99% Invisible - 434- Artistic License

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Idaho was the first state to slap a slogan on a license plate, “Idaho Potatoes,” which may not seem like a big deal, but it turns out this idea would end up having outsized consequences, and not just for Idaho. Because what started in one state would soon spread. And when it did, the question of what should go on a license plate, and what shouldn't, would prove surprisingly contentious. Artistic License Like 99pi? Get the 99pi book: The 99% Invisible City

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 1928, a strange phenomenon was sweeping the state of Idaho, a vanishing act of sorts. A poise resident would wake up on a typical Monday morning, drag themselves out of bed, get dressed for the day, and they would hop in their car to drive to work, not noticing that something was missing. And suddenly, cops in the rear view. And the next thing that the driver of the car knew, they were getting picked up because they weren't displaying an license plate. Idaho's historian Rick Just says license plates, well, they were disappearing.

The Secretary of State was fielding complaints about all the lost tags. And soon enough, the culprit became clear. Tourists would come to Idaho and steal the plates. Idaho's license plates were being snatched up like plush hotel bathrooms. Yeah, yeah. People would come up, but they would pull up to either a tourist park or a motel or something, and they would spot those plates

and think, you know, I'd like to have a souvenir. And so they would just take it off of the car and take it home. And there was a reason why people couldn't resist swiping Idaho plates in particular. That year, the state had revolutionized license plate design. That's reporter Daniel Akramin. Before this, plates were basic, with info like the state name and the registration numbers. All of this on a pretty simple solid colored background. But in 1928, the Secretary of State in Idaho had an epiphany. He was like, we have this half-square

foot of open real estate just rolling around on everyone's cars. Let's do something with it. The 1928 plate is often said to be the very first advertising license plate in the country. They're the very first one that tried to advertise a product. In the product that Idaho chose, we'll surprise absolutely no one. The state's 1928 license plates all featured a single giant potato. That big kind of elongated goofy looking potato, but big. It was as big as the plate. The registration numbers were stamped in green lettering,

right on top of this lumpy brown spot. I would say it looks almost fecal in nature. It does. It really, the shape, particularly, yes, yes. The execution wasn't perfect, but it was innovative. Below the tremendous tater, there was even a modest, pragmatic slogan. Idaho potatoes. Today, every state's got a marketing slogan. Hawaii is the Aloha State, Missouri is the

Showme State, but Idaho was the first to put theirs on a license plate. They wanted to make sure that when people thought about Idaho, they thought potatoes. And for better or worse, the association stuck. And now it's gotten to be such a thing. I mean, coming out here in a few days, it's a New Year's Eve, we drop a potato. What do you mean? Absolutely. Well, you know how the Times Square ball comes floating down

like that. Well, we have a big potato that comes floating down. They've been doing it about 10 years now. The concept of slapping a tagline onto a license plate might not seem like a big deal, but it turns out this idea would end up having outsized consequences and not just for Idaho. We're talking legislative clashes, multiple Supreme Court cases, and even jail time. Because what started in one state would soon spread, and when it did, the question of what should go on a license plate and what shouldn't would prove surprisingly contentious.

The first state issued license plates appeared at the very beginning of the 20th century, and they served a mostly bureaucratic function. More people were buying and crashing cars every year, so state governments originally mandated plates as a way to keep track of all the nuts behind the wheel. No one was interested in sloganering. But then Americans discovered the road trip. The U.S.A. in your Chevrolet. Well, the big factor with increase in automobiles

was that it allowed people freedom to roam. You could go wherever you wanted. Christine Byron is a former history librarian at the Grand Rapids Public Library. She focuses on the history of tourism, and she says that the rise of the road trip in the 1920s created this huge new tourist market. Drivers needed services like gas stations and roadside motels that hadn't existed in the age of steam-powered travel. Traveling east, traveling west. When you traveled by a steamship or railroad,

you pretty much brought what you needed with you. And your meals were served at a resort. But once the automobile came along, there was a lot more money that needed to be spent. From the state's perspective, all those new tourist dollars were up for grabs. So states started letting the world know what they had to offer. Arizona had the Grand Canyon. Minnesota, it's lakes.

