Shag carpet, often bright orange or green, or in multiple shades of either. You were supposed to use a yard rake to keep the shag puffed up (otherwise it would get beaten down flat). Faux wood paneling covered the walls of countless living rooms, and the kitchens were filled with avocado, bronze or harvest gold appliances.
No cell phones of course, so if you needed to make a call away from home, you had to look for a phone booth.
Drinking age in most states was 18. That certainly had the biggest influence on my life after high school.
Apparently, three was the magic number. (I have Jarts. If we ever have a Dopefest in a park I should bring them. 
)
People painting fire hydrants for the Bicentennial.
Estes model rockets.
Estes Cold Power rockets. (Fill a cylinder with Freon, and let it jet out into the atmosphere!)
The Apollo-Soyuz mission
All-in-one stereos (without turntables) with wood-veneer cases and stainless steel fronts, with a long dial.
Radio headphones. (The FM ones had a retractable antenna.)
Walkie-talkies from Radio Shack.
I had loooooong hair, straight, parted in the middle, and I sometimes wore corduroy bell bottoms with a tight little ribbed sweater. (If a girl had long curly or wavy hair, she often ironed it straight.) My cousin had a Bicentennial wedding, with bridesmaids in the most hideous polyester navy blue dresses, trimmed with red and white, of course.
We didn’t have one at our house but microwave ovens were becoming more common.
Is the mid 70’s when “sucks” started being used? I remember people saying “suck the bag” a lot and I think it might have morphed from that.
Here is a little guide to the aesthetics of 70s movies that I created last year for the amusement of a friend. I think it applies here.
I’m seeing a lot of stuff in this thread being mid- to late 1970s rather than early 1970s.
How about Duncan yo-yos? There were all sorts of models, along with various tricks you could do with them, such as “walk the dog.” The company even had some sort of yo-yo master (really), probably more than one, who would travel around the country and give tips.
Catchphrases:
Dy-no-mite!
Sit on it and spin
Jogging/running was big. It hadn’t become as organized as it would in five or six years but it was catching on.
Tennis was booming, I am not sure who was the tennis star of the moment, but for a while there Jimmy Conners, Matts Velander, Chris Everet, Billy Jean King were so big. There was even a Pro team tennis thing that quite captured the fancy of much of the nation. Trying to find time on a court was easier said than done.
Chess and bacgammon were very popular.
Big cars were still king especially for the older generation, but many young people were discovering smaller foreign cars and were easing away from the American gas guzzlers. The VW bug and bus on college campuses were omnipresent.
And there was a toy – this may be more mid-1970s – called a Sit 'n Spin. A toddler sat on it, turned a wheel on top, and it spun him around. We always cracked up about that name. Maybe they’re still around?
Cousin Oliver.
Basement Rec Rooms. Pool tables, or Air Hockey, or both.
With wood paneling and green or brown shag carpet.
I appreciate all the great ideas I’m getting here - I’m cutting and pasting them into my ‘side’ file for later use.
I do have another (related question): for pre-teenagers in the early 80s, if you wanted to shorthand ‘dweeb’ you could use monty python; for teenagers in the mid-to-late 70s (or early 80s), you might use D&D.
But what were dweebs doing circa 1970? Did dweebs even exist then? What were nerdy but marginally academic kids doing while their compatriots were smoking grass or demonstrating for Richard Nixon?
Us nerds were in the marching band. And the AV club.
The Fifties were big in the 70’s…my high school had a group of boys who dressed like greasers and lipsynched to the fifties hits. This was 1973.
I’ve always thought The Wonder Years did an excellent job of capturing the look and feel of suburban America in 1968-1975. I was 10 in 1968. The first time I saw The Wonder Years it brought back a flood of memories. The look of the neighborhood, clothing, cars everything was very accurate. At least from my childhood.
I’d watch a few episodes from seasons 3 or 4. That would fit your 1970-72 time frame.
I’m thinking pocket protectors and slide rules.
Were they called “slide rules” or slide rulers"?
I got a four-function (no memory) calculator when I started jr. high in the early-'70s. ($99)
Slide rules were called ‘slide rules’.
I’ve never heard them described as “slide rulers”.
“Didja see last night’s MASH? Henry Blake died!”
