Underground Parking

In excavation jobs big and small, people Friday were digging up 70-year-old cars mysteriously buried in a Silver Lake neighborhood.

On one side of McCollum Street, Danica Jerosimich was shoveling out what seemed to be a 1925 two-seat roadster she discovered when she saw one of its wheels sticking out of her backyard.

Across the street, Tom Overn was unearthing a tiny replica of a 1920s race car he discovered when he saw one of its wheels poking out of his backyard.

Jerosimich, 34, is a singer-songwriter who moved into her tiny hillside cottage last month. She was clearing weeds and overgrown vines from her yard two weeks ago when she saw a wood-spoke wheel protruding from an embankment behind the 80-year-old house.

Overn, 75, is a retired business consultant who has lived on McCollum Street since 1932. He was bending down to pet his cat Friday morning when he saw one of the antique car’s cast-iron wheels sticking out of the ground.

Neither neighbor knows how their buried cars got there.

Jerosimich has invited friends and her new McCollum Street neighbors to an “excavation party” this afternoon in hopes of unearthing the complete car.

So far she and several helpers have exposed a portion of its rusted frame, two wheels and the rear spare tire, its gas tank and drive shaft, a giant headlight, an old tire, a windshield visor, the rusted remains of door panels and what appears to be a hinged trunk lid.

“I thought the wheel was part of an old wheelbarrow when I first saw it,” Jerosimich said. “I was going to dig it up and use it as a flower planter.”

Jerosimich ran for her video camera when friends shoveled enough dirt to reveal the first outline of the car and a handful of old wine bottles beneath it.

“Maybe it’s a Brink’s truck!” Jerosimich can be heard exclaiming on the video. “Maybe the crooks died in prison and didn’t tell anybody it was there. How happy I’d be if we found money!”

The previous owner of the home could not be reached Friday for comment. But Jerosimich said the woman told her that she believes the car is an old Pontiac that her brother-in-law buried.

“She’d forgotten all about it. She said it was very hush-hush when it was buried,” Jerosimich said.

Jerosimich said she hopes that today’s excavation provides some answers about the car. Like whether the wine bottles mean it was involved in moonshine-running during the Prohibition period of 1920-1933.

Across the street, Overn said Jerosimich’s buried roadster was puzzling. But he said it is not McCollum Street’s first buried car mystery.

He said his father unearthed a buried 1925 roadster in 1938 when he was digging the foundation for a building he was constructing behind the family’s home.

“I was a teenager at the time and I just figured somebody stole it and stripped it and then buried it,” Overn said.

“Why else would you bury something like that? Back in those days junkmen would come up here with a horse and wagon buying scrap metal. Why would somebody bury something they could have gotten a few bucks for selling?”

As for the buried cars possibly being tied to Prohibition liquor smuggling, Overn recalled that there was an illegal Silver Lake winery that did a thriving business on nearby Sunset Boulevard.

Overn said he was surprised by the toy race car he unearthed Friday morning.

After its caked-on dirt was brushed away, its bright-yellow enamel color could be seen. Overn identified it as a replica of Barney Oldfield’s famed “999” race car.

Oldfield, a legendary automobile racer in the first quarter of this century, was the first person to drive a mile a minute. Toy Oldfield cars were prized by boys when he was a child, Overn said.

But back then he never dug up enough cash to buy one.