Teen Suburban Life in the 70s?

My school didn’t do the “pod” thing, but when I was in Junior High (77-79), some touchy-feely psychologists came in and painted all the classrooms light blue and light green and pink, and the hallways and lockers bright red and electric orange and bright yellow. It was some color experiment. The bright hallways were supposed to rev you up and get you excited for the next class, while the pastel classrooms were supposed to be calming and favorable to learning.

When I was in elementary school, I learned “New Math” and the Metric System. We were told the US would be using the Metric System by the year 2000. I never learned feet and inches, quarts and pints; the normal measuring systems used in the US beyond second or third grade. Consequently, I still have trouble with that stuff occasionally. New Math also screwed me up. Math was always hard for me. I still have an anxiety attack when I have to balance the checkbook. Both New Math and the teaching of the Metric System were dumped soon after I left elementary school.

We learned spelling with a system called CPS. I don’t remember what that stands for, but it must have worked, because I’m a very good speller. It was a self-guided program, using cards in boxes, and we went and got the next card on our own. That’s all I can remember about it. Anyone else use it?

We always had two cars. We had a station wagon, and I can remember riding in the back, in the cargo area with the seat down, hanging out the open tailgate window. God forbid a parent let their child do that now!
We never wore seatbelts. Never.

No one had a VCR. If you wanted to watch a TV show, you had to have your butt in front of the TV when it came on. Actually, you had to have the TV turned on five minutes before the show came on, because the TV needed a few minutes to “warm up.”
If you missed it, you had to wait for summer re-runs.
And there wasn’t that much to choose from anyway, because there were only 4 channels. The three networks, one PBS station, and one independent local channel that just showed re-runs of old sitcoms and old movies.

We had milk delivery up till about 1978 or '79, I think. We had a galvanized metal box on the back porch, and we could leave a note if we wanted something more than our usual order.

I used to walk to a local gas station and blow my allowance on candy with a couple of friends every Saturday. It was about a mile and a half away, and we had to cross a fairly busy road. Sometimes we’d ride our bikes there, and then spend the day playing and riding bikes all over the place. We’d be gone for hours without checking in with our moms.
I’d never let my kids do that now.

Just to pick a little nit here, he was killed on November 22, 1963.

And since I was born in '54, I turned 16 in 1970. I was very atypical as a teen, so I really don’t have anything worth sharing in this thread. Well, except for the nit I picked above.

Carry on.

World events did influence teen culture at the time. When I first got my licence, in June of 1979, Long lines were common at gas stations. Thus, in order for me to drive the 1967 Plymouth Valiant my folks got me, I was responsible for filling up the vehicles.

I also remember when a girl from Iran came to the school (during the hostage situation). Every teacher in each class publicly told us that someone from Iran would be at the school, and to make her feel welcome. She was in a couple of my classes. I learned that academic standards overseas could be far more rigorous than here. She was the best math and english (burn) student in the whole school.

I also remember living near older neighborhoods that had modest houses occupied by largely middle-class blue-collar families, that are today being replaced by wealthy professionals in tract mansions.

The neighborhood where I grew up was near some farmland, and it’s all gone now, replaced by $500,000 McMansions piled right on top of one another. :frowning:

My teen years were spent in an neighborhood in northeast Buffalo, New York in the early 1980s. Because Buffalo was always, culturally speaking, about five to ten years behind the times, it could be safely said that I was a child of the 1970s.

Technology - there were remote control color televisions, microwave ovens, VCRs, and push button telephones, but they were all much more expensive than today. They weren’t commodity items, but rather luxuries that many had, but not in the numbers of today.

A typical middle class family might have one large 25" console television (in a Colonial-style cabinet festooned with pewter Bicentennial eagles) and a couple of 12" or 19" black and white televisions; rich folks had remote control televisions in huge consoles, which also included a hi-fi set (AM-FM tuner, eight-track tape player, record player). Other things that we thought were over-the-top luxurues; having more than two telephones, cars with power windows, remote control garage door openers, and refrigerators with automatic icemakers or water dispensers.

