Joe looks like he fell down a mountain, made his way back to the top and fell back down again. How did he get that filthy searching for Vicki?
But maybe we're supposed to believe it was because of all those filthy, dusty rooms that we never saw on the second floor of the Old House and in the basement. Perhaps he went back to search them more thoroughly.
But whatever the reason, at least Joe's disheveled look makes a lot more sense than the other soaps of the period where people could be rescued from being trapped in fires and still have every hair perfectly in place and with their clothes looking like they had just come back from the cleaners.