Beverly Sherman remembered her blue suede heels and a matching blue paisley shirt-waist dress that she packed into her suitcase in 1960, then stored in the trunk of her friend’s 1950 Dodge.
The rest of what followed her on a drive around Lake Crescent 44 years ago remained a vague memory until Saturday, when divers surfaced from the lake with Sherman’s water-logged luggage.
Wide-eyed, Sherman, a Lakewood resident, watched as divers pulled from the case her black cats-eye sunglasses, a half-slip trimmed in pink lace, a pair of scissors, a shopping bag, a restaurant menu, her dress, a red swizzle stick, a toothpick and other mementos — most covered in a layer of black muck.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as she recognized each piece.
She held up the slip, now stained in blue but with its waist elastic still stretchy.
“I had pretty good taste back then,” Sherman, now 64, said.
The contents of the two-door Dodge sedan, plus its passengers — Sherman, Dale and Dee Dee Steele, and Gary Lind — plunged into the chilly lake at about midnight on Jan. 24, 1960, when the car hit an oil slick on U.S. Highway 101 near Ambulance Point.
All four escaped from the vehicle underwater and made it the surface, but their luggage stayed trapped inside the Dodge’s trunk about 200 feet below the surface.
Until this weekend.