New Mexico, it's average 310 days of sunshine per year. And in this war for tourists, states promoted themselves anywhere they could. National magazines, various automobile guides, the blue guide, the green book, and of course tons and tons of promotional brochures. But no one thought to advertise on a license plate until 1928 when Idahoans realized

that their plates were too valuable to waste on just a registration number. And Rick just says once Idaho staked its starchy flag on the license plate, the rush was on. License plates became a different thing because of that potato. States spent the middle of the century transforming their plates from austere government documents into colorful boosters of tourism and industry. You could even think of them as miniature little a's that are driving all over the state and all over the country, hopefully.

In 1940, Arizona stamped Grand Canyon State on its plates and never looked back. In 1950, Minnesota went with land of 10,000 lakes. Meanwhile, New Mexico actually put sunshine state on its plates in 1932, before Florida muscled it on the slogan in 1949. Florida for the record only has an average of 237 days of sunshine per year, but whatever. Wisconsin was America's dearing land, Maine was vacation land. Other states couldn't make up their minds. Michigan's plate, for example, initially sported the phrase water wonderland in 1954,

which then evolved into winter water wonderland, followed by Great Lakes State, Great Lakes, and Great Lakes Blender. In 1970, Michigan State Tourism Council actually adopted the slogan, the Michigan's, the almost islands of the Great Lakes. But sadly, that plate never happened. Today, license plates like these are a national institution, and it's fun in a kitschy Americana kind of way. Each state is earnestly trying to put his best foot forward. So what could possibly be wrong here?

It turns out quite a bit. is earnestly trying to put his best foot forward. So what could possibly be wrong here? It turns out quite a bit. Because as fun as some of these plates might have been, at half a square foot, a license plate is a small canvas. And when you have to pick one symbol to represent an entire state, you are not going to please everyone. And this has caused trouble from the get go. In 1928, when Idaho unleashed the potato plates, it didn't go over all that well. People they tested those license plates. Lots of Idahoans, it turned out,

resented, being associated with the state's cash crop. Particularly people from Northern Idaho, because they don't grow potatoes up there. It really gets a kind of a southeastern Idaho thing. Newspaper editorials called it an embarrassment. One headline actually read, Why Bring That Up. And probably it's a good thing that they just dropped the idea entirely and went back to numbers in 1929. No motto, no graphics, and certainly no potatoes. And license plate quarrels weren't unique to Idaho.

Florida had to dump one of its plate designs after residents complained that the great fruit with a stem attached looked more like a bomb. Massachusetts, meanwhile, tried to put a codfish right next to its state's name, only to be blamed by fishermen for a poor catch that year, because the fish on the plate was swimming away from the word Massachusetts. These dust-ups over license plate design can seem like small potatoes, but the fight over license plates was about to be taken to the next level. Thanks to a politician named Meljum Thompson. In this critical battle for the survival of America,

we shall not tolerate a no-win settlement. Thompson was a titan of New Hampshire politics in the 1970s. He served three terms as governor, and he was a conservative fire brand who hated Democrats. We must drive from the seats of power in the White House Congress and the State Department, all of the foul brood of Kami lovers. Thompson had a lot of unorthodox ideas, including wanting to arm the New Hampshire National Guard with nuclear weapons. And he was obsessed with freedom.

Here's Thompson's Dorky campaign song. Live Free or Die, of course, is New Hampshire's fiery state motto. It was coined by a revolutionary war vet. And Thompson loved it so much that before he became governor, he worked with allies in the state legislature to get it slapped on every car in the state. And I don't know of any more prominent place to carry a message than right on the license plate.

That's the best bill board at all. In 1971, the slogan on the state's license plate changed from scenic New Hampshire to live for your die. Let's be your die, don't look for freedom, pass you by, stand up. But not everyone embraced the state's message. I have to, that's ridiculous. At 88 years old, George Maynard still gets heated about the New Hampshire license plate.

And for good reason, it changed the course of his life. George grew up in Rhode Island. He married a woman, Maxine, who he'd actually met in junior high. They settled into a pretty typical family life. They had kids. George got a job as a newspaper printer, and then something happened, like really abruptly.

