Chuck. That is an awesome story. I want to play the Italian guy in the movie version :-)
But there has to be more of a twist.....
As his loving wife took care of him on his death bed, it turns out the cloudy origin of his firewall padding was not the only secret that he had carefully hidden from her for years. He had also kept a passionate love affair to his mistress, Mercedes Freidacher, from her. And he could not go to his grave with two such heavy pieces of guilt resting on his shoulders. First, cheating honest Hr. Klenk, NOT only out of his "roofing material". ...And second, lying to his wife about his secret double life with his extravagant mistress, with whom he often had intimate rendevous d'amours while he was on "business trips" to Oberursel, in the foot hills of the Alps. His lavish mistress had cost him so much money that he was forced to get a "loan" from the Milanese mafia. But, he devised a sordid plan to pay them back. While helping Herr Klenk remove the old roofing material from his shed, unbeknownst to the hard-working retired warehouse man, he discovered a parchment with a treasure map. It had been drawn by an Italian Sailor, Octavio Pagodliany, and showed a rich treasure that had been seized from a Spanish Galleon centuries ago. If he only could find the treasure, his financial obligations to the mafia could be met and he could continue his torrid affair with Mercedes.
However, sometimes fate does not treat those kindly, who go through life keeping secrets. And as he lay on his death bed (a sudden bout with pneumonia had laid his lofty plans to waste), he decided to make amends to his wife and he whispered to his priest, the secret location of the parchment. Months earlier, as he was installing the firewall padding in his Pagoda, he noticed that the material was made up of two layers. He had more material left over, so he carefully separated the two layers and hid the map in the role of remaining material..... Well, the priest, who was having his own troubles with the mafia due to a much larger bill than he had expected, for the restoration of his church, went to look for the remaining firewall material that had left the Feuerwandfabrik all those years before. ...But it was already gone! As it turns out, the wife had stumbled across the roll of roofing material on the attic and decided that it was no longer of any use to their household as their roof was made entirely of Roman tile. She gave it to the adult son of her sister who was married to a French man, just before they all immigrated to America. Her nephew, an architect from California, had come to visit them and was a collector of old Citroens and Peugeots and oddly, one 230SL Pagoda as well (His family on his mother's side was of German descent). He recognized the roofing paper she was about to throw away and brought it back to the new country to use in the restoration of his Pagoda. He even had enough material left over that he sold several more pads to some wealthy Americans at a large profit (One, even as far away as Church Falls, Virginia...) In fact, in some circles this man and his incredible find attained an almost mythical status, but no one ever heard what had become of the mysterious treasure map. Had the enterprising American nephew uncovered the treasure? Or perchance, he himself never stumbled across the parchment, hidden in the remaining material or it was in one of the pads that he sold to other collectors of Pagoda cars, maybe never to be discovered again?...
Oh, by the way.... The name of this American, born of French immigrants, was Tom LeClerc... Alas, poor Tom is no longer among us. However, he WAS able to achieve his lifelong dream and almost complete the restoration and with the help of a talented young vintage car enthusiast from Hollywood, CA, whom he also called Tom, they were both able to put the finishing touches on his beautiful 230SL before the brave man left this world behind. ..But!... Not before also leaving behind, as payment for his assistant's dedicated work to help him display his treasure at the now fabled Newport Beach Concours D'Ellegance at Strawberry Fields in Irvine, California, the remainder of the roll of firewall padding that had made this incredible journey over all these years and holds such a "treasured' secret.
....(Or does it, ....still?).....
The END....