After school … I hung out with my friends in McDonald’s, or if we had a large enough group of kids, headed to an isolated spot in a local park and drank beer. The drinking age was 18, and the immigrant owners of convenience stores didn’t check ID; MADD and decoy sweeps didn’t exist. There was less parental supervision; kids that were eight or nine years old played in the street near their houses, or rode their bikes to nearby parks and shopping centers.

Transportation: not too many kids had cars, and those that did usually drove junkers. Most of us got around on bike and public transit; when we got our licenses, we borrowed our parents’ cars on rare occasion. There was a strong car culture, though … the “groders” and “motorheads” usually dumpred all their spare money into their rides, which were either muscle cars in some stage of repair, or an early 1970s GM model (usually a Chevrolet Nova) that was heavily modded. The muscle car scene died in the late 1980s, but it was revived with contemporary import tuning and rice culture.

Music … it might be difficult to comprehend this, consider that the fans of moldy classic rock are now stereotyped as mullet-haired forklist driver types, but “classic rock” was pop rock of the day; middle class suburban white teens listened to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, BTO, Lynyrd Syknyrd, Boston, Aerosmith, the Who, and the Rolling Stones. Nerds were fans of progressive rock - Styx, Rush, Starcastle, Yes, and Kansas. Rock concerts were BIG; Buffalo had at least one big concert a week, filling a 18,000 seat arena a week. Groups like The Who, The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones played at football stadiums, and every summer bought a few other stadium-filling concerts featuring several bands.

FM radio was actually GOOD. Stations had more diverse playlists, and distinctive local flavor; you could travel from city to city, and in the next town over radio would sound completely different. We listened to radio a lot more than kids now.

The further out you got into the suburbs, the more holliganism you encountered, apparently because of boredom. Juvelile deliquency in Buffalo’s distant suburbs, especially new planned communities, was a problem. The more distant 'burbs had more sex, more pot, more alcohol … I think sociologists had a field day. I hung out with a motley crowd, but we never smoked pot, smashed mailboxes, or otherwise broke any laws except those related to underage drinking.

Where else did we hang out … video arcades, the mall (no such thing as an upscale mall or “lifestyle center” - about 50% of the stores were local, and the rest were national chains that are now seen as dated and conservative), the basements of friends’ houses.

Go to some neighborhoods in Buffalo today, especially more blue-collar areas like Cheektowaga, Riverside, Black Rock and Lovejoy, and you’ll see lots of remnants of 1970s teen culture; kids racing around in Chevy Novas (glass packs, dude), feathered hair on girls, and jean jackets with “LED ZEPPELIN” penned on the back, among other things. Fly Southwest into Buffalo, and sometimes there will be an announcement made upon landing - “Welcome to Buffalo … please set your watches back twenty years.” :slight_smile:

My teen years were spent in an neighborhood in northeast Buffalo, New York in the early 1980s. Because Buffalo was always, culturally speaking, about five to ten years behind the times, it could be safely said that I was a child of the 1970s.

Technology - there were remote control color televisions, microwave ovens, VCRs, and push button telephones, but they were all much more expensive than today. They weren’t commodity items, but rather luxuries that many had, but not in the numbers of today.

A typical middle class family might have one large 25" console television (in a Colonial-style cabinet festooned with pewter Bicentennial eagles) and a couple of 12" or 19" black and white televisions; rich folks had remote control televisions in huge consoles, which also included a hi-fi set (AM-FM tuner, eight-track tape player, record player). Other things that we thought were over-the-top luxurues; having more than two telephones, cars with power windows, remote control garage door openers, and refrigerators with automatic icemakers or water dispensers.

After school … I hung out with my friends in McDonald’s, or if we had a large enough group of kids, headed to an isolated spot in a local park and drank beer. The drinking age was 18, and the immigrant owners of convenience stores didn’t check ID; MADD and decoy sweeps didn’t exist. There was less parental supervision; kids that were eight or nine years old played in the street near their houses, or rode their bikes to nearby parks and shopping centers.

