At the end of last month, my other half and I took a trip to visit family in the Rust Belt area where northeast Ohio meets northwest Pennsylvania, near the Shenango River. Much about this area reminds me both of the factory town where I grew up (Flint, Michigan) and also the rural area of Ohio on the northwestern part of the state where my grandparents had their farm. This region instantly felt both familiar and nostalgic.
Many aspects of this area (spanning Brookfield, Ohio on the west to Hermitage, Pennsylvania on the east) seem wonderfully and magically frozen in time – if I had to pick a year, I’d say from 1971. A trip to Daffin’s candy store in nearby downtown Sharon, Pennsylvania is like being transported to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory around the time the original movie was in theaters. The decorations and fonts on the various signs throughout the Daffin’s showroom look like something out of one of the better sets on the Lawrence Welk show. And the candies and chocolates are incredible in both breadth of selection and deliciousness. Daffin’s is at once hopelessly square and of the utmost cool, and really must be seen (and tasted) to be believed.
A rusty, Googie-era road sign for defunct steak house John Schuster’s still stands on the side of S. Irvine Ave. in nearby Masury, Ohio, its arrow pointing the way to the former restaurant building which now appears to have been converted for residential use. This entire area has an air of former blue-collar prosperity (like much of the industrial U.S. Rust Belt, including my hometown), with many hints of mid-century glory popping up in all kinds of unexpected places.
It was then no real surprise to see an unrestored ’67 Buick Special in the parking lot of the Sparkle grocery store, with the adjacent site of former, local, single-location retail giant Valley View Discount Department Store in the background. Valley View used to be the place, according to many sources familiar with this area’s history. In the era long before megastores, Valley View was a place at which you could purchase hardware, auto parts, clothing and groceries in a one-stop shopping trip – which was a novel idea at the time. Originally opened in 1959 and closed in 1995, one could say that Valley View was a popular meeting place for folks in this community, even acting as a beacon for tourists passing through. The smell of hot, buttered popcorn wafted throughout from the snack shop, adding to the excitement of shopping at everyone’s favorite store.
All that’s left now is an empty lot from the mostly-demolished (as of 2009) main retail structure and a wonderfully large-scaled sign announcing the parking lot entrance. (Thanks, Walmart.) I wondered to myself if it might have been possible for this Buick Special to have been driven to Valley View or the adjacent, former Giant Eagle grocery store when the car was new. This Special clearly looks like it’s driven regularly (if not daily), and much like the rusty Chevy Cavalier I profiled last month, this old Buick appeared to have rust but very few dents, and also mostly complete trim. Pride of ownership. I wonder what it looked like twenty years ago.
This Special (identifiable against a Skylark by its different bodyside trim) looked wonderfully stock – down to its tri-shield deluxe wheel covers. The Special (and Skylark), along with the intermediates at Oldsmobile (Cutlass, F-85), always seemed to me like the GM A-bodies for grownups. Without the youthful, visual gymnastics of a Pontiac or the everyman ubiquity of a Chevy, I imagine the Special or Skylark buyer to be just a bit older, more deliberative than the average person, and more drawn to enduring class than temporary fad.
(As a sidebar, in my research on this car, I was unable to find any decisive indentifiers which would differentiate a “Special” from a “Special Deluxe”. Initially, I had thought the chrome strip running alongside the car made this one a “Special Deluxe”, but then I found pictures of some pretty “stock”-looking Special Deluxes without that trim, so I gladly welcome any feedback on the subject.)
Maybe it’s partially because of growing up in the 1980’s when “special” was thrown around by grade school kids my age as a put-down, but I never warmed to the moniker “Special” as the name of a car. It just seems so generic, and slightly condescending. “Special Deluxe” sounds even worse, almost like the name of a prepackaged cake mix. (“Try new Duncan Hines Special Deluxe yellow cake with lemon frosting!”) A “special deluxe” could refer to just about anything from a vacuum cleaner, to a toaster, to a cherry pie. It’s like Flint gave the lesser A-body a dull-sounding name to encourage the Skylark upsell. It’s the car model name equivalent of a white box with black, Arial-font letters on it describing the contents. As if pulled from a hat in the Ironic Names Dept., “Special” hardly seems to befit a car with basic styling as tasteful, handsome, and almost elegant as this one.
