In those days, the upper shells were framed with wood. It worked perfectly, unless water was allowed to get inside the walls (caulking failure, accident, etc). If that happened, the water gets trapped inside and there is a good possibility that the wood has rotted, which brings a host of problems and is not easy to fix.
I'm not saying that this is common, but it does happen, and would make me leery of driving 1200 miles.
There have been several threads on this board about how to determine if the wood has rotted, so the Search function may help you, as long as you are still a Trial Member (or become a Sponsor). Things like look at the bottom edge of the shells, remove some screws, and look into the hole - looking for solid dry wood or dark rotted wood. Looking for screws that can't be tightened but just spin in the hole.
Bill
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