In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman Read Free Book Online Page A

View, had been built on a circular piece of property on the northeastern corner of Garvey Avenue, alongside Johnny No-Bones Steakhouse #1, with a permit to operate 180 camp spaces. The housing boom attracted numerous speculators and developers; they bought up large tracts of land, turning theSan Gabriel Valley (along with the San Fernando Valley) into what historian and author Mike Davis called a “real estate casino.”
    For the average American, home ownership seemed an unobtainable dream before the war. But it was well within the grasp of many during the postwar boom, partially as a result of the generous GI Bill that offered $2,000 home loan guaranties. Indeed, between 1944 and 1952, the Veterans Administration backed nearly $2.4 million in home loans for World War II veterans. In Baldwin Park, shortly after the war, a desirable two-bedroom house with a double lot cost between $6,650 and $8,500. And a large percentage of the town’s new housing developments were specifically built with the influx of veterans in mind.
    One residential builder, Louis Rudnick, developed a tract of two-bedroom houses with the lofty sounding name “the Baldwin Park Estates.” They were generally referred to simply as “GI homes,” and were made available to veterans “with no down payment except escrow and impound costs.” The houses boasted such features as automatic garbage disposals and plenty of closet and storage space. Another developer, Home Builders Institute, constructed a tract known as the Baldwin Park Homes. They were two-and three-bedroom dwellings along Los Angeles Street at Merced Street, between Las Tunas Drive and Ramona Boulevard, and were offered to veterans for “as low as $250 down.” Baldwin Park’s rural landscape of orchards, dairy farms, ranches, and citrus groves was fast being transformed into stretches of ranch houses and cottages with detached garages.
    The Snyders moved into a small one-bedroom house on the corner of Vineland and Francisquito avenues, across the street from the Baldy View trailer park. It was a time marked by uncomplicated formality, of starched white shirts for men and peplum skirts for women, and of hopefulness and sanguinity for all. The era carried all of the hallmarks that came to be associated with Southern California—a place where the past could be cleared away in order to build a brighter future. Indeed it was during this period that a Chicago-transplant, cartoonist, and animator named Walt Disney bought up 160 acres of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim and erected an homage to his dreams that he named Disneyland.
    Harry Snyder’s dream was a modest one. He was going to start his own little food business—a hamburger stand. Harry had good reason to want to go into business for himself; a child of the Great Depression, he watched his father shift between the Vancouver shipyards and the boom-bust cycle of Seattle in search of work before moving his family down to Southern California in search of yet another opportunity, only to land in the middle of the greatest economic decline in American history. Harry was determined to live a different sort of life. It wasn’t greed that drove him; he was simply determined to create his own future.
    With the war over, Harry had a strong gut feeling. Although he had a couple of failed businesses under his belt, he believed that following the Depression and years of war and shortages, people would be in the mood to enjoy life. Harry wanted to serve quality food at a reasonable price, and as quickly as possible. “We really have to have a place where people can get their sandwiches and go,” he said. Harry and Esther would open a new kind of hamburger stand—the drive-through—catering to an increasingly mobile society. A typical entrepreneur, Harry was rich in ideas but short on cash. Early on, he took on a partner, a man named Charles Noddin, who agreed to finance the