The Fabricator
Harry’s Shell on Charlotte Avenue was overwhelmed with customers last weekend as three separate living-history events converged at the same time, says owner Harry Gibaldi.
A group protesting the United States’ dependence on foreign oil had dressed in leisure suits and were lining up outside the station in 1970s-era cars to simulate the gas lines of the first energy crisis in 1973.
As the oil protesters’ Cordobas, Pintos and Chevy Vegas made their drivers’ petroleum-oriented political point, several busloads of people on their way to events observing the Freedom Rides of the 1960s also pulled into the station to gas up before heading south to Alabama to teach and reminisce about the events of the civil rights era.
That group was, in turn, blocked by several pickup trucks filled with paunchy men in ersatz Confederate and Union uniforms who were heading for a rehearsal for a re-enactment of the Battle of Franklin.
“It was a great day for business, but I was pulling my hair out,” Gibaldi says. “We had the Civil War soldiers lining up outside the rest rooms while I was trying to get the Freedom Riders’ buses filled with diesel.
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“At the same time, we were trying to get those people in leisure suits moved through—they were buying a lot of snack foods for some reason. And everybody was complaining about the ’70s music they were playing on their car radios, like ‘The Night Chicago Died’ and ‘Billy, Don’t Be a Hero’—terrible stuff.”
Gibaldi says he was just as happy when the groups moved on.
“History was not my best subject, anyway,” he says. “I liked getting back to customers from the here and now.”