Well! The winter is just about to come to a close, and for me, not soon enough. We will all soon be taking our Buicks out on the road again. And so, as we start a new year, I hope it brings you all health and happiness.
At our last meeting on February 11 at Rossini’s Restaurant, we had 17 members in attendance. All went well, and we are working on different events for the upcoming months. Some things that were brought up include: Mark’s Cruise Night in June, date to be determined; our annual Buick show in August, tentative dates are the 25th or 26th; a picnic at the home of Tom and Elizabeth Lane on July 29; a Spring Dust-Off Run tentatively set for May 6.
One event on our calendar is on June 1 and 2 at Goldstein Buick in Albany, New York, sponsored by the Upstate New York chapter of the BCA. There are several of us, who are planning on going up together, so if you would like to join us, please call John Scheib or me. I have some fliers should you need one. Please try to come if you can, as I would like us to support our sister chapters. It sounds like it’s going to be a fun event this year.
As for our show, we currently have it scheduled for the end of August. During the meeting, the members suggested the same site in Vernon where we held out regional. However, we have recently learned that the cost to hold an event there has become quite expensive. As a result – since the last meeting – we are now looking for alternative sites. If you have any thoughts regarding our show, please call John Scheib or me.
Our next meeting will be held once again at Rossini’s Restaurant on March 11th (second Sunday in March). The meeting will start at 1 PM, however we will be there at noon for lunch if you’d like to join us early.
Take care for now, and I hope to see you at our next meeting!
Buickly Yours.
Tony Vespoli
-- Drive Safely --
By chance, are any of you familiar with the movie “If I Had a Million?” I don’t know why this is hitting me at the moment, but I was staring out the window, looking at how peaceful it is up here. Which is ironic because the movie – or at least one portion of it – is anything but peaceful.
I guess you could say it’s an early version of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” Several big names of the day have a featured role in the flick, including Pennsylvania’s own William Dukenfield – known better by his stage name – W.C. Fields. Don’t bother looking for it in the dollar pile at your local Wal-Mart; it’s not there. While you’re at it, save yourself the trip to the video outlet in the mall as you won’t find it there either. Your best bet, as it was in my case, is to search online and hope that you’re the highest bidder! I was.
Fields role is short, perhaps a 15 or 20-minute clip. In it, he plays an ex-Vaudevillian that has retired to the somewhat simple life, working as a cook in a little mom and pop joint that he opened with his wife, played by Alison Skipworth, also an ex-Vaudevillian.
The segment of the movie that he stars in is two or three parts deep past the opener, but it’s worth the wait. The main character is an old coot who’s laying in his death bed, while the gathered family on the lower level of the mansion is already busy counting their share of the family fortune – or figuring out how to get more than their fare share. Fed up, the old man chases the “quack” – his endearing term for the doctor – out of the bedroom with a cane and promptly announces that the blood-thirsty nuts in his family won’t get a penny of the stash. Instead, the coot has his servant flip through the local phone book while he stabs at pages at random, which is how he chooses to give $1 million each to eight individuals sight unseen. An unsuspecting Fields is one of them.
While deeply engaged in degrading banter with his sister-in-law, the old coot visits Fields and his wife. With $1 million in hand, they quickly scurry off to buy the one thing they have always wanted: A new car! Up to this point, the movie itself is somewhat flat, but in typical Fields fashion, a terrible disaster befalls upon them as their car is totaled by another vehicle as soon as the front wheels leave their driveway!
In an instant fit of rage – as only Fields can deliver it without uttering one solitary curse word – the now not-so-happy couple find themselves at a used car lot, selecting candidates for their growing fleet of cars that they intend to use as weapons against road hogs! His wife is right by his side, just as eager to get started. They even go so far as to hire the entire crew from the dealership to drive the purchased cars, and follow Fields and his wife who are naturally driving the lead car.
Mayhem ensues. One classic after another is obliterated in a madcap effort to teach a lesson to the road hogs. Climbing out of one pile of carnage after another, their appearance naturally deteriorates, but a growing smile emerges with them. At one point, you can actually hear Field’s wife telling him to “Get him” as the next road hog passes by.
In the end, you’re left with a vision of a smoldering city, not of buildings, but rather of destroyed vehicles that today are highly prized by collectors of all kinds. With tattered hats, and their Sunday best anything but, Fields and his wife depart a dealership with a new car. Satisfied that their job is complete, they carefully check to ensure that nobody is coming from either directing before turning onto the street to return home. Wham! A motorist arrives out of the blue and destroys the new car.
I have conveyed this story only because I wonder how many of you have envisioned such a thing, as you are going about your daily business. All of a sudden an unscrupulous driver cuts you off with nothing on his or her mind other than being first to the exit ramp. Deep down inside, you must have felt something stirring.
I know I have. A unrelenting tailgater; the persistently slow idiot who won’t go any faster than 45 in the super-fast lane on I-91; the guy so insistent on passing, that when you finally have a chance to pull over, he rAfter my years of racing at the local tracks in Connecticut, and traveling to other states to compete, I was witness to many a car being unceremoniously destroyed in a tragic use of misjudgment while traveling at high speed through a corner.ides in your blind spot for the next 17 miles on I-84.
As a result, I envisioned myself saving up enough money to purchase a steel bumper mid-seventies Monte Carlo. Preferably one with multiple colors applied to the body panels. Perhaps a little rust in the lower quarters. Exhaust held in place by a coat hanger. A set of overgrown snow tires on the rear wheels. Hood ornament ripped off its foundation. A roll cage inside the car welded to the frame. A push bar affixed to the front bumper. Vinyl top – gone!
Let’s face it. While driving down the road in your brand new 10 mpg SUV, the last thing you want to be driving next to on the road is the image I have painted above. It’s clear that the owner of that vehicle has no care for material objects. You actually give it a wide berth for fear of a glance from its driver; surely an individual who’d rather stomp a mud hole into your face than say hello. All that driver would have to do is just fake a lane change and you’re gone: Either hitting the brake faster than a jack rabbit in heat, or on the gas to get to the next county before he can read your personalized plate that’s surrounded by the Yosemite Sam license plate frame that reads “Back Off!”
Perception goes a long way. You don’t physically have to do anything. Yet implying that you’re indifferent to what’s happening around you can go a long way, especially driving that Monte Carlo. I still wouldn’t mind getting one, just to see what would happen. Maybe a bump or two! Just so they know what it’s like on the receiving end. Oh well…
That’s my two cents!
Respectfully yours,
Matthew J. Litwin