NEWBERRY — It is not every day a car covered in toys and knick knacks drives into your parking lot, but that is what happened this week in Newberry.
Curtis Gruninger, who said he is currently “from the road,” but is moving back to the midwest soon, stopped by Downtown Newberry, and The Newberry Observer, at the request of Gail Bensten. Gruninger’s 1987 Jeep Wrangler (named Lolly) is covered with nostalgia from the last 20 years, and some even older than that.
“Most of these are donated, I quit the corporate world in 2000 and started a cross country road trip to start a family photo business, and I go to visit the men and women I work with. The first group gave me a gargoyle, the one on the hood,” Gruninger said. “Once you say yes to your first group of friends, this is what they do to you for 20 years — they keep giving you things and you can’t say no to anything.”
On his Wrangler, Gruninger said maybe 30-40 items are his, the rest have been donated over the last two decades. He said there are 37 foreign countries represented on his Jeep, including, Vietnam, Greece, Italy and Ireland.
“My mom brought me back a little emergency Guinness, so if I need to I can take it off and there is Guinness in there,” he said.
When you spend 20 years collecting toys and other knick knacks on your car, there are a few stories to tell. One of the stories involves Prince Eric, from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
“I had Ariel and Sebastian for years, I was in Brooklyn with the top down, visiting a friend of mine. I came out and there is a little paper with Prince Eric taped to it and it said, ‘Dear Mr. Curtis, we’d like to give you Eric,’” Gruninger recalled. “Here is the fun part, this is Brooklyn — fast forward three hours and half a million people between Point A and Point B, we are stopping to get ice cream and visit with some friends. Then, up walks a little grandmother who asks if I’m Mr. Curtis, I say yes and she does a side-step — literally there are the two girls (who gave Prince Eric) standing beside her.”
Gruninger said little things like that are his favorite part.
So how does Gruninger keep all of these objects to his car? Well the answer is silicone. To his knowledge, he has never lost a toy or other object while driving.
“I just wiggle them every time I go on a trip, then replace the silicone,” he said.
He said for the most part, everything stays on pretty well, for example the California Raisins — which are actually from California — have stayed on his car since the beginning, so 20 years.
“I’ve never touched them up, they’ve stayed on,” he said.
If you examine Lolly the Jeep, you’ll see a host of items that will catch your attention, and you’ll even recognize a toy or two from your childhood. Examples of the toys include, Power Rangers, superheroes, Disney characters, and even characters from lesser known television shows, like Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog.
There is even a toy Gumby from the 1960s, and a hidden Where’s Waldo toy.
“Have a Waldo hidden on my car, my roommate I lived with, he put it on there — three weeks he didn’t tell me, would just keep saying, ‘Where’s Waldo?’ I found it finally,” Gruninger said.
Gruninger came by The Newberry Observer thanks to Bensten, who said she felt this would be something this author (Andrew Wigger) would enjoy. She was correct.
“Met Curtis in Georgia, and he helped us renovate a house that had been foreclosed that my daughter and I bought, then he moved to Arizona,” she said.
Her grandson, Alec, actually added a toy plane to the collection when he was a child, and more recently added a toy duck in memory of his brother, Parker Killian.
During his trip to The Newberry Observer, and after at least half an hour of examining the Jeep, this writer ended up giving Gruninger a pair of Batman mask glasses.
Did you miss seeing Lolly the Jeep while it was in Newberry? Or did you see it, but want to follow it? Gruninger recommends following his Instagram @lollythejeep.