If production figures indicate any direct correlation to a name-based upsell strategy, that tactic apparently worked. Again, I couldn’t find any external identifiers which would have pegged it as a V-6 or V-8 model (including the front fender-mounted portholes). But for 1967, there were about 20,500 combined Special and Special Deluxe Sport hardtop coupes produced, the most popular of which was the Deluxe Sport coupe with a V-8 (available in displacements of 300 or 340 cubic inches), of which there were about 14,400 produced. This is out of almost an 86,000 total for both the Special and Special Deluxe in any bodystyle. Zero-to-sixty times could range anywhere from around 13.5 seconds with the 225 2-bbl. V-6 and the 2-speed “Super Turbine” automatic, down to about 7.5 seconds with the 340-4 bbl. V-8 and a 3-speed manual.
The Special’s 1967 production figure was eclipsed by the 107,000 Skylarks sold (including the Sportwagon), but by not as wide a margin at this point as I had always assumed. Skylark production figures (including the Sportwagon) would sail past those of the Special for model year ’65 (101,000 Specials against 133,000 Skylarks), and would never look back through the end of the Special’s first unbroken run through ’69. (The “Special” designation would return as a Century submodel for ’75 on GM’s Colonnade platform.) In my opinion, the ’67 Special has cleaner bodyside trim than the same-year Skylark, and the lack of fender skirts on this one is a definite plus.
My first thought was that this Buick must have been someone’s grandfather’s car. It looks just factory-stock and basic enough to have belonged to someone who had lived through a more frugal, less indulgent time in U.S. history, but a little too weathered to have been Grandma’s regular ride to and from home, church and the grocery store. I imagine pleasant, windows-down summer drives in this car along the main stretch of Warren-Sharon Rd. past the Ohio state line into downtown Sharon, Pennsylvania – through the surrounding townships and past barns and horses, old houses with large front porches, barber shops, American flags, and ice cream stands.
Both the car and the old signage at Valley View hark back to a very different time, as it is no longer possible to go “Valley Viewing” as in the 1960’s / 70’s commercial jingle above. I may not ever be able to go back to a place in small-town Ohio exactly like where my grandparents lived some twenty-five plus years ago, but spending time in the communities surrounding the Shenango River last month felt almost like the next-best thing. Being in this charming region which is about fifteen miles northeast of Youngstown, Ohio and spotting this old Buick served as a comforting reminder of a time when American optimism seemed much more prevalent, and when possibilities seemed as wide-open as the Valley View parking lot.
All photos are as taken by the author. With the exception of Daffin’s (photographed November 2013), photos were as taken in August 2015.
Related reading: Paul Niedermeyer’s comprehensive piece on this car’s upmarket stablemate: Curbside Classic: 1967 Buick Skylark – Big Little Car.
While “Special” may seem a bland name for a car today, It does (or did) have meaning to car buyers at mid-century (no pun intended..), Introduced in 1936 as a Buick that a Blue Collar worker could afford, it was aspirational and acheviable, Of course the original concept was renamed LeSabre in ’59, Bringing the name back for an ‘A’ body seemed to harken back to the ’36 ideal. BTW, I’m drinking Giant Eagle coffee as I write this!
a beautifully written article.
” It’s like Flint gave the lesser A-body a dull-sounding name to encourage the Skylark upsell. It’s the car model name equivalent of a white box with black, Arial-font letters on it describing the contents.”
as in a “special” value.
the pictures are great, too. i really want to go out a rub compound into that paint job and bring out the shine of the old buick’s glory years!
The full-size, B-body Special had been Buick’s best-selling car until they sort of crashed and burned in 1957–58, so I assume Buick figured it would be auspicious to stick it on the Y-body and A-body cars.
This well kept survivor is only a paint job (and matching tires) away from once again looking “Special”.
Being a hardtop coupe, this Special still looks reasonably special. With whitewalls and full wheel covers (both optional) this car still looked well trimmed. Being a hardtop does an amazing job of taking even the most basic of cars upscale.
But, I agree with Joseph that there is some irony calling your base car Special, especially when the base sedan with dog dishes and black walls would become arguably ugly with the ’68 restyle.
Not so many years earlier, the base Buick (a full size car) deserved the name Special. It didn’t seem to be a stripped down Chevy, rather it was an entry level luxury car – more like a top line Chevy with a bigger and standard V-8. Even the sedan didn’t seem too frumpy in 1955. GM insisted on stripper Buicks in the ’60s for volume at the long term expense of the brand.
The 1955 Special, when the Special was still Special……..
That old GM Brand Watering, It also was seen up the hill at Cadillac. By the mid 70s The Calais (former Series 62) was less “trimmed” than it’s “lesser” C body brothers the Electra and 98 in most editions, And the post ’85 non DeElegance Broughams were more DeVille than Fleetwood!
