aulin’ north on the 99, November 1967. Headed for the last drag race, a Super Stock showdown between “Dandy” Dick Landy in his blueprinted Hemi Dodge and Butch “The California Flash” Leal in his Coronet street Hemi. The race would run at Fresno Dragway in Raisin City, California.

I was ending a long national tour as the advance man for Landy’s Dodge factory racing team, and I had a date with the Dragway promoter, one Michael Gejeian.

Landy handed me his phone number. “Call him Blackie.” The noonday meeting took place at a rural roadhouse with high ceilings, leather booths, and worn oaken veneers. The place was packed with dozens of working men in working clothes, eating, smoking, playing cards, and drinking red wine out of stubby glasses.

A shimmer of sun cut the dust and a commanding figure walked in; he wore Levis and a torn, mud-streaked T-shirt. His curly, coal-black hair crowned a brow covered with sweat. He was animated; his voice alone commanded the smoky proceedings. He was unlike any promoter I’d met across America. He’d gotten off his tractor and we could do our business tomorrow. Just call. One final impression: he had golden tiger eyes that glowed with ethereal intensity.

When I called, a woman answered. “Is Blackie there?” “Murgadich, he’s not here.” The next day, I began, “So, Murgadich, how’s it goin’?” Oh. Oh. Golden tiger eyes shot a bolt. “You little [expletive], if you ever call me that again, I’ll kill you.” Rule one. Fail to understand Blackie at your own peril. Later, I’d discover that it was Blackie’s mother, Ossanna, who answered, and, yes, she was a prankster. Murgadich (phonetically) is Armenian for “the Baptist.” Her little joke almost got me killed.

Blackie was a legend, both in his native Fresno and far beyond. For more than 51 years, he produced the Fresno Autorama. It was his show. He scoured the country; he picked the cars, gave the awards, and orchestrated the painterly spectacle. “I was the first showman to color code the cars,” he said. His legacy in Fresno is celebrated by a plaque at the Fresno Convention Center and a permanent exhibit at The Big Fresno Fair. His hand and eye helped shape several landmark show cars, three of which won the coveted AMBR trophy at the Oakland Grand National Roadster Show: The “Ala Kart” (with Richard Peters and George Barris), only two-time winner (1958/59); the ’29A “Emperor” (with Chuck Krikorian, 1960); and his ’26 T roadster, the “Shish Kebab Special” (1955). The Shish Kebab would stand as a symbol of Blackie’s life of speed, style, and showmanship over seven decades. Chrome undercarriage aside, the T was the real deal: A dead-run hot rod that clocked out many a blacktop racer on Fresno backroads.

He was a daring and sometimes reckless race car driver whose fiercely competitive spirit in the heyday of Central Valley hardtop racing shaped his sense of showmanship. He learned how to run big events and put the fans first.

He was 90 when his high-revvin’ engine finally gave out in September 2016.

Blackie touched thousands and each has a story. There were elements of his life that might shed a timing light on the engine that drove the Blackie legend: his farm, his time racing hardtops, and his Armenian brotherhood in Fresno.

The Gejeian ranch, a 40-plus acre vineyard near Easton, was in the family since 1909, when a first wave of Armenian immigrants came to the Central Valley. His parents fled the Armenian genocide after World War I. The immigrant experience shaped Blackie’s early life. He remembered his large, extended family at the ranch house; grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts, and the gatherings on the veranda for music, food, and wine when the heat of the day began to recede. Writer William Saroyan would come out to talk life, people, and Armenian soul.

“He was truly a farmer,” Carol Cusomano of Clovis says. She and her husband, Joe, were top ISCA show car winners; she staged the world class tribute to Blackie at Fresno’s Convention Center in September 2016. In Blackie’s later years, the Cusomanos escorted him to shows, SEMA and rod and custom gatherings. “On our way to events, he’d talk about the soil, the orchards, the vineyards. He loved the earth,” she recalls.

Eugene Sadoian, “Clean Gene” to Blackie, was a lifelong and steadfast friend. The retired chief federal probation and parole officer, now 87, lives in Las Vegas. He remembers his first encounter at the ranch in 1948.

“So, there I am, meeting the famous Blackie at his headquarters, but even more impressive was his father. Charles wore bib overalls, no shirt, always with a shovel in his hand and no shoes.

“The next time I was out there, Blackie was tearing around like a dirt tracker in his dad’s Model A. He spun and wiped out three rows of vines. Uh oh! Here comes dad with shovel in hand, storming barefoot through the vineyard. Blackie took off and didn’t come home that night.”

For a time, Ossanna had a psychic-hypnotist, Hyrkos, living at the ranch. According to Sadoian, his psychic powers seemingly passed to Blackie’s daughter, Diane.

Blackie’s day began at 3 a.m. when he fired his tractor and began tilling the vineyard. Then onto business, his show, track preparation, race car prep, racing. Restart. Seven days a week.

“He came along to rival Billy Vukovich as a favorite son,” recalled late circle track racing promoter Bob Barkhimer. In 1949, “Barky” and fellow midget racer Jerry Piper, organized an intense Central Valley hardtop racing show on half- and quarter-mile dirt and paved tracks from San Jose to Clovis.

“Blackie drove an orange Ford coupe, (he) was a handsome devil with flashing eyes and black, curly hair . . . he had charisma galore, waved his arms all the time, and was excitable on and off the track. The fans loved him.”

Sadoian recalls a lot of those races. “He polarized the crowd. He brought them out to races even if he played the villain. I always worried because as a fastest qualifier, he started at the back. When the flag went down, he’d charge fearlessly through the pack; crash or no crash, he’d win. He put flaring bellows on his tailpipes and the noise alone would fire up the crowds.”

Next time we will cover Blackie’s growing organizational skills in producing and promoting motor racing events, his grand Fresno show, and his willingness to assist other motoring enthusiasts, all in part driven by his hard charging Armenian motoring brotherhood in Fresno.