Hot Rod Hero Blackie Gejeian: 1926-2016

[Suarez™]

Blackie Gejeian, who was a major part of the California hot rod, show car and drag racing scene from its very inception, died Sept. 2 at the age of 90.

Gejeian grew up on his family’s farm outside of Fresno, Calif. and learned to drive fast by powersliding on the dirt roads between the farmland and orchards his family owned. He enlisted in the Navy during WWII and when the war was over and he sailed back home, like so many of his generation, he built a hot rod. It was a 1926 flathead Ford-powered racer and he took it to the dry lakes and the drags and everywhere in between. An accident at the lakes resulted in a ten-year rebuild that saw one of the first chromed undercarriages in hot rod history. While the chrome glistened below, the rest of the car was black.

“Everything on it was nothin’ but black,” he once told us. And that’s when they started calling him Blackie.

Gejeian was at the very first Grand National Roadster Show when it was held in Oakland in 1949, and has been to every single one of them since. He first showed the roadster and its magnificent undercarriage there in 1953. Every hour on the hour he and three friends each picked up a corner of the car and tipped it fully up on its side to show off the chrome beneath. As a result, it got the nickname Shish-Kebab. He kept working on the car and finally won the title America’s Most Beautiful Roadster, top honors at that show, in 1955.

He spent the rest of his life deeply involved in the burgeoning hot rod and custom car scene throughout California. In 1958 he launched the Fresno Autorama, a show so exclusive that the only way you could get a car in it was if Blackie himself invited you. He ran Autorama for 51 years before health issues forced him to close it down. Gejeian had also been the promotor for race tracks in Clovis, Madera and Raisin City for many years in the 1960s and ‘70s.

He was recently honored with a bust of his likeness at the Fresno County Historical Museum, and with a Lifetime Acheivement Award by Galpin Auto Sports. He was a prolific and tireless trumpeter of his friends, and would often speak at length, quite a length, of his love for them, as witnessed most recently when he spoke at this year’s Grand National Roadster Show in January, and then as the funeral of fellow icon and great friend George Barris. God speed, Blackie; keep the shiny side down.