Man gets back wallet lost in ’46 Hudson

updated 8:56 p.m. ET May 7, 2007

TWIN FALLS, Idaho - Glenn Goodlove said he was likely smooching with a girl in the expansive back seat of a 1946 Hudson when his wallet slipped from his pants pocket more than five decades ago. The year was 1952.

Goodlove was a sailor home on leave from the U.S. Navy. The Hudson belonged to his grandfather, who lived in Western Washington.

He'd long since forgotten about the lost leather billfold, until last month when he got a phone call from a pair of southern Idaho car collectors who told him they'd found the wallet. Inside were a $10 bill, a $1 silver certificate, military identification, Social Security card and a handwritten Washington state driver's license.

"If it was in my sailor-mentality years, I might have attempted to, as they said in those years, 'make out,'" Goodlove, who now lives in California, told the Twin Falls Times-News, on why the wallet went missing.

Earlier this year, Jon Beck, 61, and Chuck Merrill, 72, both from Twin Falls, took out an ad in the local newspaper looking for a classic car to restore. They were offered the Hudson by a man in nearby Oakley and in April went to retrieve the car, which had changed hands since it belonged to Goodlove's family and wound up in a dilapidated state in southeastern Idaho.

The Idaho collectors stopped at a restaurant on the way back to Twin Falls and were walking past the Hudson when, "I saw something about to fall out," Merrill said. "I said, 'That looks like a wallet.'"

Beck said he'd hoped to find $100 bills.

"Like a couple of kids, we thought we had a gold mine," he said.

Though the wallet contained just $11, it also had some other documents, including several jewelry receipts from 1952.

After an Internet search, Beck found Goodlove, now 75, at his home in San Diego.

Beck began the telephone conversation by asking for the man who used to drive a '46 Hudson.

"There was a silence for about 15 seconds," Beck said. "Then he said, 'Who is this?'"

Beck and Merrill plan to return the wallet and its contents to Goodlove.

Goodlove said the find from so long ago has conjured up memories.

"They've been flowing ever since he (Beck) talked to me," he said. "It's a miracle."

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