Saturday, November 14, 2009

Flint Video: Gerry Godin Returns to Buick City

Gerry Godin and the Death of Buick City from Dude! (ironic) Productions on Vimeo.

In June 2009, Gerry Godin, the publisher of All Things Buick, gave me a tour of Oak Park near the former site of Buick City, where he worked for 25 years. We spent the rest of the day driving around town in his Park Avenue, eating lunch at Angelo's, and touring the "Hardwood" Smith House. Read all about it here.



5 comments:

  1. Tell Gerry I have the blue hard cover "To Remember Our Days at Buick" book. It's fantastic but the biggest blunder was they forgot to put an index in it, so it you know someone's name you'll never be able to find them. I want to see if he's in there. What dept would he have worked in by the time Buick City came to a close? He might be pictured.

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  2. I'm not in there Shawn. Like a true "SHOP" rat, I left the sinking ship in 1997 before it sank. A lot of my old fellow rats are pictured. I have posted some of the photos from "Our Days Together At Buick City". Is that the book you are talking about?

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  3. From the sound of it, at least the birds are getting something out of the Buick City site these days.

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  4. Sable Pelt: Can you imagine a couple of night stalkers walking through the over growth at about midnight and a pheasant suddenly getting airborne under their feet crowing it's head off. The thought of it makes me LMAO. Next, will be deer moving in. Must be plenty of browse by now. Eh?....unclebuck

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  5. I enjoyed your recollection of "time on the line" and the thumbnail history of the neighborhood around that area of Buick. Although you experienced the demoralizing end of Flint Buick City, you are part of what could be a decent career and valued contribution to family, community and life. Thank you for this video. My Grandfather, Harvey Crane, a WW I vet, worked there until his retirement in 1956 as a welder & tool and die man. He died in 1962, but, he and Grandma raised their 4 kids and were able to pay off the house well before retirement. I guess when you lived through the terror of home owning in the depression, burning that mortgage was one of the top priorities. When they moved to Flint initially in the 1920's, they rented whatever shack they could find and lived their longest at 1312 Park (Now the jct of I-69 & I-475) and over 3 decades at 1529 Indiana. When my grandfather purchased his 1st new car in the 1950's (a Buick, naturally), he stopped walking or bussing to work and drove his new Buick. He'd comment, "It's nice to be a big shot".

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.