The '70s, from memory
 

Like many of us, I grew up in the seventies. Reflecting back from today there are things I miss and don't.

Please share your '70s memories.

I do Not miss:
The smell of unburned gasoline as a car passes by on a street.
I am reminded of that every time a nice old muscle car goes by.
I do miss the length of hemlines.

Best
Les

I remember trance-like periods of sesame street, electric company, and Saturday morning Looney tunes in the den tv until mom turned on the vacuum. Then the tv screen turned into an angry storm of snow and white noise. "Awe mom, come on."

This sometimes happened with the kitchen blender and mixer.

I miss the music. Simpler lifestyle. Radio shacks, Lafayette, Heathkit, model building, hobby stores, music stores, milk deliveries, and deposit bottles.

I don't miss - unreliable cars that rusted out..... changing shocks and exhausts every 3 years kept midas in business. $1000 for a 19" tube tv. Landlines. Party lines. Expensive long distance phone calls. Expensive plane tickets. 3 on the tree.

Our tv was also on a movable cart with clear plastic wheels. Nothing weird about a heavy tube and glass monster on a rickety little table.

air quality
 

In downtown Washingtom DC the air was so bad it would make some people puke.

Also lots of rats and homeless people, Lots of gunfire too - I almost caught one.

But I met a beautiful woman and she's still with me - as is the MGB she was driving.

I miss this fashion trend

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I also don't miss smoking indoors in public and on planes.....

Having to prime the carb by pumping the gas pedal. Cars not starting in the cold. Long cranks where the engine barely catches and sputters to life. God damn, EFI is amazing.

STD's that didn't kill you, only made you stronger...

I remember the Cleveland (Cuyahoga) river catching on fire from the pollution, and also driving through Pittsburg, and trying to hold my breath from all the steel mill pollution.

I also remember hardly ever being indoors while playing driveway basketball, riding bikes, and skateboards until dark, and having sleepovers with pizza, and movies.

My first job was sorting customer return soda bottles in 1982 as a bagger at our new Kroger store (I had attended a 3 ring circus a few years earlier on the same site).

I remember not being afriad to ride, or walk on our county road (no fear of fast, distracted drivers).

There were no texting, cell phones, or home video games, you had to save up your quarters for a trip to the arcade, and you had to sit in the kitchen to talk on the phone.

I did have a hand held electronic football game that I wore out, and my freind had an Aurora slot car track that we played when it rained.

I remember my dad coming home with a perm, and a three piece suit made out of denim. He looked like Gabe Kaplan from “Welcome Back Kotter”.

I also remember that we were the weird family with “foreign” cars like a Cooper S, a Mercury Capri, and a VW Rabbit . . .

This. And thumping the TV to improve the reception.

Working nights. Living at the lake, skiing (Obrien wood), and dirt riding (Elsinore CR250M)


A great time

And vinyl albums. Flipping through rack after rack looking for the latest/greatest rock.

Cable tv with triple rhe channels! 12!

Really long cords on the phone so you could move around.

I grew up across the street from the world's largest industrial complex, the Ford Rouge Plant. The one car factory in the world where cars would come in as raw materials and leave completed automobiles, they had their own steel plant, own glass plant, parts plants, all centralized and made on site.

Part of that operation was the electrical power generation and steel making operations (blast furnaces, coke ovens) all coal powered.

I do not miss the coal.

I do not miss the pollution.

I do not miss the constant smell of sulfur like rotten eggs in hell.

I remember the sky darkening when the wind blew and the coal dust from the coal piles would cut lunch time recess short by forcing all the elementary children back indoors under the calling of the teachers.

I remember licking the top part of my lip, running outdoors with my eyes closed and coming back into the school with a proud coal mustache.

I do not miss the pain of coal in my eyes.

The list of things I miss is too long to list.

In case I wasn't clear, I do NOT miss coal. :cool:

JBL 4311s (I still have them). The Marantz 2270 and Thorens TD 124 (I don't). Joe Cocker's first album. The Allman Brothers. My Alfa.

I don't miss rabbit ears or only 3 TV channels at the cottage, one boring, one snowy and the other that signed off at 9pm.
:rolleyes:

What I do miss is stabin' at the cabin....because there was no TV :D

Thanks Paul! I've been wanting to replace this old keyboard, now I must!

I still have my Mac 1900 and my Thorens TD 115 turntable.

I liked the early 70s, the mid to the late 70's not so much. - Music peaked in 1973, IMO. I graduated college in 1973 got my first job.- it was nice to have money.

