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<\/a>I was born in Ogden, Utah in 1950. What I came to know about cars was both exciting and frightening.\u00a0 World War II was over and my dad, Van, had a dream like most men did after serving and that was to live out the American Dream or in this case create it. But he needed a car, so he bought a\u00a01948 Ford and painted it\u00a0Red, White and Blue. The roof was repainted with red and white stripes from front to rear with a blue body. He was cool, married with three children and on his way to success.\u00a0 For every 1000 Americans we had just about 325 cars<\/strong>.\u00a0 Cars were getting more powerful as men were looking for better times and the women were ready for families and peace.\u00a0 I was not around for the 40\u2019s but we all know it was a time of fear and inhumanity.\u00a0 After the war America felt we were great and our way of life was the best in the world.\u00a0 In 1950 gas was 18 cents a gallon, a new car was 1,500 bucks and a new home was well under 10,000.\u00a0 The middle class could make payments so the 50\u2019s were a great time for many people to get well into the middle class. It seemed magical with Disneyland opening up and the World\u2019s Fair showing us the future of flying cars<\/strong> and leisure time.\u00a0 Any one born in those times remember it as a great time. Three more kids were born and now the Van Batenburg\u2019s were living the dream. Van was selling used cars at his car lot, Shirley (my mother) was raising six\u00a0kids in Ogden, Utah. By the end of the 50\u2019s the dream was coming apart for me. The cars were growing fins, getting faster, getting bigger and heavier and V8 engines were the most popular choice. President Eisenhower was getting a highway bill pasted in Congress that would create the Interstates. Cities were getting congested andwe were\u00a0off to the suburbs\u00a0in our 10 mile per gallon Buicks.<\/p>\nNo wonder we need HEVs now<\/p>\n
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Craig<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello, I was born in Ogden, Utah in 1950. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craigs-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fixhybrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}