Happy Days.  America emerged from WWII with Baby Boomers glued to a new and affordable techy gadget -- television.  Pull into Union Service Station in 1950, and you could fill-up your tank for 18 cents per gallon!  John Steinbeck’s award-winning Viva Zapata! premiered across America in 1952.  The movie’s star, Marlon Brando, didn’t pull into the station while filming in Roma, Texas, but he did drop into Martinez Grocery across the street. 

 

Regrettably, Texans were experiencing an epic drought (1949-57), decimating ranches and farms.  Some relief would come with the completion of Falcon Dam in 1954, and its dedication by our Texan in the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

 

America was on the move.  The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 (aka the Interstate Defense Highway Act) now allowed families easily to commute to work and drive to vacation spots.  Pedro and Eugenia’s son, Jose Pedro, graduated in 1954 listening to Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, then the radical new beats of rock and roll crooners like Elvis and Little Richie.  America was in love with automobiles as drive-in restaurants like Whataburger (1950) and drive-in movies spread across America. 

 

This sped along the growth of suburbs as well as inner cities with their characteristic demographics.  Nevertheless, this was the end of government mandated racial segregation in schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and McCarthyism’s largely baseless attacks on labor unions.  In 1953 Rosa Parks was too tired to move to the Black section of the bus, and Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine to end polio. Gas was selling at 25 cents/gallon in 1959.