Buzz the Gut | ABC 10 Feature

ISHPEMING –The roar of the engines and the smell of exhaust fumes and food fill the air.

It’s the 15th annual Buzz the Gut car show and cruise.

“It’s kind of an way to get together with all the old cars,” said Buzz the Gut President Scott Perry, “But as you can see there’s new cars, there is goose and a half’s, there’s army trucks, there’s kind of a menagerie of everything here”

And there definitely are some more unique vehicles that show up, such as the ford owned by Dennis Henderson

Henderson has a 1950 ford utility coup that was made in Australia. The car is a right hand drive, meaning the steering wheel is on the right. Though Henderson says he used to driving with it, the car is “very unusual to have one of these in the U.S.”

A few hundred people make it to Ishpeming for the show, some of them are familiar with cars, such as Henderson, who said to keep his 1950 ford running, “you have to be sort of a mechanic because there’s always little things that go wrong with it.”

While some are just beginning to learn about how cars work, such as young attendee Makenzie Baker. Makenzie said that she was most excited about the food at the car show, but did once, “see a peek under a car, so they have all the bunch of thingy–ma–jigs and then the gas tanks way up high.”

The Car show started about 15 years ago. However the real Buzz the Gut happened decades before that, right here in the gut of the city.

Perry explained that “It’s something that, I guess the old–timers, even older then me always would call it, lets go buzz the gut.”

“buzz the gut is what they used to do in the old days, back in the 50’s and 60’s,” said Henderson, “everyone would buzz the center of Ishpeming, which they call the gut of the town.”

And it was for a very good reasons, says a man who used to Buzz the Gut.

“It was always on a Thursday, Friday night, Saturday night,” said Perry, “we’d go downtown and look for all the girls.

Even though it happened back in the sixties and seventies, Perry says it’s good to keep the tradition alive.

“It’s a good feeling to see all the guys come out and see the cars like this,” he said.