I’m pretty sure the full wheel covers, chrome strip on the side, and perhaps also the brightwork between the taillights do mark this car as a Special Deluxe. When you’re ten years old, and a 1966 Special Deluxe was the only new car your skinflint father had purchased for seven years (or would purchase for another seven), you notice these things.
It looks a lot like an FD Vauxhall Victor, which was sold as a Pontiac in Canada.
I thought that too, more so than the equivalent Buick saloon – though the FD coupe never got past the one-off ‘clay’ and had quite an odd grille, very different to the production models.
Sold in Canada by Pontiac dealers, but not as a Pontiac. It was still called a Vauxhall. Aside from the early ’70s Firenza (which was badged as neither a Vauxhall nor a Pontiac, just a “Firenza”), the Vauxhall products sold by Pontiac were always called Vauxhalls.
In the ’60s, Canadian Chevrolet dealers also sold badge-engineered versions of the Vaxuhalls sold by Pontiac dealers, under the “Envoy” name.
Sorry about that I thought it was a Pontiac Envoy.
Thanks, Johnnyangel, for that input.. I am surprised at how hard it was to research Special vs. Special Deluxe on the internet in 2015! FWIW, my parents were also (sometimes painfully) frugal. Ever remember going to McDonald’s and getting to order “burgers and water” without fries or pop? That was us! We had cars from the original Low Priced Three (Plymouth, Ford, Chevrolet) and even an AMC/Renault (Encore)!
I about died from shock when my parents brought home an Oldsmobile (even if it was a Cutlass Ciera) after I left for college.
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/ is your best friend in unraveling these kinds of subtle issues: htttp://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Buick/1967_Buick/1967_Buick_Brochure_1/dirindex.html
It’s one of my top resources. Unlike wikipedia, it’s always right 🙂
Bookmarked! Thanks, Paul.
Joseph thanks for this bittersweet look back at the Ohio of your youth. Every 4 years, the presidential candidates spend a lot of time there promising the moon. Maybe the promises will eventually come true and Ohio can again offer a future to it’s kids, so they don’t have to go.
The mid size Buick you found for some reason had me thinking about my late brother. In the mid eighties he was an industrial engineer at a diaper plant in Bethune, SC. It was his first real job out of Cornell. He lived in Camden and commuted. The car he chose was a Pontiac 6000LE two door sedan. It had the half padded vinyl roof with the Pontiac alloys and the split velour bench and console shifter. It was new and shiny and cut the right figure where American cars were still respected. I imagine this Buick did the same, perhaps for its young driver in 1967. That young driver is now old and the town he made a home is fading, but perhaps the continued existence of this special Buick gives hope.
I grew up in the Rust Belt and I am glad I left though some people are doing well. Still waiting to see what Governor Cuomo pulls out of his hat that will help the Southern Tier. About every four years jokes go around about how the Southern Tier is largely avoided by political folks so we can be left alone and watch and listen to the banter from afar.
What a great write-up! That’s a beautiful part of the country. I’ve written about Gram’s 1977 Regal before; well, her previous car was this very model – a 1967 Buick Special, in a rare aqua green/blue. Her only other car was a ’58 Buick…she was definitely a Buick woman.
Our Connecticut version(s) of Valleyview were Mammonth Mart, Grants, Bradlees and Caldors – all wiped out by the mighty Walmart.
Bradlees…haven’t thought about that name in a while. They must have had a brief run as a larger-than-regional chain for a while, as one appeared in Greensboro, NC in the late 80’s. I don’t even think it lasted 10 years though.
A great evocative piece
As it says “Every car has a story”
Lovely piece of work, Joseph. I have similar memories of Peoria, IL, and its long-forgotten big (at least for us) discount stores–Venture, Arlans and Spartan among them. Looking forward to your next post.
Shenango-that sounds like the name of a Western movie.
Absolutely, it does.
“According to local historians, prior to the arrival of settlers in the Shenango Valley, the Seneca Nation governed the land now occupied by Penn State Shenango. For a short time before the actual arrival of settlers, this section of the Shenango Valley was inhabited by a displaced clan of the Delaware Nation. Their leader, Kiondashawa, acted as a political liaison between his people, the displaced Delaware, the Seneca Nation, and for a brief period, the new settlers in the valley. Actually, the name Shenango, is said to have been derived from the Indian who once dominated the hunting land along what is now the Shenango River.”
As a kid, I always was told that the name Shenango was a Seneca Indian name. There’s a similar name in midstate New York, Chenango, which is described as from the Onondaga Indian word meaning “large bull-thistle”. The Iriquois League incorporated the Seneca and Onondaga tribes, it doesn’t surprise me that there are similar words throughout the area.
