Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Consumption.
Consumption who?
Consumption be done about all these Ether Bunnies?
Yeah, i find it funny to give directions like “turn where the cafeteria used to be and drive a block past where the Radio Shack was…”
I was in a car driven by a friend’s grandfather. Getting out of his parking spot he hit the car behind him and the car in front of him. Then he flat out ran a stop sign, nearly getting us killed. When I told him he went through a stop sign, he told me there was never a stop sign there when he was growing up.
That’s accepted as a law around here. When I commented on a stop sign in an unusual location someone said that a little girl got hit by a car there and went into a coma. So I said it must be a good idea to have that sign there. I was told, no, it wasn’t, because that little girl came out of the coma and she was fine after that.
So, he thought his right to ignore the stop sign was ‘grandfathered in’? 
A good thing to keep in the back of your mind is: not every traffic sign is legal. I went to court for illegal left turn and discovered the “No left turn” sign had been put up by the shopping center, instead of the county/state. Big no-no for them, “Get out of jail,” card for me.
I am just a little too young to remember the Bicentennial, but television and books when I was a kid gave the impression that it had been a big deal. I have wondered whether maybe it kind of wasn’t really, beyond network television say having an excuse to have a few red-white-and-blue corny dancing and music specials, since no one talks like 2026 is interesting at all.
I was grown and had one toddler at the time. It was as big a deal as they could make it. I’m sure there’s a ton of merch still rolling around.
We went to the fireworks and laser show at the California Capitol. I’d never seen a laser show before.
I was just a little too young: my single memory is that all the fire hydrants were repainted red, white, and blue. Too bad they didn’t leave them that way: it seems a nice and harmless little bit of patriotism.
Just did a search to see what kind of bicentennial crap comes up, and many of the results were 1976 proof sets and the quarters. It was fun as a kid to get a bicentennial quarter. You know, back in my day when you even knew what you were likely to find on the back of a quarter.
Edit: I mean “Back in my day when people used to use something called cash.”
What is this “cash” of which you speak? 
I actually had to use some the other day. First time in months. I commented how strange it was.
Then the clerk handed back my coin change and I commented how somehow over the last 15-20 years I’d become used to the idea that I could instantly recognize nickels, dimes, and quarters by weight, size, and edge feel, but I have no earthly idea what might be stamped on the front or back; it’s always a surprise.
If somebody could duplicate the size & weight they could stamp Bozo’s face on the coins and I’d believe they were real. How the heck did that happen?
There are a lot of fake quarters in circulation. You can tell they’re not real because there’s a picture of a sailboat stamped on the back.
Sadly, your no-doubt excellent joke has sailed (heh) waaay over my head.
More likely way under. It’s the Rhode Island State Quarter: Rhode Island State Quarter | U.S. Mint
50 different variations of this lame joke are possible.
Now that you mention it, I remember hydrants being painted to resemble certain popular figures of the day, Ben Franklin, f’rinstance.
Around the Philadelphia area a number of hydrants were painted to look like revolutionary war soldiers or some such. First time I encountered one I stupidly didn’t realize what it was and parked next to it with the expected follow up of a ticket.
Oh, my freaking gawd! It was the hugest, hugest of deals! everything that came in colors came in red, white and blue, not just that year, but the second half of 1975 as well. And anything that came in numbers came in 76. Maxell even manufactured cassette tapes with 76 minutes on either side (normal was 30, 60 or 90, and years later, 120).
July 4, 1976 was holier than Easter and Yom Kippur combined.
My parents took us to DC, Philadelphia and Boston that year-- there was tons of stuff going on all year long, including the grand re-opening of the National Zoo in DC which had closed to rebuild the caged enclosures for the animals into habitats. I used to visit the Bronx zoo as a little child, and a few other zoos, and this was my first time seeing a zoo without square cages.
Even though my parents booked passage almost a year in advance, flights were sold out, and we ended up taking a train-- so they booked a whole sleeper car just for us, and it was actually a ton of fun for my brother and me. We didn’t even travel right around July 4th, but we did go in the summer.
I went to Girl Scout camp in 1976, and we heard a lot about the history of the girl scouts, and the contribution of women to US history-- the punchline each time was the years each woman had been a Girl Scout.
Schoolhouse Rock developed America Rock for the Bicentennial.
The Federal government poured a ton of money into the Bicentennial. I didn’t realize any of that at the time-- it dawned on me sometime in the 90s that the government took advantage of the year to make people feel good about being Americans again after Watergate and the Vietnam War.
It worked, too.
I would have gone with “The fake ones are in Braille,” myself.
PS: It just says “Helen Keller.”
I thought it was amazing how Helen Keller overcame such adversity from being deaf and blind. But I was not aware she also didn’t have legs!
Growing up in the DC suburbs, i had always assumed it was less of a deal in the rest of the country. Glad to hear we didn’t suffer alone. We literally couldn’t find clothes to buy in any other color scheme. Everything was Red, White, and Blue. Still, it was a nice break from harvest gold and avocado.