a civil action

It’s shaped like a giant sugar cube, this ancient, yellowing structure on the corner of Opp Street and Eubank Avenue in Wilmington. Surrounded by a 12-foot-high barbed-wire fence and downwind of refinery smokestacks and railroad yards, it’s something Jerry Garcia might have seen in a dream.

The sign-less mystery is actually an 1862 Civil War powder magazine. An ammunition bunker. A blockhouse. So what would have been stored inside? “Black powder in bulk barrels for cannons,” says Phil Harley, who can often be found sporting a muslin shirt, dark blue coat, black boots--in short, the uniform of a Civil War Yankee private from the 2nd Cavalry. “For rifle ammunition, you typically had 1,000 rounds per box; for pistols, 1,900 to 2,200 rounds.”

Harley, a fiber-optic cable guy from Glendale, recently pitched a small Civil War campsite, complete with white tent, tins and weapons, in front of Wilmington’s Civil War Drum Barracks, a few streets up from the powder magazine. Harley brings his show to Wilmington three times a year as part of a living history program. “The persona that I normally use is an Irishman who came over with his family in the 1830s and joined the Army in 1854,” says Harley.

If you prefer action over chatter, however, later today you’ll find Harley at Ft. Tejon State Historic Park, off the Grapevine, holding a cap-and-ball .54-caliber as he joins a 200-person Civil War battle reenactment. (The Ft. Tejon Historical Assn. will host reenactments the third Sunday of every month from now through October.)

“The Civil War is four pages in my sons’ history books,” says Harley. “There is a lot of noise in a kid’s universe, such as TV and video games. Before any learning can take place, you have to stand out above the noise just to get their attention. The uniform and period weapons help me do that.”

Harley picks up a museum-quality ammunition box. “During the Civil War, black powder was very dangerous; friction could set it off,” he says. “It was still not that different from the original gunpowder/black powder invented by the Chinese 1,000 years before. A spark could have demolished the building.”

He says that, during the Civil War, some seccessionists lived in El Monte and San Bernardino. Who knows what Confederate ghosts might try and blow up the drum barracks in the moonless night? Harley has stood watch at the drum barracks before. “We have a wood fire going, pull out a guitar and sing,” he says. “And then we hit the hay.”