Nice find for an area where 15+year old drivers are pretty thin on the ground. I grew up just north of that area on the New York/Pennsylvania border. In the mid 70s, I worked a summer job loading semi trailers at a bread factory for delivery to area supermarkets. I remember the names Valley View and Sparkle being on the manifest sheets. It was nice to be able to put a face to those names.
Very nice job weaving an interesting historical perspective with an overview of this car.
I grew up in a close-in suburb of Pittsburgh. The first supermarket I remember was called Sparkle Market, back in the late 50s or so. I would assume this grocery chain lives on, not too far away from Pittsburgh. The things you learn from CC!
Gone from Pittsburgh area but still in OH and WVA, Remember when we also had; Thorofare,A&P,Kroger, GoldenDawn.OpenPantry? and those were the national chains, Small towns had “‘Star Markets”. Giant Eagle is dominant, With Shop & Save replacing Foodland as 2nd. BTW, I don’t eat ANYTHING from Wally World… Off to Co Go’s now!
Kroger remains one of the largest chains in America…only 18 miles from Robinson to Weirton store off Three Springs Drive!
Giant Eagle, based in Pittsburgh, operates in Northeastern Ohio and Western PA. Far and away the dominant player here.
Interesting to see a Giant Eagle Pharmacy at a Sparkle Market. Someone forgot to update the sign, I assume.
Shop & Save and Foodland are both owned by Supervalu with offices in New Stanton, a couple miles from the old VW plant. I think Thorofare was local to Pittsburgh. A&P still exists, mostly around New York City where they appear to score at the very bottom of grocery satisfaction rankings.
I feel like the entire Youngstown area seems like the land that time forgot and the decades can’t improve. WHOT remains one of the oldest Top 40 stations on earth and nearby Canfield has a drool-worthy car culture. (It’s also the home of TP Tools – hog heaven for any DIY’er)
One industry creating jobs is oil/natural gas fracking. But that’s slowing down a bit as prices hover around historic lows.
Great catch! This Sparkle was a Giant Eagle until maybe four or five months ago. They probably did just forget to update / remove the pharmacy sign.
As noted below, I worked for Golden Dawn back in the day. I worked in the distribution warehouse after my father and both of my brothers. My oldest brother worked in their in-house ad agency, along with a guy named Don Bryson.
Mr. Bryson would leave Golden Dawn to be the advertising manager for the Cafaro version of the Avanti Motor Company. IIRC, he arranged for the photography of the Avantis at the Butler Institute of American Art in downtown Youngstown, Ohio. I was at some of those photo shoots, only as an observer. I had worked at the Butler and still knew people back then. I was able to observe some of the photography, but it’s not the most exciting thing to watch…
My wife is from the South Park area of Pittsburgh. Every time we go to visit her relatives, we either stop at a CoGos or a Eat’n’Park. Maybe even a Sheetz or two…
Excellent piece, where the locale was every bit as much of a feature as the car was. The car and the area seem to go together perfectly. A Buick Special would have been right at home there in 1967 and its current condition mirrors the area now.
Everyone ought to be able to shop at a grocery store named Sparkle.
Wegman’s, JP. Trust me on this. Wegman’s.
Erie on east to Syracuse and also in Eastern PA/Delmarva.
Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to read my musings here and for the kind feedback. I’m also thankful that the carful of relatives allowed us to make a quick pit-stop at Sparkle so I could get my shots. It was another loud gasp-moment (glad it didn’t cause an accident!).
Joseph, what a great write-up! The nostalgia and old Buick made my day. Thanks again!
The Shenango Valley is my hometown. It’s rather an odd feeling when a CCer posts pictures of your old neighborhood. I grew up in the village of Masury,part of Brookfield Township.
That picture of the Googie style sign for Schuster’s Restaurant? That’s about 1/8 mile from my childhood home. I grew up on Syme Street. My folks (and our neighbors) used to walk down to Schuster’s back in the day. They advertised lobsters, but were known for their frog legs. It was rumored that the frogs came from Yankee Creek, which is about a 1/2 mile south of the restaurant as the crow flies.
Daffin’s Candies (along with Philadelphia Candies) are a staple of the Shenango Valley. One of our best known businesses is the Quaker Steak and Lube, which has locations across the country. They originally started as a “cook your own” steak house in the mid 1970’s, but hopped on the wing train back in the late 70’s. It’s been great for them ever since. I worked at the Lube in 1979, but made more money mowing lawns, so I did that instead.