In 1956, four years after I got married, the witnesses came to my house. They told me that God had a name, and his name was Jehovah. George and his family joined the Jehovah's Witnesses. And by 1972, they had moved to Claremont, New Hampshire. That's where the trouble started. Every day, George would hop in his car

and drive to work at the local printing press with his New Hampshire license plates screaming in all caps, live free or die. In this really great it on George, because he didn't share Meljyn Thompson's belief of freedom over everything. As a Jehovah's Witness, George actually believed that God-given life was more important than freedom. Well, that's right, definitely. And the real existence of life is very precious. Life is a gift,

and we appreciate it very much. George didn't want the government telling him what to die for. So then one day I decided, you know, if it's offensive, why should be forced to support something that's offensive? So I carved it up with Rick Tate. And when he erased the state motto, George marched to the front lines of the license plate wars. Covering up the slogan was a violation of state law, but a few weeks went by and not much happened.

Until one day, George and Maxine were shopping. They left the store, they got to their car in the parking lot, and they saw a police officer writing them a ticket. George told me he'd been expecting this for a while. He didn't actually feel scared or surprised. Well, I was happy. You were happy?

Yeah, because I was expressing my belief, my rejection of something. George refused to pay the $25 ticket. And of course, I kept the tape on, I did it again. The tickets piled up until his consistent refusal to pay landed him in court, and the judge put him away for 15 days. And so if you don't want to live for your day, you're going to jail in New Hampshire.

Two weeks may not seem like hard time, but the sentence had a huge impact on George's life. When he didn't show up for work, he got fired. And he was embarrassed that his kids had to see him hauled away. Things were tough for the Maynards. But George still wasn't on fighting. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, he filed suit in New Hampshire, claiming the state's law prohibiting the all-train-of-licence plates was unconstitutional. And the state court agreed, but Meldrum lived for your die,

Thompson, had become governor by then, and Thompson was not inclined to extend George the freedom to cover up his beloved motto. So Thompson appealed the case. We'll hear arguments next in... All the way to the US Supreme Court. 75, 14, 53.uss, Maynard. The license plates collided with the First Amendment before the High Court in November of 1976. During oral arguments, George Maynard's lawyer claimed that in covering up live for your

die, George was just exercising his freedom of expression. License plates are displayed on people's private vehicles. He argued the government can't just hijack that space and force people to express a certain viewpoint. And it's our position that the state lacks the power to require its citizens to bear this sort of model. I think that if the court were to uphold this sort of thing, then the state could require all citizens to wear a pin or an arm band, or they could require you to have a plaque

on your door next to your address saying, live for your die. New Hampshire countered with, what's the big deal? Just because it's on the license plate doesn't mean every driver believes in it. And sometimes it seemed like the court was buying it, like just as they're good Marshall. The first time I noticed the motto was buying it, like just as they're good Marshall. So what was it? Was a license plate a declaration of the state's ideology or just a thing that says nothing at all since everybody had one? George couldn't make it to DC for the ruling. He actually found out the same way as everyone else. From CBS News headquarters in New York, this is the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite.

Supreme Court ruled today that drivers may not be compelled to disperse. Frank I came on a nose and says that Supreme Court ruled, is our favorite that you can tape over the state bottles. That was nice. The court in effect gave them permission to tape over the offensive words. I think the court got it right in the major case. Caroline Mala Corbin is a First Amendment scholar at the University of Miami.

She says the court's six three decision hinged on a concept called compelled speech. The First Amendment protects both your right to speak, so it protects you against government censorship. But the free speech clause also protects your right not to speak. So it protects you against the government forcing you to say an ideological message that you disagree with. And that was what the problem was here.

They were trying to force you to say something that you don't want to say and you don't want to live by. In George's homemade solution, that strip of red tape, it actually held up under the weight of the First Amendment. And so that's my way of expressing my free speech. At this point, it might seem like George Maynard's case solved the license plate problem. Today, if you live in, say, New Jersey and object to the notion that you live in the garden state, well, you can cover that sucker up. Your car is not a government billboard on wheels. But it turns out the constitutional battle over license

plates is not over because after all that was settled, a new problem showed up. Specialty plates. You've seen these. Unlike vanity plates where drivers choose their own numbers and letters, specialty plates sport alternate designs with their own logos and slogans. They're usually put out in collaboration with the government by a non-governmental organization. When drivers choose a specialty plate, they pay a little extra. And those proceeds get split between their chosen group and the State Department of Motor Vehicles. So for example, in my family, we have a Save the Manatees license plate. That's a specialty license plate that the state of Florida offers that we paid extra money to purchase.

