Gas Panic!!

We got a frantic call yesterday, warning us that the truckers were going on strike, and that people were lining up, laying siege to petrol stations in the fear that all of the fuel would be gone. We saw no evidence of this here in Nastyville, but it really happened back in North Alabama, even if the reason for the panic was a canard. In the defense of the panic-ees, there was some trucker protesting going on.

A lot of folks live in fear of another big trucker strike, like the one in 1974, which was held in protest of high fuel prices (though they were relatively MUCH higher than today's). Many of the folks in North Alabama remember the Shoals-area murder that was a centerpiece of the last big strike, when a trucker who had "crossed the picket lines" was shot to death on Highway 72.