Valley View wasn’t just the store. There was a subdivision right behind it (to the west) of nice 50-60’s brick homes. Some of the outlots were occupied by even larger homes, big enough to ride horses. Back in the day, if you had a house in Valley View, you were doing pretty well.
That Sparkle has been a bunch of different supermarkets over the years, it started out as a Fisher-Fazio, a chain from Cleveland, in the mid-late 1970’s. It was sold to several different supermarket chains. Sparkle is a grocery chain from the Youngstown area, which still has locations across NE Ohio, Western PA, and WVA.
When I was in college (YSU Penguins!), I worked for Golden Dawn supermarkets, in their distribution warehouse. My father and brothers were there before me, and my mother kept house for the family that owned the whole company. Wonderful people to work for. The company was later sold to the Canadian holding company Peter J. Schmitt, who owned Loblaws and Star Markets also. They went bankrupt in the early 1990’s.
Our town was really built on steel. About a 1/2 mile or so to the east is the Sharon Steel works, at one time the largest specialty steel manufacturer in the East. Many of the houses you passed near Schuster’s were built by Sharon Steel company, either directly (for the management) or indirectly (by the workers).
I was there during the 70’s and 80’s, during the contraction of the steel industry. The guys my age (40’s thru mid 50’s) all saw the demise of big steel and manufacturing. There’s a huge diaspora of Northeast Ohioans throughout the sunbelt and other places. We were all looking for some stability. Even Lordstown, 25+ miles to the northwest, had it’s huge ups and downs. Many of our parents worked there, but we were all pretty skeptical of what would happen.
I went home over the Labor Day weekend. I didn’t go to my childhood neighborhood, though, as I find it too depressing to view. I remember my childhood days, where things were much better and the neighborhoods fully occupied, not with abandoned houses like I see now.
I have great memories of my life back then, and those experiences made me the person I am today. I would not change that part of my life for anything, but I can’t go back there without a feeling of dread. Many old friends have asked me if I would come back home. I tell them no, as realistically, there’s nothing there for me to do. (I work in printing, the closest big offset printers are in Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron/Canton or Pittsburgh).
As for the subject matter at hand, that Buick looks like a hooptie from my teenage years. Someone has looked after it all of this time and managed to keep it on the road. I congratulate them. Our environment (freeze/thaw cycles and heavy usage of road salt, along with a fair amount of ferrous oxide in the air) conspires to kill car bodies more rapidly than probably anywhere else I’ve lived. Generally, if you see an old car in my hometown, it came from somewhere else.
Unlike me.
PS: One addendum… I don’t know why folks from Flint like the Shenango Valley so much. When I first saw this article, I thought it had been posted by supremebrougham (Richard Bennett, who is also from the Flint area), as he had been traveling through the Valley on Labor Day also. In fact, I may have walked right past him at the original Quaker Steak and Lube when I was meeting family for dinner on Saturday evening. I guess I need to spend more time in Flint and see what clicks with you guys…
Geozinger, thank you so much for your personal insight on your experiences originating from this area. Now I feel like we’re friends. To your postscript, I think part of the allure of this area to people from mid-Michigan (like myself and Supremebrougham) is that the two areas are just so similar, from the standpoints of economy, industry, climate, and ethnic makeup. It all just feels so comfortingly familiar.
My other half’s mom lives in Masury, and we’ve stayed with her. You should have heard the laughter when I pronounced it “Mah-ZU-ree” like the state. We also ate at Quaker Steak & Lube – that place is incredible. I’m pleasantly shocked to find out this small chain *originated* in Sharon, PA – that place is so dope. My favorite (besides the food and ambiance) was the red C3 Corvette suspended from the ceiling (see picture below).
You and I must have missed each other by one weekend, as I was there the weekend before Labor Day. This whole area is magical to me. As an outsider (unlike you), though, I can see how you might feel a bit sad when you remember more prosperous times in this area. I feel the same way about Flint and though I love going home and visiting with friends, I know I’m seeing things through the lens of the way things used to be when (more) GM factories were still standing and humming away through all hours of the night and day. What would I do for work? I’d consider moving back if I could find work, but now that decision isn’t up to just me. B says we can move to Flint if we win the lottery. 🙂 We’re probably staying put in Chicago.
Here’s a link to my Flickr set of pictures I’ve taken in the Shenango Valley area: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jhdennis/albums/72157657638090579. I hope it’s okay to link this here.
I wanted to post more, but I had already written a book. Email me geozinger@yahoo.com when you get time.