Transportation: not too many kids had cars, and those that did usually drove junkers. Most of us got around on bike and public transit; when we got our licenses, we borrowed our parents’ cars on rare occasion. There was a strong car culture, though … the “groders” and “motorheads” usually dumpred all their spare money into their rides, which were either muscle cars in some stage of repair, or an early 1970s GM model (usually a Chevrolet Nova) that was heavily modded. The muscle car scene died in the late 1980s, but it was revived with contemporary import tuning and rice culture.

Music … it might be difficult to comprehend this, consider that the fans of moldy classic rock are now stereotyped as mullet-haired forklist driver types, but “classic rock” was pop rock of the day; middle class suburban white teens listened to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, BTO, Lynyrd Syknyrd, Boston, Aerosmith, the Who, and the Rolling Stones. Nerds were fans of progressive rock - Styx, Rush, Starcastle, Yes, and Kansas. Rock concerts were BIG; Buffalo had at least one big concert a week, filling a 18,000 seat arena a week. Groups like The Who, The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones played at football stadiums, and every summer bought a few other stadium-filling concerts featuring several bands.

FM radio was actually GOOD. Stations had more diverse playlists, and distinctive local flavor; you could travel from city to city, and in the next town over radio would sound completely different. We listened to radio a lot more than kids now.

The further out you got into the suburbs, the more holliganism you encountered, apparently because of boredom. Juvelile deliquency in Buffalo’s distant suburbs, especially new planned communities, was a problem. The more distant 'burbs had more sex, more pot, more alcohol … I think sociologists had a field day. I hung out with a motley crowd, but we never smoked pot, smashed mailboxes, or otherwise broke any laws except those related to underage drinking.

Where else did we hang out … video arcades, the mall (no such thing as an upscale mall or “lifestyle center” - about 50% of the stores were local, and the rest were national chains that are now seen as dated and conservative), the basements of friends’ houses.

Go to some neighborhoods in Buffalo today, especially more blue-collar areas like Cheektowaga, Riverside, Black Rock and Lovejoy, and you’ll see lots of remnants of 1970s teen culture; kids racing around in Chevy Novas (glass packs, dude), feathered hair on girls, and jean jackets with “LED ZEPPELIN” penned on the back, among other things. Fly Southwest into Buffalo, and sometimes there will be an announcement made upon landing - “Welcome to Buffalo … please set your watches back twenty years.” :slight_smile:

I spent the 70’s in suburban Boston and then suburbarn Baltimore. Oddly, just south of each city. Graduated HS in 1979.

The TV we had in our living room, whcih was brand new in 1975, had a mechanical remote tuner and the remote was ultrasonic, not infrared. You hit the channel up or down buttons and a motor turned the tuner knob inside the set.

I didn’t see my first in-home videogame until the early eighties. BUT, we did hang out at the local arcade a lot and played the early arcade videogames like Asteroids and such.

We seemed a lot more free then to pretty much do what we pleased as kids and teenagers. You didn’t even think about things like guns in school and the like. The worst thing that ever happened in my suburban junior and senior high schools was a knife fight between a couple of the “bad-ass motorheads.”

We had a LOT of sex, that’s for sure. At least in my crowd of friends, anyway, there wasn’t any kind of situation that would prevent a quick - um, quickie… We had a lot of parties at friend’s houses while parents were out of town, and so on. If someone could get their hands on some weed, everyone tried some, but mostly we drank. And drank. And drank. And drank. And then had more sex. We had places around school were you could go between classes. The senior parking lot in high school housed more than a few customized vans - where do you think the phrase "if this van’s rockin’ don’t bother knockin’ " comes from? Oddly, you never seemed to hear about pregnancies that I’m sure almost certainly resulted from this kind of activity - I’m not sure if abortions were that common or what. I avoided that whole problem - I discovered boys pretty early on.

