Barto Ferrara and his son, Bart L. Ferrara, remember the long lines as though they were yesterday. So does Bob Leone.
"They were backed up a half-mile or more in each direction," Barto Ferrara recalled of anxious motorists trying to get gasoline in the midst of a fuel shortage that peaked in 1979. "There were cars and trucks all along Grand Boulevard and coming up Parente Boulevard. It kept us hopping, that's for sure. We were running on limited hours and limited supplies (of gasoline)."
Ferrara's Exxon service station in 1979 was located where the Citgo Servicenter and Bart's Tire and Auto Service are that he and his son own and operate today on Grand Boulevard in Monessen.
Less than a mile away, Bob Leone was in business at Eastgate Exxon at the corner of Schoonmaker Avenue and Parente Boulevard.
"I still see those long lines backed up in my dreams," said Leone, who now owns and operates Forever Jewelers and Awards at the Riverside Shoppes in Lower Speers. "It was a real nightmare for everyone."
A six-column picture spread across the top of the front page in the June 20, 1979 edition of The Valley Independent emphasizes Leone's point. Schoonmaker Avenue and Parente Boulevard looked like parking lots for the myriad vehicles waiting to get to the pumps at Eastgate Exxon. The scene was repeated daily for several months at stations throughout the Mon Valley.
"Sure, some people were angry about (limitations) but most of them understood," said the elder Ferrara, 79, who has been in the service station business since 1950. "But they weren't complaining about the price (about 89 cents a gallon). They just wanted the product."
Ferrara, like most dealers in the area, shut down his Exxon station each day after selling about 700 gallons of gasoline. The rest of the day was busy with handling service calls. At one point he was forced to close the station on Saturdays because of the low supply of gasoline.
He recalled his station had been cut back 22 percent from its June 1978 supply to 23,000 gallons.
"Every dealer in the area was in the same boat, only some were worse off than I was; they had lower allocations," he said.
While Leone's Exxon station was "nearby," Ferrara recalled that four other service stations were located within 100 yards of his business.
"There was an American (Amoco) station up the street and Mobile, Boron and Sunoco stations in the other direction," Ferrara said as he pointed in both directions along Grand Boulevard. "All of us were having a tough time trying to do business and please everyone. It was a real struggle."
According to the Internet site Wikipedia, the 1979 oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.
"Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979, allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to gain control," Wikipedia said. "The protests shattered the Iranian oil sector. While the new regime resumed oil exports, it was inconsistent and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations ... increased production to offset the decline, and the overall loss in production was about 4 percent. However, a widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher than would be expected under normal circumstances."
The political explanation of 1979 notwithstanding, Leone said he felt the pinch several years earlier.
"(Eastgate Exxon) opened on November 1972 when the United States was just entering a severe energy crunch," Leone recalled. "Our allocations were based on what we had received the previous year, so I was in a real predicament because I had been in business just over a month the year before. We had a rough beginning, but we endured the crisis until times were better. Our volume steadily increased over the years and our customers remained loyal. Once (the crisis) was over and conditions improved, we moved forward and never looked back."
Before opening Eastgate Exxon, Leone owned and operated an Esso station at Third Street and Schoonmaker Avenue in downtown Monessen for 3.5 years and Gateway Esso in Belle Vernon for two years. Significantly, Ferrara also owned and operated a Texaco station at the Third and Schoonmaker venue when he started in the business in 1950.
"I didn't know much about the business but I jumped in with both feet and we've been fortunate all these years," Ferrara said.
Ferrara moved his business to Grand Boulevard in 1961 as a Humble Oil Co. (Esso) station. It later became an Exxon site before evolving into the Citgo Servicenter that now holds forth with gasoline and a variety of repair services.
Ferrara and Leone lamented that many customers "didn't fully understand" that the shortage of gasoline was compounded because of "emergency" needs.
"We were mandated to have fuel available for police, ambulances, fire trucks and garbage trucks," said Leone, who was Monessen's municipal fire chief at the time. "We also were committed to providing fuel for the Visiting Nurses program at the (Mon Valley Community) Health Center. But some people didn't want to accept that. They wanted gasoline when they wanted it. Many of them were very mean and took their frustrations out (verbally) on our attendants but their complaints were misguided and unwarranted. My guys, and those at other stations, were following the rules."
Leone, who had as many as five attendants pumping gas at the height of the shortages in 1979, said he would close his pumps after only three or four hours.
"Once we quit (pumping), we had trucks blocking the entrances to the station," he said. "But some people found ways to get around those barriers. One guy edged his way by a truck and drove right over the shrubbery we had planted to beautify the area -- just plowed right through and up to the pumps. I asked him what the heck he thought he was doing and he demanded gasoline. We showed him the way out."
Another incident that remains fresh with Leone is a knock that came on his door early one morning.
"It was about 2 a.m. and I was, quite frankly, more than frightened," he said. "I peeked out the window and saw it was one of our city policemen. I opened the door and said, 'What's going on?' He wanted to know what time I was going to open the (service) station. I told him 6 a.m. and asked 'Why?' He said, 'Bob, they're lined up already on the streets to get gas."
Police also "kept the peace" on some days when gas was being pumped.
"Jim 'Buckets' Kline was handling traffic control one day and I called him over to the pumps," Leone recalled with his trademark smile. "We were getting close to the cutoff point and I was a little nervous about deciding who the last customer would be. Jim was an imposing figure, a big guy, so I asked him to make the decision. He didn't hesitate, walked to the last car inside the station lot and told the guy behind him, 'That's it for today.' No one complained."
Ferrara and Leone said the "Odd/Even" system alleviated the crunch to a certain extent. That plan had motorists getting gas on "odd" or "even" days, depending on the last digit on their license plates.
"It worked fairly well," Ferrara said. "But it was the same old story, you couldn't please all the people all the time. There were people who would say they forgot they had an even number and come in on an odd number day. We couldn't convince them we had only a certain amount of gasoline available, that some of it had to be set aside for the emergency vehicles, and that we were trying to be in compliance with regulations."
While Ferrara and his son remain in business today, Leone, 65, has been removed from gasoline pumps and auto repairs for several years. He owned Panorama gift shop in Monessen for 18 years before opening Forever in Speers eight years ago.
And he doesn't complain "too much" about the high prices of gasoline today.
"Hey, I understand what (dealers) are going through," he said. "I empathize with them. It's one of those 'been there, done that' things. The cost per gallon wasn't the big thing 30 or 40 years ago, but the problems were the same -- trying to do business and keep the customers happy. Some things never change."