Why did you choose the manatee plate? What are ridiculous questions we want to save humanity, naturally. Specialty plates are easy money. A lot of states will issue one to almost any nonprofit, as long as enough people are interested. But the problem with an open door policy is you might not like who comes inside. And a decade ago, the state of Texas learned that the hard way. I'm now calling the meeting for November 10, 2011 at the board of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to order. Usually public hearings for the DMV

are dull bureaucratic affairs, poorly attended. But in 2011, the board of the Texas DMV held a standing room only hearing. So we're going to move to agenda item 5a, which is the approval of specially licensed plate. The DMV board votes unproposed designs for specialty plates. They generally approve the designs with very little fanfare or scrutiny. But this one was different.

The sons of Confederate veterans wanted Texas to issue a license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag. And a lot of people weren't happy about it. Dozens of community leaders showed up to testify. Good morning. Thank you very much for letting me come. That voice you're hearing is San Fronia Thompson. She's a Texas State House representative and a black woman born in 1939.

There was a time that I could not even come on the grounds of the Capitol because I was black. And it's very difficult to be able to see these symbols because they bring back memories. And to me, it's like sticking poop in the face of black people every day to see them. That's how repulsive it is. We have folks who say, well, I'm offended by the SCV plate. And my response is, and your point? In favor of the Confederate flag plates,

was Jerry Patterson. He's the commissioner of the Texas Land Office and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. No one has a right to go through life to be unaffended. Patterson made a first amendment argument. He thought that if enough people like him wanted a specialty plate related to Texas history Then the state shouldn't be allowed to prevent him from having it. There's also some folks who suggested well now

If you want to do that happen a Mexican flag plate and I say bring it on and if that plate offended anyone My response to them is well get a grip It's gonna happen as it should be After two hours of tense testimony, the board held its vote. All those in favor of denying the plate, please raise your right hand. All those opposed, the motion carries unanimously the plate is denied. There would not be a Texas license plate featuring a Confederate flag. But then the sons of Confederate veterans sued. Arguing that the state had violated their free speech rights by targeting speech that

they did not like. Remember, Texas had an open door policy on specialty plates, which meant that they weren't normally in the business of picking sides. So the state really was singling out the sons of Confederate veterans when it denied their plate. And once again, there was a lot at stake here.

George Maynard's Live For Your Die Case had established that you could reject the state's messaging if it didn't suit you, but was it okay if the state to reject your message on a state issued license plate? We'll get to the argument first this morning in case 14144. So in 2015, license plates were back in the Supreme Court. John Walker versus the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. This was a really close decision, a five-fourth split. But the court's majority sided with Texas.

The state could deny the Confederate flag plates. The court acknowledged Jerry Patterson's right to display symbols, even abhorrent ones, on say a bumper sticker. But they said that right does not extend to license plates. Because the Supreme Court held that specialty license plates were government speech. And the government's right to speak is also protected. Justice Stephen Breyer, in his opinion, actually pointed to a kind of legal symmetry with the

live-free or die case, just like a state can't force an individual to display a message. So, the sons of Confederate veterans cannot force Texas to convey on its license plates, a message with which the state does not agree. Ultimately, the Supreme Court's decision in George Maynard's case didn't resolve all the issues around license plates, and neither will the Texas decision. Caroline Mollekorban thinks license plates will always be a contested space. A government-issued document displayed on a private vehicle.

It's as if a license plate is a kind of bowl horn, only instead of taking turns speaking. You have both the government and private individuals shouting into the bowl horn. The problem is they're both speaking. And perhaps that's why this little hunk of metal has so often become an ideological battleground. A place for governments and citizens to clash over the identity of an entire state in its attempt to reduce it to a slogan

ensemble speeding down the highway. And those debates are still playing out. The Supreme Court ruling empowered Texas to keep the Confederate flag off its license plates, but it also empowered states to make the opposite choice, and at least six have. If you live in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, or Tennessee, you can go to your local DMV today and register your car with a state-issued specialty plate bearing a Confederate battle flag. In a couple of those states, Tennessee and South Carolina, lawmakers have actually introduced bills that would ban the flag from specialty plates.