And that’s someting else too - the whole issue of “gay” and so on. It wasn’t as big a deal then. Sure, you had the same homophobic assholes around that you have today, but the only national voice against homosexuality at the time was Anita Bryant - and she was pretty much universally laughed at after a while. Funny - my friends an I all knew what it was to be “gay” or a “homo” etc., but if you asked any of us (who, remember, were having routine same-sex encounters all the time) whether we were gay, we would almost all have said “no way!” The issue just wasn’t as in your face as it became after AIDS and with the serious onset of the Reagan years, the moral majority, etc.

But by and large, we lived a pretty easy existence. We borrowed mom and dad’s car if we could get permission and otherwise, we rode bikes everywhere. Most of my friends and I were still routinely riding bikes for basic transportation right up through 16 and 17 years old. Hell, one of my classmates rode to graduation. Bicycles weren’t for excercise and fitness then - they were the only way you got around without a car in my world.

Streaking came and went when I was in Junior high. It was a pretty short-lived thing, honestly. A bunch of us streaked, of course, but it loses it’s fun after the first couple of times, frankly. Basically, when people quit looking and it stops being a shock.

At all the schools I went to, TONS of kids smoked. My high school had a smoking area outside the cafeteria that was routinely used by 50 - 100 kids during every lunch period. I’m not sure that would be allowed on school grounds at all today.

The cool kids listened to Foghat and Boston - and didn’t dance. Plaid flannel shirts, jeans and hiking boots were THE fashion statement during 77-79 if I recall. In fact, when you look at my yearbook, you’ll see the entire jazz band dressed in plaid flannel and jeans.

Disco was king for a short time, but among my friends, it was considered “less than cool” from '76 on pretty much.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget the blacklight posters. Kind of a hold-over from the 60’s, but man, everyone I knew had painted their bedrooms flat black, blacked out the windows and had blacklights up to illuminate the day-glo posters of Pink Floyd, Foghat, The Eagles, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath and the like.

Of course, we spent a fair amount of time laughing at Gerry Ford slipping, stumbling and falling. We spent a lot of time in current events in high school talking about the Iran hostage crisis. But we were between wars and Vietnam was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Things across the oceans just weren’t something we, as teenagers, worried about a whole lot.

One thing that we DID worry about though was the environment. Mine was the generation that helped launch Earth Day. We all spent a lot of time doing projects in school about pollution and cleaning it up. I had one science class in 10th grade where we spent all of the second semester doing field work in local streams and ponds and doing nothing but pollution projects the whole second half of the year.

One last thing. I will never forget seeing my first Japenese car. It was back in 1973 and I was still living south of Boston at the time. One of our teachers had just bought a little Toyota Corona. It was always parked right out in front of the school along with the Buicks and the Dodges and the Oldsmobiles. It looked TINY compared to those boats. But then again, those “boats” were considered standard size for a car back then. There are SUV’s today that are smaller and lighter than an early 70’s Plymouth. :smiley:

Some snips in the quote … sorry.

Not many kids where I lived had cars, because to get a car, you needed a job. Jobs were scarce in the late 1970s and early 1980s; Buffalo’s economy was in severe pain, and former steelworkers toom many jobs that kids wuld have elsewhere. Many employers still discriminated based on sex; the staff at local fast food joints were mostly female, for some reason.

We were a two car family, as many were in the neighborhood. However, we had one good car, and one not-so-good ten year old second car. Most families on our block had the “good car” and the “old car.” Cars then rusted out at a much younger age than cars now, so there were a lot of beaters lining the street. Now, two-car families have two decent, newer cars, and cars that are relatively old are in good shape; they don’t rust out.

In my neighborhood, there were many middle aged and elderly women that didn’t drive; they either never learned, or their husbands didn’t let them drive for some reason. One of my grandmothers never drove; Dad had to do most of her errands.

Fast food … McDonalds and Burger King were common, and local fast food chains that are now long gone. For some reason, Gold Rush-era San Francisco-themed chain restaurants were a big thing. There were still a few McDonalds that didn’t have indoor dining. Red Barn was interesting - indoor dining, but no bathrooms!

