As stated, here is a bit of the story. The cart started life as a way that its owner, a veteran with a disability could get around at the museum I later became in charge of. The old curator and he(the veteran) kind of got in a bit of a difference as to who's cart it was....as we all KNEW it to be the veterans cart as he bought it...even though it was used by the museum and at museum events. Well as time passed so did he. His wife and daughters were still involved with the museum and so the cart stayed with the museum to use. The cart had suffered major neglect and abuse by the old curator and his kids to the point it had become unusable and damaged so it got stuffed in a storage trailer and then piled with stuff on it....forward a few years, the old curator was moving and I took over. At the point that I started to clean the place up and try to put things right I had found the lost to time cart and had a long talk to the owners wife and kids about maybe trying to fix it and put it back to use, or they could have it back. It looked like they were going to let the museum have it, however the old curator started a battle over the cart...money and time he had invested in it(blah, blah, blah) however all us old members knew it was always this guys cart and HIS family had the right to say what THEY wanted to do with it.
Well it turned out that another long time member also with a walking disability and the late veterans wife were great friends, so the two ladies had figured that the wife was going to give the other member the cart and she could do whatever she wanted to do with it even sell it if she wanted. Now as it turned out this lady was dating a guy...happened to be the old curators brother...the cart had been taken to this ladies house...her boyfriend had tried to fix the cart and couldn't....his brother told him he had parts off it so it couldn't be fixed and should just give him the cart....again a year or 2 passes and the car is still outside sitting and sinking into the ground.
This lady and I were also friends as I was with the original owners family, to stop the brothers fighting over this beat to **** cart that pretty much wasn't worth the scrap it was made from I was told by both ladies to come retrieve the cart and get rid of it. So I retrieved it and put it in my yard to see if things could get resolved. After sitting for another year I had talked to the original owners wife and ask her what she wanted me to do with it...she was concerned if I ever fixed it and took it back to the museum to use that the whole fight would start all over so told me do what ever I wanted with it, junk it or keep it for myself. She knew that for years I have always donated the use of my vehicles to the local VFW's and American Legions for use in any parades they we going to be involved with so I told her I would do something with it and use it for what it originally was purchased, for helping veterans.
So I finally got off my butt and pulled it out of the back of my yard this last year and started to see if it was even worth trying to do anything with it...a bunch of rigging and making jumper wires everywhere it tried to move on its own so the project went forward.
I wish I had taken really good pictures of it before I pulled it out of the yard and started to clean it up, these are the only pictures kind of showing the shape it was in, including a very poor spray bomb with and spray can of cheap od paint that looked like $H*% over spray everywhere, busted front end and rear quarter panel, busted roof and windshield frame, all junk tires and two ruined rims, battery trays rotted away, almost every wire swollen and corroded and nothing working including the brakes.