But so far, neither bill has gotten a vote. And in Idaho, although it might not ever make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, the state's official license plate still raises eyebrows. In Idaho, although it might not ever make it to the US Supreme Court, the state's official license plate still raises eyebrows. And, you know, I wish we would change it. And some folks, like Rick Just, are still less than happy about it. I don't think that anybody really thinks it's a bad evil thing or anything, but, you know, I'm just tired of it.

There's no longer a lumpy brown spot on the license plate, but the motto still reads, famous potatoes. When we come back, reporter Daniel Ackerman takes us into the subculture of license plate collectors. You knew they existed, they do exist. Let's stay with us. We ended up cutting out, but can you tell us more about them? Yeah, so amateur collectors are really the keepers of this history. There's not like a Smithsonian Museum

of the American License Plate or anything like that. It's kind of like archived in the basements and addicts around the country. Yeah, exactly. And one of those archivists is Stuart Berg. I recently visited Stuart here in Boston to check out his collection, because he's been collecting since he was a kid in the 70s and he said he inherited his first plates from his grandfather.

My grandfather had a lot of really cool old cars and there were 21 plates hanging in his garage and at one point I took them all down and I actually have every one of those plates except one today and the one that I got rid of dying to get back. So like every true collector, his collection is perpetually one item short. Yeah, although he has certainly made up for that missing plate in terms of volume, because at one point he told me his plate collection topped a hundred thousand. Whoa. How do you even accumulate that many plates?

Roman, I wanted to know that too, but Stewart was pretty reluctant to give up his sources. Oh, I see. But when it was at its height, his plate collection, it was so thorough that, you know, in the classic car world, someone who wanted an accurate vintage plate to go with their vintage car they would just call up Stewart. And I wanted every year that if somebody said hey I need a three-digit plate from my Buick from 1931 can you can you get me one and I'd I'd have it. So when I went to visit Stewart we sat out on the pool deck near his condo because of COVID and he rolled out this wagon with two huge plastic tubs completely packed with plates.

Each one was in his own little protective sleeve. And he just started pulling out and showing me some of his favorites, starting with some of the earliest state-issued license plates, which were from the first decade at the 1900s. And so what were those like? They were really fancy.

To me, they actually looked more like fine China than vehicle tags. That's because they were literally made of porcelain. Well, that seemed a little too fragile to go on a car. Like, how does that work? Yeah, well, he was actually pretty proud that he had some without any chips or dings in them.

But keep in mind, at that time, only really rich people owned cars. Like, they weren't even that reliable as a mode of transport, but they were definitely a status symbol. And the license plates kind of played along. They were this smooth, cobalt blue with bold white numbering. And I can actually show you one of you'd like to see it.

Yeah. It was a 1909 number five. Feel how heavy that is. Oh, yeah. It was registered to a number five. Feel how heavy that is. Oh yeah. It was registered to a James B. Sterns, 31 Pleasant Street and Brooklyn Mass for a three horsepower Pope Electric. A Pope Electric, what's a Pope Electric?

It's an electric car. Oh, okay, there you go. So, I mean, this is before combustion took over. They were still experimenting with all these different types of engines. That's how new the automobile was at the time. Oh time. So I don't know if you caught that, but the license plate number was just five as in Massachusetts fifth state license plate. That is remarkable. Having license plate number five has got to confer some bragging rights in the license plate collection community.

Right. It absolutely does. And at the time, it also conferred bragging rights to the owner, like James P. Sterns, he was a bank president, so he was, you know, kind of the high society at the time. And Stuart also had first lady Francis Cleveland's license plate married to President Grover Cleveland, and she was number 44. 44, it's pretty good. But I did get the the era of fancy porcelain plates with low numbers didn't didn't last all that long. No. And that's thanks mainly to Henry Ford and his model T.

