Shops like Harold's Auto Station, where they talk hunting and take life slower, are all but extinct. And did we mention the brontosaurus?
By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published November 10, 2003
[Times photo: Kevin White]
Christopher Rainey, 18, who is learning to become a mechanic, rolls tires into one of the service bays at Harold’s Auto Station in Spring Hill. The garage is a concrete brontosaurus.
[Times photo: Kevin White]
At the end of another work day, Dana Hurst, left, the manager of Harold’s Auto Station, talks with automotive technician Jerry Aurelio.
[Times photo: Kevin White]
The eyes of the dinosaur, which is 110 feet long and 47 feet high, used to light up.
[Times photo (2002)
— Dirk Shadd]
[Times photo (1999)]
Dinosaurs have long been a staple of Florida kitsch. Still roaming the earth: clockwise from above, a concrete tyrannosaur in St. Petersburg, a pink dinosaur in Spring Hill and a meat-eater in Plant City.
[Times photo (1999) — Dan McDuffie]
SPRING HILL - Florida used to be a more interesting place for motorists. Driving, you were likely to encounter just about anything, from an alligator creeping across the road to - I saw this - a Seminole Indian doing a rain dance during a drought in the Big Cypress.
Stopping for gas or a repair, you could buy a pickled egg or coconut head or maybe walk out back for a peek at the rattlesnake pit. At one station in Lake Wales, a dog trotted out to my car to collect the gas money. In the Florida of my youth, even visiting the restroom was a grand adventure. Dimly lit, damp and odoriferous, a tree frog clinging to the mirror, the typical gas-station water closet brought to mind something out of Edgar Allan Poe. Quoth my mother: Never again.
Modern Florida? Well, the old-fashioned gas station is pretty much extinct. What we have now are convenience stores with gas pumps. Most of them even come with reasonably clean restrooms.
Of course, a few Real Florida dinosaurs manage to hang on. The other day, when I was driving through Hernando County, I encountered one. For the record, it was a brontosaurus.
In the belly of the beast
"Come in. COME IN!" A portly man with white hair and a pink complexion sat behind an overflowing desk and beckoned. "I'm feeling pretty good," he said. "How bad can life be when you work inside a dinosaur?"
His name is Dana Hurst. He manages his dad's business, Harold's Auto Station, on U.S. 19 in Spring Hill. They fix cars at Harold's. They fix them in the belly of the beast, a giant concrete brontosaurus.
William Wilkis built the dinosaur, and a gas station to go with it, in 1964. The Sinclair Refining Co., whose mascot was a dinosaur, must have been happy to add the new station to its roster. A West Florida landmark, it was the place you stopped for gas on the way to Tallahassee or Weeki Wachee or Homosassa Springs.
Of course, Florida was a different place then. It was a different place even when Harold Hurst bought the business in 1977. "Everything seemed smaller and slower in Florida back then," he said the other day. Harold is 73 now and retired, but he still visits his station frequently, just in case he is needed to express an opinion. "U.S. 19 was only two lanes. Hell, you could lie out there in the middle of the road and not worry."
Try doing that now. Even at night, traffic rushes by frantically. Horns honk and brakes squeal. From time to time, Harold and the boys feel compelled to walk outside to watch an ambulance roar past.
Harold's isn't exactly a tourist stop or novelty anymore, not in a state where Disney is king and where many kids can quote dialogue from The Matrix. Yet from time to time, Harold and his son are surprised. Not long ago, a visitor from Germany waved a book in front of Dana Hurst's pink face. "The book was a guide to Florida and we were in there," Dana said. "At least that's what the man said. I don't read German."
Regulars know the drill
Years ago, Harold sold gas. When you drove up, he or Dana would pump your gas and not charge anything extra. They'd pop your hood and check the oil. They'd wipe the windshield and put air in your tires.
"We had lots of customers who came just because of the service," Harold said. "Lots of widows especially. Their husbands had always done business with us, and after the husband died, the wives just kept bringing their cars here because we'd pump their gas for them."
Sinclair Refining Co. stopped selling gas in Florida. Harold's sold gas for another franchise for a while, but he had a lot of competition from newer stations, the ones more like convenience stores. "It was hard to compete," Harold said. "So now we just do repairs."
Repairs are performed inside the dinosaur, which is 110 feet long and 47 feet high. Cars perch on lifts while grease-stained mechanics meander around clutching tools. Lug-removing machines roar like woodpeckers from Jurassic Park. Cars that arrive with hiccups are sent home with motors purring. Customers all the while gulp stomach-churning coffee inside a stuffy claustrophobic room crowded with papers, old pizza boxes and auto parts. Modern Florida is absent - except for the windows.
"We had to put bars on them - somebody broke in and stole tools," Harold said.
"Florida, even Hernando County, has changed," Dana said. "Used to be, people who moved here, they understood what Florida was all about. Things were slow; you couldn't be in a hurry. Now everybody is in a hurry."
Not if you are a regular at Harold's. Regulars know the drill. At Harold's you can talk slow. You can savor a tale about fishing and hunting. Customers, minutes out of the woods, arrive wearing camouflage. Still, it has been years since somebody drove up to brag about the dead deer strapped across the hood of the Ford.
Speaking of cars, American brands get the thumb's up at Harold's, where a sturdy old Buick is better appreciated than a shiny new Toyota. Hang around long enough and you might hear a story about a cherry 1956 Chevrolet or a pre-war Whippet roadster. Now those were cars!
Brag about your own first vehicle with caution.
"A 1962 Studebaker Lark?" asked Harold, failing to hide the sneer. "That was a real piece of crap car. Really drank the oil, didn't it?"
Harold knows cars.
Old habits die hard
Used to be that U.S. 19 in Hernando County was dark, dark as midnight in the country. Even on U.S. 19, a guy could lean up against a gas pump, look up and see the Milky Way if there were no car headlights heading his way. And if a fellow wanted, he could look back at the dinosaur. Its eyes glowed in the dark.
Of course, nothing stays the same, even in Hernando. Now there are lamps lighting the highway and parking lots everywhere. Be happy if you can see the full moon. As for the dinosaur lights, they're burned out. Maybe that's a metaphor for at least this one little corner of Real Florida.
