1987 Buick Grand National (Kazinsky Quick Write #1

This is what I call a "quick-write": a random essay about nothing in particular........

On Friday or Saturday evening, I was watching another of my deceased father's favorite movies, "Fatal Beauty" (The trailer of which will be in the comments section of this picture.), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sam Elliot, on the ENC movie channel. I used to watch this movie all the time with my Dad and just about every other Whoopi movie, especially "Jumpin' Jack Flash". He had a thing for Whoopi. More great memories. When all you hear from other folks (including the many voices inside my head) is negativity concerning your dead father, then you tend to cling to the good memories as much as possible. It is strange how the negative and bad memories remain crystal f*****g clear while the good and wonderful memories of my child-hood slowly fade away into the darkness of my burned-out brain........

 

A RANDOM KAZINSKYNESS FACTOID:

This movie was made in 1987 and Buick definitely landed an advertisement agreement with the movie's producers because one of my FAVORITE CARS OF ALL TIME was the car chosen for the slick, cool character Sam Elliot was portraying. That car is, of course, the 1987 Buick GNX Grand National. This was car was so fast that the Chevrolet demanded that Buick (Both companies are part of General Motors) stop making them since this sleek turbo charged V-6 black monster of a car was destroying Corvettes, which had V-8's and are made of fiber-glass, all day every day in the quarter mile during the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Seven.

Three of my friends from Oakland and Berkeley respectively, all of whom I consider close family, have owned so many of these cars I have lost track of the number. I consider Michael C. the expert on Nationals because he has had so many of them and yet when I think of this guy, it is always a 5.0 I picture him riding in (or a turbo Dodge rag top from the eighties/early nineties but that is another story entirely.....). Mr. Matt C. owned the first one, which was a white '87 Turbo Buick Regal T-Type (I think that was the year of his. '87 was the best year but a '86 is good too.....I plan on writing an in depth essay about turbo Buick's.) and after Kyle realized exactly what a Grand National/T-Type were capable of, he bought several of them in his life. This is a man who knows fast cars since he was driving 5.0 around Oakland at the age of fourteen. I think he wrecked a couple of the Nationals (they are wickedly fast and had a notorious issue with braking, so even a great driver can wreck easily, if the correct conditions conspire together......) but my personal favorite was a silver T-Type that he had. I think it had 450 h.p. and man, that thing would just smash. I was living at the top of the Berkeley Hills at the time and you could hear the rumble of his engine from the bottom of the hill.

That car was where I was introduced to the music of Project Pat, as I sat in the back-seat smoking a blunt with my friends the first night I lived in Berkeley. We were on side road in between the freeway and the water of The Bay next to us, which glittered and twinkled in the dying light of the sun. This was in 2001, a month or two before the 9/11 attacks. I sincerely love my friends out there, these cars and the Bay Area in general........

 

                        Res Ipsa Loquitur

 

A.N.F.

WESTIES 209

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Author's Note

A Kazinsky "Quick-Write" is basically a short (or sometime lengthy but usually short) essay about anything in particular. Face-Book and other Social Media web-sites inspire sometimes long posts or comments thus the need to save them and label them "quick-writes". None are in any order date wise.......

Reviews

[Mark]

Love this one Andrew. :)