Pong … yup, had it, but the Atari 2600 was the machine most of us ended up with at the end of the 1970s. I bought my own color TV in 1976; a Quasar 12" portable set me back $200. We even had cable then; 12 channels, although it was up to 24 by the end of the decade. We had HBO, too. It was an extra $4.99 a month, and it was only on at night.

Another thing … long distance telephone calls were a big deal. Now, we make long distance calls without thinking twice, but then, folks were VERY sensitive about long dstance charges. They weren’t expensive, but they weren’t dirt cheap like today; maybe 10 to 20 cents a minute for a call in the area code but outside the LATA, and 25 cents to a buck a minute for anything else.

Just curious, since I lived in Baltimore, too. Where did you go to high school?
I graduated from Towson in '82.

Just curious, since I lived in Baltimore, too. Where did you go to high school?
I graduated from Towson in '82.

Well, cops pulled me and my buddies over at least half a dozen times for open containers. Usually, that meant pouring out the beer and only sometimes pouring out all the booze in the car. It wasn’t until the early 80’s that pouring out the booze was replaced with tickets for open containers, and then later in the 80’s MADD and the times changed. On more than one occaision, being in a car full of obviously drunk teenagers, the police would just escort the car home to make sure people got there safely.

So. maybe to pick nits drinking and driving was not socially acceptable but I can attest that the above was took place in 1978-1979 in northern California.

BTW, there were not McD’s everywhere. The francising of America had not taken place. There were little mom and pop burger joints, and diners that have since gone out of business. I can remember spending a 60-90 minutes by bus to get to the nearest mall to hang out and play pinball.

Oh ya, born in 61 and graduated in 79

Just to add my experiences to the list: The nearest mall was 25 miles away, in the next county. There was one McDonalds in our town, and no other fast food chains. We had many mom and pop pizza places though, and Chinese food. We got our first color TV in 1975 or so (no remote control). We got our 2nd car in 1973, but we were middle class. We didn’t get cable TV or a video game until 1980. Our house had shag rugs and harvest gold appliances in the kitchen. This was about 60 miles north of NYC.

It amazes me that some people would think that everybody else’s experiences in America in the 1970s would be exactly the same as their own. It’s a big country, folks.

And my understanding is that there was no where near the social stigma associated with drinking and driving that exists now.

I’ll ditto the drinking and driving comments. It was considered okay to drive if you were just “a little drunk” or “not too bad”. If you were totally wasted your friends might try and get the keys from you. More likely if someone else at your school had been killed while driving drunk. I even knew a guy who replaced his windshield wiper reservoir with Southern Comfort and rerouted the hose so that it would deliver him a glass full in the comfort of his driver’s seat. If you got pulled over and didn’t have prior offenses and hadn’t crashed then you’d have a decent chance of the cop letting you go with a warning if one of your friends was sober enough to drive. IIRC the DUI / DWI limits were higher then, but I couldn’t say how much.

Also, for us Florida kids I don’t think that flannel was ever cool (it would have been fairly stupid), but I don’t really recall what was. Maybe I’ll check my old yearbooks if I see them around.

Yeah, we weren’t poor, but I remember calling my grandparents halfway across the country was a big deal. We always waited till Sunday because it as cheaper.
And you always knew it was a long-distance call as soon as you picked up the phone because LD calls all had that distinctive hum.

**

I agree. I’ve had some of the same experiences some posters have mentioned, but not all. Some people have mentioned only having one car and one phone, as if that were a norm. We certainly weren’t rich, but we always had two cars and two phones. I think the 60s and 70s were a time when the prices of those things were coming down and families could afford to have two. Obviously, not everyone, but many families could.

Our kitchen had brown appliances, and the phone was avocado green. It was a rotary-dial, or course, and had a long cord so you could walk almost anywhere on the first floor and talk.
And in those days, you didn’t own the phone, you rented it from the phone company. Buying your own phone was unheard of.
There was no Call-Waiting, Three-Way-Calling or Caller ID.