Cars got way more affordable in the 19 teens. And in the first quarter of the century, the number of registered cars in the US jumped from 8,000 to more than 18 million. So as early as 1916, Massachusetts was stamping their plates out of tin, which was way cheaper. So these mass produced metal plates, they hit the scene. And that's when, you know, lights and plates, as we talk about in the story, basically become billboards. Right.

They become the space where states can play around with graphics and slogans and steward has thousands of examples. So during our interview, he was pulling out plate after plate after plate. Like I would try to ask him a question and he would throw off a one word answer but already be pulling out the next graphic plate to show me. This is a golden Jubilee from the state of Washington from 1939.

The 36 Wyoming was the first year of the Bucking Bronco. Mount Rushmore in 1952 was on the place the first year of the state shaped plate in Tennessee. So Carolina in 1930, they're the iodine state. And they like produce iodine? Yeah, it is the New York world's fair. No real graphics, but it does have a lot of words on it. Wow.

It's kind of fun to hear all the experimentation that was going on. Like the Tennessee plate was shaped like Tennessee. That's pretty cool. Yeah, he said that one was actually pretty tough to mount on people's cars. It bet. Yeah, but you know that experimentation really exploded

in the 1970s when states started putting a reflective coating on the license plates. And that basically let them print really detailed graphics rather than having to like emboss the shapes into the metal. So design's got really busy. And I think that is perhaps best exemplified by the plates that Illinois recently introduced just back in 2017. So let's pull that one up.

Oh yeah, okay. So there's a lot going on here. Yeah. It has the light blue and red of the Chicago flag, which I like. That looks like the top of the state house, I'm assuming. And then a windmill. Yeah, shout out to rural Illinois. Yeah, because right next to that is the Chicago skyline. And then of course, at the very far left edge is a half a face of Abraham Lincoln.

Right. So there's not even enough room for him. He's like split right down the nose. And it has land of Lincoln, of course, which is their motto. What's kind of interesting about this is like, this is kind of the opposite of the Idaho potato problem that we talked about in the piece. I mean, this is not the whole state boiled down into one thing. This is the whole state boiled down into way too many things to put on a license plate.

Right. And you know, it's not pretty because the, it's not like the canvas gets any bigger. It's still just this half a square foot and you're cramming ever more onto it. And so what do, you know, people extur, you know, license plate collectors make of, you know, this kind of graphical onslaught, you know, like, what do they think of this as compared to the old plates? Yeah, I mean, most collectors I talked to expressed a preference for those older plates

with the simple sleek design, but a lot of them also just take the whole thing in stride because to guys like Stewart, the more the merrier, right? Do you think license plate design has gotten like too busy and complicated? No, I don't. Here's a knee plate. This is one of my favorites.

It's the Georgia peach. What else do I have that I can show you? More graphics just means more plates. It just means more joy for Stuart. Absolutely, yes. Just more grist for the collector's mill. Is it Texas Centennial Plate from 1936? Is New Mexico 1940? Great graphics on these.

Utah Center, Cena, America in 1942. Ohio in 1938. A early graphic plate from Rhode Island. 41 Hawaii is an Oklahoma plate with an F and the S. And this is a very, very red plate. 99% of visible was produced this week by Daniel Ackerman, edited by Joe Rosenberg, mixed by Bryson Barnes, music by our director of Sound Sean Rial. Delaney Hall is the senior producer, Kurt Colstead is the digital director, Ressa Teem

is Emmett Fitzgerald, Katie Mingle, Christopher Johnson, Abby Medon, Chris Baroupe, Vivian Leye, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. Special thanks this week to a whole bunch of additional people we interviewed for this story, including Virginia Sharf, Eugene Volok, Peter Blodget, Dan Smith, Thomas Wilson, and especially Tennessee State Representative, G.A. Hardaway, who is fighting to get the Confederate Battle Flag off of the state's specialty plates. If you want to learn more about all of this, we'll have links and media on our website, 9iPi.org. We are a project of 91.7K ALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row, which is spread across all of North America right now,

but is centered in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. We are a part of Radio Topia from PRX, a collective of the best most innovative shows in all of podcasting, discover, listen, and support them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussion about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 9-9-PI-org or on Instagram and read it too. But if you want to chime in on which state has the best license plate, well, I encourage you to speak your piece at 9iPI.org. Video til the end.

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