on Tuesday morning not long after excavation of the Plymouth's 12-foot-by-20-foot vault began on the Tulsa County Courthouse lawn.

"I've been waiting 16 years for this," said Joe DiFatta, a retired printer who made the trip from Chatsworth, Calif., with his wife Marsha.

"I read about this in my Plymouth magazine in 1991 and said, 'I've got to be there.' "

Marcos Collins of Blackburn, England, has been planning his journey to the mecca of buried cars for seven years. Tuesday, Collins and three friends talked excitedly of an 11-day holiday that will include Friday's unearthing of the 1957 Plymouth buried during Oklahoma's semicentennial, cruising sections of old Route 66 and hunting parts for their collections of vintage American automobiles.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Collins, who owns a prize-winning 1957 Plymouth of his own. "We wanted to be here."

Al and Penni Peyton of Hinesville, Ga., were relatively late to the game -- Al read about the unearthing in a recent edition of Readers' Digest -- but quick converts.

"We went and got on the Internet, read about it, and said, 'We're going.' "

There was, frankly, not that much to see on Tuesday, but that was generally considered to be good. No sign of structural failure could be seen as the excavation crew dug down to the top of the vault and around its edges.

"The concrete looks good," said Art Couch of W.N. Couch Construction.

A brief, unexplained rattling of the lid accompanied the breaking of the Gun-all seal around the top edge of the vault at midafternoon. Some thought this signaled an equalization of air pressure, while others speculated the lid had shifted.

By the time a late afternoon shower rolled in, the site on the east side of the Tulsa County Courthouse was buttoned down. Couch ordered a sump pump installed to keep excess water from gathering in the hole.

On Wednesday morning, workers plan to separate the lids' three sections and lift them clear for an examination of the vault. In particular, the steel skid the car is sitting on will be checked to make sure it's capable of lifting the Plymouth free of the vault.

A hazardous materials team will also give it a once-over.

Denver Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets will close on Thursday so a 120-ton crane can be moved in to practice the lifts that will be carried out.

The Belvedere will be lifted out at noon Friday and taken to the Convention Center Arena, where its vacuum-sealed cover will be removed at 7 p.m.

Views of the unearthing are expected to be hard to come by. Unrelated construction on the courthouse blocks much of the Civic Center Plaza, and space between the courthouse and the YMCA across the street is limited.

But Jeffrey Sossin has his seat all staked out.

"My room is on the fourth floor of the YMCA," he said.