We didn’t have cable TV till the early 80s. It wasn’t even an option in Baltimore. It just wasn’t here.

Who else hung out at the skating rink on Saturday nights?

Well. I fit right in. Born in '60 and graduated HS in January of '80.

I had a kind of schizo time of it from about '76 on. My boyfriend and my best friend were both out of school by then. My friend, Ann, had a baby and was living with her boyfriend and my boyfriend, Marty, and I mostly hung out with them or another couple we knew who were married and had two kids. On the other hand, I had a different set of friends at school and they were mostly pretty straight.

We spent a lot of time in cars. Our idea of a regular night was to drive from my place in Burnaby into Vancouver via Kingsway, circle Stanley park and then head back into Burnaby. Repeat as many times as possible until 11:00 pm.

My parents were enthusiastic drunks, so I ran away a LOT. I’d usually just head over to Ann’s. Apart from the peace and quiet over there, she had cable and a colour tv! If I could, I’d take off with the family car, a '65 Pontiac Strato Chief. Come to think of it, it was probably just as well - Dad lhave been driving anyway.

We listened to the radio all the time. Our local top 40 am stations were 14CFUN and CKLG 73. Hardly anyone listened to FM. A big thing was CFUN’s Friday night oldies. There were a lot of 8-track or cassette players around too. Ann’s boyfriend, Gary, was a Deep Purple and Queen fanatic while Marty was into Country and Truck Drivin’ music. What you got depended on who’s car we were in. We also just about wore out the “Grease” soundtrack. I had a thing for Alice Cooper so that’s what I listened to at home. I actually went to two A.C. concerts in Vancouver in the late '70’s.

When I was with my school friends we had parties at each others houses. These were mostly no-alchohol, lots of music and dancing. At one point we tried to get a band together and that involved a lot of ‘practices’. By that point, '79 or so, Ann and Gary had broken up and I’d pretty much left her behind but stayed friends with Gary and his new girlfriend. (They got married but it didn’t last). That’s when the school crowd and the rest of them started to cross over. Gary was a pretty good guitar player and got involved with the music although he was a fair bit older.

Did I mention that the Official Burnaby Pastime in those days was sex? Often, enthusiasticly and with multiple partners. Starting at about 13 for most of us. When the two groups collided it turned into a Bop-Fest of sorts. I’ll spare the details - too bad, you pervs!
Let’s just say Burnaby Park had more than just mating chipmunks!

When we weren’t screwing or driving, we hung out at the mall in New Westminster. It was only one floor, but it was indoor. The other mall, Middlegate was outdoor and no good at night except for the bowling alley. We also spent a lot of time at Mcdonalds. Remember those styro hamburger boxes?!

The thing that seems to be different from everyones else’s experience is the lack of alchohol. We just didn’t drink much. Some of my friends got into the whole Disco/bar scene, but I never did. I’d have people over all night playing music and Mom would sit up with us and drink but we mostly didn’t. Our place got to be kind of party central. I don’t know how many times I dragged off to school or missed it altogether because everyone was at my house all night. Sounds like I had it made, right? Ha! I just wanted a good nights sleep!

We weren’t into drugs much either, but pot and acid were always around for anyone who wanted it. I’d smoked dope by 13
and tried acid at eighteen. Again, I had some friends who were more into it but I just wasn’t. Of course everyone smoked and my HS even had an indoor smoking lounge for the gr.11&12’s. I never did that either, simply because I hated the taste from the first drag.

Let’s see, what kind of general stuff do I have? Well, we learned regular math in Elemantry school, but Canada went metric just after I started to drive and everyone had these little stickers with KPH’s on them to put on their speedometers. We all drove, but only the people who had their own place owned cars. I quit riding a bike in '76. Now. of course. I ride every day :rolleyes: !

