The year of the Bicentennial, the year I graduated, and the year I joined the U.S.A.F.
Instead of the school colors(green and gold), we were forced to wear alternating red, white and blue gowns…but we came down the aisle humming Springsteen’s “Born To Run”. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was all over the radio, Frampton Came Alive, Dreamboat Annie sailed into our hearts, and McCartney used his Wings to travel at The Speed of Sound. The Cray 1 was born, as was Apple Computers. I remember the scorching hot parade grounds during the 4th of July during basic training(eight people passed out while standing at attention). After basic I was sent to Chanute A.F.B. in Illinois for further training in Crewchiefin’ a B-52D…and how to survive if the Earth ever freezes, because that was a hella cold winter.
I fell in love with three different Airmen, the Cubbies, and the Chicago Dog(please don’t ask in which order), met my first African-American acquaintance/friend, and smoked my first weed.
It was not a boring year for me-How was it for you?
In '76, I was selected for an officer accession program in the Navy (NESEP) and in April, I left San Diego enroute to Newport, RI, for a “prep school” - a summer of assorted refresher training to get us ready to be university students. I was there for July 4, and I seem to recall there were some British ships visiting.
In August, I reported to Purdue, Univ to begin studies in Aero Engineering, and I discovered that Lafayette, Indiana is in the middle of nowhere!
That was also the year I got my first new car, financed thru the Bank of Dad. It was a Datsun B-210, and it was the car that convinced me never to buy a 2-door car again.
So, not boring for me, either.
I spent the year goofing around, watching television, and being catered to hand and foot. (I was three.) It has all been downhill from there.
My grandmother had one of those (orange, 1977). I got it in 2005 and it only had 8,000 miles on it. I drove it for 100,000 more miles before retiring it.
Got my first “real”, full-time job, as a typesetter at the Brookline Chronicle.
Now there are no more typesetters, or Brookline Chronicle.
I might have had a few kicks in 1976, but they were all of the inter-uterine variety.
“The Laughs are on 56 in 76”
So said the ads on Boston’s biggest independent station. They even made an ad with the space between the “5” and the “6” morphing into a “7”. Channel 56 (WLVI, so the call letters were actually “56” in roman numerals0 ran Star Trek every night, along with a lot of 1950s and 1960 comedies (hence the ad).
I went to Boston Pops concerts on the Common (but avoided the July 4, 1976 one – that would have been insane), so I got a lot of classical music that summer. Read all of Cecil Scott Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, including The Hornblower Companion. Commodore Hornblower got me interested enough to start reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I finished up that fall.
I was 8. Can’t even remember where we went on vacation, but my brother Ed was 2 and Jay was on the way (he’s got an October birthday). That makes an important year or, “when History begins according to Jay”, who’s been known to claim that anything pre-1976 counts as pre-historical.
They better be intra- or you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Small world. I was also in the NESEP at the University of Idaho (metallurgical engineering), but earlier in the 70s, prep school in San Diego. I didn’t graduate, however; just couldn’t handle the physics.
Anyway, 1976. My son Keith, who died recently, was born in Camarillo, CA that year. Smoked weed for the first and only time while on assignment to St. Thomas, VI. A great place to have a good time, for sure. I was then sent to Guatemala for earthquake relief. Also a good place to party. All in all, a pretty good year.
Born to Run was omnipresent here in central Jersey. WNEW & WPLJ were the rock stations then.
My Yanks beat KC in an exciting Championship series, though lost to the Big Red Machine in the Series. The first Post Season in my lifetime for the Yanks.
I remember the big Op Sail that year. We saw some of the tall ships sailing into NY harbor when we were fishing in Sandy Hook Bay.
Extra big fireworks displays that July of course. As a kid that was pretty awesome.
The Muppet Show & Baa Baa Black Sheep went on that year. Bad News Bears was the big movie for kids my age.
I truly hope you meant intrauterine, not interuterine.
Well, I was 5. I do recall staring at Lynda Carter’s boobs a lot.
I spent that summer in bed with mono, then started third grade at a new school. We were the first class in Fairfax County’s new “Gifted and Talented” program. I struggled horribly in math class, because being “smart” kids they decided to skip us straight into algorithms and long division without bothering to teach us multiplication.
The BiCenntenial was quite a big deal in the DC suburbs, and we pretty much lived the revolution in every school activity. Even our language arts reading assignments tended to be short stories from or about the era.
Argued a lot with my Father, who was still outraged by “the nation’s poor treatment of Richard Nixon” while I was rooting for Jimmy Carter to be our next President. The only thing we agreed about was “The Muppet Show.”
I loved John Travolta, WildCherry, Rod Stewart, Chicago and Diana Ross.
Watched “Freaky Friday” while my Mom did her shopping (you could do that back then) then sneaked down the hall to peek through my fingers at “Rocky”. I remember skipping past a theater with screams coming out of it, that must have been “Carrie.”
Wore a lot of moss green and plaid double knit polyester.
I’ve been told I really liked pureed peas.
In the immortal words of William Claude Dukenfield: “Go away kid, ya bother me.” 
I made the transition from elementary to junior high, played some baseball, and worked like a dog on my family’s farm.
I spent the first four months of it kicking the inside of my mother’s womb, and the rest of it probably flailing my legs randomly.
I managed to get from second to third grade, started playing soccer in a junior team, sang in the youth choir “Junge Stimmen” and heard A LOT of ABBA. Yeah, 1976 was the year of ABBA, they were everywhere.
I spent most of 1976 in South Korean, going over in early March. So I missed out on all the Bicentennial stuff, and that I really regret. I was in the US Army, stationed at Camp Humphries, south of Seoul. I did learn to like Korean food though.
In 1976 I bought my first stereo (turntable and AM/FM radio!) and KISS’s Destroyer. I discovered The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings and B. Kliban in 1976, too.