Star Trek wasn’t entirely history. The Animated Series by Filmation was on in '73. Hey, it was the next best thing.
8-track tapes! OMG, what a boondoggle those things were. If you liked one particular song on an “album” you had to wait a helluva long time to make it come around again (for those who are too young to remember, you could not rewind the tape.)
Vietnam: My older sister wore one of those copper bracelets that had the name of a POW-MIA. I don’t remember exactly when she finally stopped wearing it, but it was probably around '75.
I think my sister also got her first Cheech & Chong album about then. Two classic bits I remember: “Let’s Make A Dope Deal” and “Sister Mary Elephant.”
Papa Tiger was in on that; he remembers that year fondly. Sometimes he makes me feel like SUCH a dinosaur. Earlier today he was telling us about first discovering shareware DOS on a BBS in Kansas City, posted by some young unknown geek named Paul Allen. Sigh.
I can’t remember much else about 1973, alas. I was having way too much fun in college. Better living through chemistry and all that!
In 1973, I was a freshman/sophomore in high school. Bell bottoms were very ‘in’, as were long hair, sideburns, and afros. People still wore tie-dye and said groovy a lot, but it was fading. Earth shoes and sandals were popular footwear. Chicago (the band) was on the charts and Led Zeppelin was becoming popular. My older brother turned 18 and graduated from high school on the same day, shortly after they stopped calling up draftees. 18 was the drinking age (in Texas, at least) and he got suitably snot-slinging, commode hugging polluted, legally.
There was a lot more stuff, but at 14, I wasn’t really looking for world-changing trends, I was much more interested in puberty and so forth. I remember Watergate, but mostly I was upset that they were wasting so much air-time on all three channels with it.
I missed most of 1970-1976. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was going through “post war trauma”. I was a recluse hiding in the mountains and most of what I remember is better left unsaid.
We pulled out of Vietnam. When we took the last of our troops out my mother wondered why church bells weren’t ringing. (She can remember WWII and I guess they rang the bells at the end of that war.)
My mother constantly watched the Watergate Hearings even when we were on vacation. We kids called John Erlichman “the round-headed-liar.”
The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour was on TV every Saturday, followed by Scooby Doo and Josie and the Pussy Cats.
“The Exorcist” came out, prompting my 4th grade teacher to give us a speech on how Hollywood was going overboard on gross-out horror effects. She claimed grown men had “lost their lunch” while watching the movie. (20 years later I watched it and found it so boring I can barely remember it.)
Students in my class argued about who was cooler–the Jackson Five or the Osmonds.
Super Bowl VII Miami 14, Washington 7 MVP: Jake Scott
Oakland A’s 4 - 3 over the Mets. Two run shots from Campaneris and Jackson in the third-inning of game 7.
Manly beat Cronulla 10 - 7 in the most brutal Grand Final in history.
Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Clayton Turner of Burlington, N.C sets a world-record 19 … 17 aces and one par … at Winston-Salem’s Putt-Putt course.
Muhammad Ali’s bouts with Ken Norton. He lost the second match of his career at the hands of Norton, but won the rematch later that year, both by decisions.
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