There wasn’t a lot of division in music. What you got on the radio was pretty much what everyone listened to. Most of the guys had long hair and most of the girls had either FFM feathering or short, layered, bobs. We wore French jeans with three lines stitched across the hip and flared legs, or cords. Plaid skirts and boots, tiny t-shirts with very short sleeves and jean jackets or leather blazers. I always craved a guy’s short bomber, the kind with the fan of stitched ribs on the back. (Guess which jacket I wear constantly to this day? :smiley: )

Our cars were either cast off mid-60’s beaters or Cougars, Camero’s and Firebirds. We got stopped by the cops constantly. I think the RCMP actually had a quota in those days. They had to do so many “Routine Checks” per night, so they’d pull us three or four times, sit around and shoot the breeze for a few minutes and write it up. We know most of the cops in Burnaby by name. It’s funny now, because a good friend from church was on the squad in those days and still remembers most of my friends.

We went to the drive-in now and then or to the Columbia, Odeon or Paramont in New Westminster. I saw “Grease” six times when it first came out! “Saturday Night Live” was cool and so was "“Midnight Special”. The “new” station, CKVU channel 13 showed “Baby Blue Movies” on Friday night. They had stuff like “Emmanuel” - I don’t think you could even get it on regular tv now! :EEK:

I better go ahead and post this before I fill up the whole thread!

The 70’s…yeah, kids, the snow was 16 feet deep and it was uphill both ways to school and we were constantly being attacked by wolves.

Oh, wait, you meant the 1970’s. Well, I’ll never forget the T shirts. “Marijuana-Nature’s Way of Saying Hi” or “Keep America Green–Grow Grass!” And then there was the “Last Great Act of Defiance” shirt which featured an eagle, talons outspread, trying to catch a mouse, which was giving it the finger.

I think “Animal House” must have had a good bit of influence on kids, since after lunch my junior high school cafeteria looked like a war zone. I just hope they paid the janitors who cleaned the place up some good wages.

Where I lived disco was cool up until 1979 and then it sucked; after that you wouldn’t want to be caught dead admitting you’d ever listened to it. Zeppelin ruled until Bonham’s death and only weirdos listened to punk.

Our teachers sometimes tried to give us “relevant” reading material that the “kids” could relate to–“The Outsiders”, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” and “Alas Babylon,” the last of which made survival of a nuclear war look easy. I don’t recall being very impressed by any of them. Judy Blume’s books were very popular but weren’t taught in schools.

My family didn’t have a color TV until the mid 70’s and microwaves were out of the question back then–when my grandfather got one in 1982 my mother said he was crazy (of course 3 years later she got one.) We had shopping malls and McDonald’s; elderly people would often just go to the malls to just sit around on the benches (a guy in my high school class, assigned to do a project on the Depression, took a tape recorder to the mall and interviewed some of the old folks he met there.)

And there were the predictions that by 2002 there would be moving sidewalks everywhere and everyone would own artificial pets.

If you can find the book “Retro Hell” by the editors of the now defunct zine “Ben is Dead” you can read a lot of anecdotes about the era from 1967 to 1985.

Born in 60, graduated in “78”. Wow, what a long strange trip it was! Freaks vs. Jocks at my school. Long hair was still in for some of us. The cars the kids drove at my school were classic. Super Bee’s, 69 GTO’s, late 60 Camaros, very sweet.

Beer was the staple. Pot was the desert. Tons of it. We prided ourselves on who could find the most exotic and potent weed. Everyone I knew owned a store bought or homemade bong. We drove constatly while drinking or toking, never gave it a second thought. We got pulled over many times. The worst that happened normally was your beer got poored out and your dope confiscated.

When I hear the talk of how much stronger the pot of today is I have to laugh. We had access to a super refined semi-clear molasses like stuff that was called “honey oil” one spot on a piece of foil or a thin line on a joint would put you away for a few hours. Never seen anything like it since. Four finger tall bags of some of the finest “expando” Columbian pot could be had for 45 or 50 bucks.

As in the 70’s show, the basement was the place to hang at friends houses. We all knew who’s house we could go to and drink and get stoned.

We would sometimes have kegs at State and City parks, literally hundreds of kids hanging out together with kegs in plain sight in the the trunks of cars or backs of pickups. The cops would drive through slowly, we basically waved and palmed the joint we were holding, or set our beer to the side. 99 percent of the time, they just kept driving.

