that his brother, who asked to remain
anonymous, had collected as many as 1,200
cars.
"He had a 1972 [Chevy] Super Sport that was a basket case, but the underframe was good, and he was asking $7,500 for the car," Cushing said.
"A gentleman came up and looked the car, spent several hours looking it over, and he said to my brother, 'I'll give you $7,000 cash,' and my brother said, 'well, the price is 7,500.' And the guy says, 'well, I've got $7,000 cash right now,' and my brother said, 'I need you to leave my property.' And he had $500 in the car, but that was my brother."
Cushing also recalled a girlfriend that his brother had at one point who said that if anything ever happened to him, "the day after he was gone, she would crush every car."
After that comment, Cushing's brother apparently threw the girlfriend out, however, she called the US Environmental Protection Agency as revenge.
The EPA inspected the property but found nothing "as my brother said, 'they've never seen oil in 50 years,'" when referring to the cars.
Despite his close relationship with his brother, Cushing revealed that he was kept in the dark that he had been diagnosed with fatty cell sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
"We got a phone call in early September of 2020, and this guy said, 'do you have any idea how sick your brother is?' And I said, 'no, I speak to him every couple of weeks.' And then he said, 'well, he's pretty bad off,'" said Cushing.
"So my wife and I jumped on an airplane the very next day and flew up there."
The cancer had metastasized but Cushing said his brother refused to leave the property to get any help, forcing him to call an ambulance to get his brother to the hospital for treatment.
"And we got hospice to go in there, and he eventually ended up in a palliative care facility and passed away in November of 2020," he said.
As his brother's only relative, Cushing was left with a mind-boggling number of non-running cars on his hands.
He explained that the cars are all "part cars," meaning there are few to no restorables.
Cushing also believes the number of cars on the property is closer to 500 than 300 but his brother didn't keep an inventory.
The home is also unfinished, which Cushing said was done on purpose as his brother didn't want the tax assessor to visit him.
Cushing said the home was sold this past weekend but didn't give details on the buyer.