1953.
My dad was 19, recently graduated from high school…and desperately trying to avoid being drafted into the Chinese Nationalist Army under the ultimate oversight of the dictator Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dad failed in this regard. He was drafted, only not into the Army. Rather, he was conscripted into the Air Force where he was assigned to pilot a tank. Presumably in Taiwan in 1953 tanks were much easier to come by than airplanes. Anyhow, the assignment didn’t last for long. That gig was up after his poor tank-piloting skills led to an unfortunate incident involving the destruction of a farmer’s field and maybe killing – or at least substantially scaring – a water buffalo or two. In short order my Dad was ejected from the service, sent to college, and the rest is history.
On the other side of the world, my mom was 11, living in Western Maryland in an area that is now a suburb of Washington, DC but back then was mostly woods and dairy farms; notably devoid of tanks, and particularly Chinese people.
I was 8.5 years from existence and given the circumstances was about as likely to occur as a snowstorm in August (in Maryland or Taipei). But things happen, you know?
And this 1953 Pontiac? It was there for all of that.