The Buried '57 Plymouth

Tulsans have had a big week.
In 1957, a Plymouth was buried inside a sealed concrete vault, along with a time capsule, to be dug up in 2007, the centennial of Oklahoma statehood. What a great idea! It was an exuberant time with great hopes and fears for the future. They stuck a can of gas in the trunk. Heck, in 2007, they'll all be whizzing around in uranium powered flying cars. The vault was designed to withstand the sure-to-come nuclear attack. In '07, that "far off day," they figured a pristine, brand new car, the perfect symbol of their time, would be an interesting curiosity for our strange new world.
People entered a contest: guess the population of Tulsa in 2007. Whoever came closest, or their heirs, would win the new car.
Thing is, they didn't have super sealants and plastics in 1957. The vault failed almost immediately, and admitted groundwater for 50 years. What was dug up and revealed to a sellout crowd today was a mud-packed, destroyed mess. They handled the car with gloved hands when they buried it so as not to leave a fingerprint to spoil the effect when it again saw the light of day. But it was, effectively, a car that spent a half-century at the bottom of a pond.
The biggest difference between their time and ours, they could not have foreseen. If  a car were buried today, the thoughts of the participants, their feelings, would be endlessly asked and recorded. "How does it make you feel to do this? What are your thoughts? What meaning does all this have for you?"
No one, of course, thought to ask such silly questions then.
So we're left wondering. 
Oh, that, and they couldn't have predicted live Internet feeds of the event, and pictures being snapped of the car with little camera-equipped telephones.
I just can't get past the sad thought that this lovely new car was sent to an immediate and watery grave.