Sex was rampant. I think the summer of my junior year I had relations with approximately 10 different girls. It could be fairly casual and we would remain friends afterwards.

When I was 14 and 15 I was working 40 hours a week working as cook at “Red Lobster” while attending high school. No one ever thought anything strange about it. I routinely got off work at midnight and went home and did homework till 2:00 am or so.

Drive In movies were still prevalent and kind of fun on a Friday or Saturday night.

We played Fooseball quite a bit just as video games were getting “hot”. We had probably 4 Fooseball parlors in town we would hang out in.

The music was superb. We had the Zeppelin camp, The Who people, The Doors enthusiasts, Lynnyrd Skynnard folks with Pink Floyd and The Dead thrown in. Yes was also quite popular.

8 tracks were the norm. I used to have at least 20 of them in my car at a time. Impossible to keep organized. (For me anyway).

Sometimes I look back and wonder how I and my friends survived it. Never knew one person killed in an accident from drinking. (knock wood). I know it was utterly, completely wrong and thank goodness we don’t allow the kids today to pull the stuff that I and my friends took for granted. But quite frankly I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it. I had more fun and good friends that I still consider close today, than anyone has a right to.

Oh, by the way, I grew up in West Des Moines, Ia. Left home at 20, joined the service, got my Masters Degree, have a wonderful wife and kids now. Don’t believe everything you hear about how drugs will always condemn you to a life of nothingness. Won’t make it easier, but can for sure make it more interesting. In my case anyway.

Great thread!

sorry about the spelling errors, that was being hasty and not proofing well enough.

Born in '58 - graduated high school '76.

Transportation - Mom and Dad each had a car. Mom’s was a station wagon, I don’t really remember what Dad had. My older brother had an old Barracuda, and when I graduated I got a Vega. Before I got my car, I either walked where I wanted to go, bummed a ride with friends, or in extreme cases, had Mom drive me. I rode the school bus or walked to school. There wea no public transportation in our area. Firebirds and Camaros were HUGE. You were automatically cool if you owned one of these cars.
Music - Aerosmith was fairly new and was getting very popular. Led Zepplin was popular, as were Rod Stewart, Bob Segar, Lynard Skynard. Concert tickets were less than $15 and was general admission. We went to about 4 concerts a year. The King Biscuit Flour Hour was a radio concert every week and quite popluar. Music was very important and the radio was always on.

Recreation - Concerts, as mentioned above. There was a mall a few miles away, but it was not the place to go unless you needed jeans, which were $8 a pair. Chess King was the cool place for guys to shop. Most Friday and Saturday nights were spent either at the football games, or cruising the fast food parking lots, looking for something to do. Drugs, mostly marijuana, was available, but only for the “freaks”. Beer was the drug of choice, especially the Miller Ponies - little bottles of beer. Lots of time was spent in friends’ basements, playing pool, air hockey or Pong, pretending to be in a rock band, listening to music or just hanging around. As soon as the weather warmed up, entire high school populations could be found at Stone Mountain, cruising. Underground Atlanta was just beginning to die, and was a fairly popluar place to drink. As long as you could walk, you were okay to drive. Sex was a popular sport. It was okay to have sex, just not with to many guys in a short period of time, otherwise you were a slut.

TV - Saturday Night Live was almost required viewing for teenagers. It was talked about first thing Monday at school. Most people I knew had color console TV’s.

Everyone had chores. It was an accepted part of teenager-dom. On Saturdays, you had to cut the grass or wash the cars or clean the house. But by 7pm, everyone was out looking for a party.

Papers had to be researched at the library, and typed on a typewriter. If you were lucky, you got to use the school’s electric typewriters rather than a manual. Most of the girls took “business classes”, wherein we learned how to type, use a dictaphone and write in shorthand. Girls also had Home Ec - where you learned to sew, cook, and run a household. (Most of the time we just made brownies and sat around talking).

Ah, those were the days.