Don't miss disco, new wave music. I remember long gas lines. I remember the beginning of the demise of the auto big 3at there market share began to shrink. I saw the demise of the steel industry on the south side of Chicago. I worked in the steel mills in the late 70's and early 80's and couldn't wait to get out.

I missed most of the 70s. Working my way through college, raising a son, maintaining my house and my rentals, I was so busy I barely noticed. I remember someone mentioning Bruce Springsteen and I had to ask who he was.

Ah,the 115° weather in Phoenix with a swamp cooler and then the local "monsoon" storms and the power would go out and flooding rain that makes people drive crazy.

Lots of bicentennial memories, red white blue themed stuff was everywhere including my Harley Davidson socks because Evel Knievel. Watching him break his body on wide world of sports. Riding my Sears purple spyder bike to nowhere in particular. Collecting bottles and cans for which you could get some real money for back then.

"Collecting bottles and cans for which you could get some real money for back then."

As a kid, myself and my friends would scour the new neighborhoods being built looking for coke bottles left behind by the carpenters. I think the deposit on the bottle was 5 cents, then when it went up to 10 cents, we were rolling in the dough after cashing them in at the local convenience store. Enough to buy a coke or gum, or maybe ride the bike to the hobby shop for a model airplane kit.

It was a real genuine micro-economy back then. We learned to do some work for our rewards. Too bad all that is gone nowadays.

Wow do we agree. There was Blood on the Tracks and then....God help us...disco.

There are so many things. Putting aside things that are more oriented to my age,

-What is now called "Classic Rock" that demanded to be played at full volume. This also included the revelation that headphones allowed you to play loud music without getting yelled at and, how cool the mixes were in stereo (especially when you were, ahem, partaking) :cool:

-Nehru jackets that were in fashion for about a week :mad:

-Muscle cars that you could actually work on yourself! :)

-The speed limit on the interstate was 55! :mad:

-Black light posters and mobiles :cool:

-Kent State :(

-Disco http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...s/pukeface.gif

-Gas was 35 cents :)

-The draft (I had a number but wasn't called up) :eek:

-The advent of the "Radar range"

-The BIG BAD BRUINS - back in that time, hockey was rough and exciting to watch! :D


should I keep going?

Lots of good times:

Good music.
Hanging out at the beach.
Watching the hippies at Needle Park.
Watching the Vietnam protesters on Saturdays at the town hall.
Saturday high school football games.
Saturday morning cartoons.
A Coke and slice of pizza for $.50
Riding my Schwinn stingray and then my Schwinn Continental 10 speed bike for a million miles.

I still have my Marantz 2270 from 1976.

I knew some very willing Soldiers in the Sexual Revolution......

I can remember the first time it cost $3.00 for a full tank of gas. The guy came out, washed my windshield, checked the oil and tire pressure, asked about the family, all while he pumped the gas. Three whole bucks for gas was an outrage. A couple of my buddies could dig in our parents couch to find enough change to pay for the gas to cruise around all evening.

Disco sucked, as did leisure suits. And it was simply impossible to buy jeans that were nor bell bottoms, or worse elephant bottoms. Slacks all had huge cuffs that I hated.

The good news was the girls in my high school had skirts that had to come DOWN to at least thier thumbs when the relaxed their arms. Now stand up, let your arms relax, the tip of your thumb was the hemline.

Smoking everywhere was horrible. My high school allowed smoking in the bathrooms. I had to run in there as fast as possible after the bell, pee as fast as possible, and it was hard to see to door because the smoke was so thick. :eek: I hated that.

cheap old cars
I wish I had space to store old muscle cars
and or wrecked race cars Sebring and daytona could supply many locally
made due with 65 corvairs at 50 to a 100 each

cheap houses if only I knew how bad inflation would be

concerts were not insane priced for major groups or scalped

one could hitch-hike eazy

jobs hired you quickly with out investigations or drug tests

$10 lift tickets.

Could drive to Taos from SW Okla, ski 2 days, and only spend a $100.

This. We did the same thing with soda bottles. This was in the late 70s when an apt was built at the end of our street. After school when all the workers were gone, we picked all the bottles and walked down to the liquor store and bought candies and chips with money made from our collection. Good times.


I think bra less was the trend in the early to mid 70s? I may have been a little too young to noticed that

$3 between a friend an myself. We got gas in his muscle car, a 6 pack of Michelob, drove around drinking until league bowling was over then bowled a few games.

Monty Pythons Flying Circus was in full swing.

I entered the decade as a ten year old kid....left it as a 20 year old bigger kid. FUN decade (for me personally...due to my age)....but disco did absolutely SUCK :)

This was the '70's.........

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