I once got a free 1936 Ford cabriolet and didn't even know it until I got back from VN.
The story behind the car is that a soldier from the 82nd Abn Division was driving the car through Clinton,NC (maybe 30 miles from Ft.Bragg) during WW-2,and spun his tires in the gravel leaving a gas station/grocery store,and broke a rear axle on a Sunday. Since it couldn't be fixed on a Sunday and he had to be back at Bragg that night or be reported Absent Without Leave in Wartime (a SERIOUS Bozo no-no!) he asked the owner if he could leave it there until he could come back to get it. The owner agreed,and they pushed the car up beside the store. It wasn't long after that before the 82nd Abn deployed to England to prepare to jump into occupied Europe,and the soldier didn't make it back before the deployment. So the store owner pushed it behind the store and refused to sell it to anybody "because the soldier will be back for it".
When the war ended and the soldier never showed up,he figured out he would probably never show up,so they pushed it into the woods behind the store to keep people from noticing it and asking him to sell it. He knew it was likely the soldier died and would never be back for the car,but he also knew there was a chance he was wounded and recovering somewhere in a hospital,and would be back "some day" to get his car. Eventually,the store owner died,and various locals went into the woods and pulled out the hot rod flathead engine,the transmission,the rear end,and various other parts.
I had made friends with an elderly farmer there that was restoring a 1933 Ford tudor sedan. I was just driving around one weekend and spotted the 33,so I stopped and asked him if it was for sale. He said "No,I am going to restore it.",and then he told me he was looking for parts,so I told him about a guy I knew at home who had hotrodded a 34 Ford pu and had removed all the brake parts and replaced them with hydraulic brakes from a more modern car,and just thrown them into the weeds behind his shop,and that I would look and see if they were still there when I went home again. I did look,they were there,so I got them and delivered them to the farmer and just gave them to him,as one old car lover to another. That's how he and I became friends. When I was at Bragg after that I would generally spend weekends at his house and help him work on his cars. I loved doing that,and it kept me out of bars,so why not?
Anyhow,he and the other people I met there knew I LOVED 36 Fords,and had a serious case of the hots for a 36 3 window coupe. I didn't know this while I was in VN,but they got together and talked about looking around for a cheap 36 3 window coupe (yes,there were still such things as cheap 36 coupes in the 1960's) to give to me when I got back,and then one of them remembered the "California hot rod 36 with the chopped top back in the woods",so he took his tractor and chainsaw,and they pulled it out of the woods and started work.
When I came back from VN and paid a surprise visit (I was medievaced,and not expected back for another 3 months) to see my friends,nobody was more surprised than me. I could see a car sitting under a tarp in my friends yard and asked him what it was,and he smiled as he took the tarp off and told me "It's your 36 Ford convertible!"
By then all the bodywork had been done,it had rebuild 39 Ford front and rear axles under it,a rebuilt 39 Ford transmission,and a rebuild 283 Chevrolet engine in it. They had planned on having it painted before I got back home,but I surprised them by getting back early.
To my great regret,I had to sell it when I went to gunsmith school in Colorado a few years later because I didn't have anywhere to store it,couldn't take it with me,and my father hated old cars and would have sold it for scrap if I had left it with him,so I sold it to a rich contractor from South Carolina. I THINK I saw it at a car show maybe 10 years ago,but the geezer that owned it claimed he chopped the top and did all the other work to build the car. Since 36 cabriolets are uber rare and the odds of finding another one on the east coast with the top chopped the exact amount go from slim to none at all,I suspect it was my old car. I would like to think it survived and got finished,anyhow. I suspect whoever owns that car today would like to know about the WW-2 soldier from California that built the car originally,and how and why it was saved.
