Ok cool thanks. I haven't looked yet, but I think it's possible maybe that the guy put a hurst t-handle into it and that the slip in part might slip out and allow for bolting in the original... gonna check here tomorrow, hopefully I get lucky. If not I might try to transplant the bolt in style thing from the hurst super shifter i've got. I talked with the original owner of the car yesterday and he told me that installing the hurst super-shifter was why he had to cut the shifter tunnel up.
The original owner of the car also told me that he raced my car with 4.56 gears in it and without changing the gear in the tranny, so in his words "Whatever it says on the odometer, like 50,000 miles, that's waaayyy off. It's probably more like 20. I used to do burnouts and race with that thing the way it was and the speedometer would be pegged. I'd drive around town going 30 and it'd say I was going 70."
Cool info I thought. He also confirmed that my rear end was out of a 69 hemi road runner and that the gear ring and pinion (not the whole rear end) were what he had taken out of a pickup truck in the junk yard. What a cool experience it is to build my car, wonder what happened, then be able to actually know because i'm in contact with the original owner and second owner (his friend) on Facebook and on the phone.