I bought/built my first computer, an IMSAI 8080, for $500. When I couldn’t get it to work, I figured out that it didn’t come with any RAM. So I bought some 1K boards, and soldered those, one pin at a time.
64K RAM would have cost $2700.
I was in grad school at the University of Illinois, and my adviser died unexpectedly, so I started the process of finding another. I was heavily into multi-user games on PLATO, and was doing my Star Trek column on the PLATO newspaper. I think that was the year I bought lots of Unknowns from a guy whose father died. They were $12 each, reap expensive back then, but a bargain since I’ve never seen another at any used magazine stores.
Other than that, totally boring.
I started my first year of high school (10th grade). Hash jeans, feathered hair, rugby shirts, Earth shoes, saddle shoes (made a comeback), paddle combs in our back pockets, giant tubes of Bonnie Bell lip gloss, the band Boston, Peter Frampton, Hall & Oates, and Kiss. Went to football games and the dances in the gym afterward. Parties were actually “advertised” in the school hallways on posters taped to the walls. The parties were outside at various locations around town. Someone would buy a keg and charged a $1 which got you an X on your hand so you could drink from it all night. I think the drinking age was 18 so we would get an older kid to buy us TJ Swan “wine”. We, sophomore girls, were suddenly experiencing popularity with the older boys. My dad laid down the rule - I could go out 2 nights per week. If I went out in the middle of the week, I could only go out one night that weekend. Curfew was 10:30 on weeknights and midnight on the weekends. I stuck to the rules, some begging may have taken place on occasion but I was a pretty good kid. Even with all of the drinking going on, I didn’t do it that often. Never did any type of drugs or smoked a cigarette. I was too afraid of getting in trouble. My friend and I would share a bottle of TJ!
I remember a boy called and asked me to go to the Elvis concert that was in town, I remember rolling my eyes at the mention of Elvis and turned him down. But I did go to the Kiss concert at some point that year.
College, and that’s about all. Double major in music and education, specializing in low brass performance and minoring in piano and voice. Lead tenor in school show chorus, first desk tuba in bands. Carried a total sixty semester hour load during three terms. Counselor, first tenor, tuba and electric bass player, equipment van driver, and roadie for an eight-day “music mission” tour with my Church’s youth choir (from Atlanta to Dallas, with places between).
A very dull year. I still don’t know how I managed to get arrested (only) once during the year I turned 25.
I was 11. I was really interested in the Bicentennial, and U.S. history around the founding of the country, at that point.
We had moved to Green Bay from suburban Chicago the year before, and I was becoming a Packer fan (at that point, I still didn’t know a lot about football). My other hobbies were model railroading, slot cars, model rocketry, and stamp collecting (why, yes, I was a little nerd who didn’t like going outside very much).
I graduated from high school. Preppy little snots that we were, I believe my graduating class was unimpressed, if not downright annoyed because it stole our thunder, that we were graduating in the same year as the bicentennial. Our yearbook doesn’t even mention it.
Then I went to college in the fall.
Pretty much all I thought about, in both my last semester of high school and my first of college, was BOYS. I was a horny young lass, yes I was.
I was six or seven in 1976. I remember the hype about the Bicentennial. My first-grade teacher really pushed the rah-rah patriotism thing. We sang a lot of patriotic songs in class and made hasty pudding which is mentioned in “Yankee Doodle”. and That summer, my mother, sister, and I visited Valley Forge and Philadelphia. I remember touching the Liberty Bell, which I doubt is allowed any more. I collected the special Bicentennial coins the mint put out, convinced they would be worth a fortune some day. I was a little disappointed on the Fourth that nothing particularly exciting happened.
I was starting to get interested in astronomy and the space program. I was excited about the aerodynamic testing they were doing on the Enterprise shuttle. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t capable of space flight.
Ah, 1976, my first apartment. I had a car and got the tag renewal, and this was in Pennsylvania, so the tag had considerable Bicentennial cachet. I sold the car and kept the tag while the “76” sticker was still on it, and now it’s hanging in my shop on the wall covering a hole where the outdoor spigot shutoff is.
I smoked a huge amount of pot and hash, and worked insanely long hours, and drank Schmidt’s beer, and had veal parmesan every week with my coworkers (I regret this now but at the time I had not the slightest idea what veal was (dumbass)). And I was even more foolish than I am now.
I remember that DC Comics had numbered “Bicentennial Banners” during July and August, and if you clipped and sent in 25 different banners they would send you a special Superman belt buckle.
I remember that if you stepped out the north gate of Chanute AFB not 20 feet away was a head shop, complete with incense, glow in the dark and black light posters, and my first exposure to underground comix.
In 1976 I was dreading junior high, watching Happy Days and ‘200 years ago today’ on our 800 lb. Zenith tv. Oh, and I got to go on the Freedom Train when it stopped in town. Fun stuff.
Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Electric Company.
I was 5 years old.
Oh, my, 1976 was a good/bad/crazy year.
One year after high school graduation. I was living in the Bay Area with my nutty boyfriend. I worked as an auto parts sales person – very novel in those days. I was a golden goddess, water skied every free moment in an almost non-discernible yellow bikini, drove a white 1971 Corvette LT-1 with T-tops. Lots of concerts, camping, drinking, dancing, sunning and sex. Discovered wine in earnest and learned to pick mushrooms of many varieties. Fell in love with San Francisco for my whole life.
I remember never missing SNL but otherwise didn’t much care about tee vee. Music was my thing. Buddy Miles, Led Zep, The Youngbloods, CSN&Y, Savoy Brown, Tom Petty, Blind Faith, Judy Collins… an endless list, really. That never changed, at least!
Toward the end of that year, I fled the nutty boyfriend to live in Boise. It was the best available alternative to being shot.
Mostly good times. Learned a lot.
Two weeks that Summer term were pretty awful. I decided to stay in a men’s dorm for the Summer session, to keep me close to campus and not having to fool with cooking. The dorm was a 10-story building, floors 1 and 2 were common areas, 3-10 residential. There were only enough residents to open floors 3-6 to us. All was good, until…
A couple of weeks into the term there was a mandatory all-residents’ meeting with the Dean of Students. During this meeting we were told that the upcoming cheer leading, flag corps, majorette, and drum major camp attendees would be occupying floors 9-10 during their two week session. This came with the solemn announcement that any resident found or reported above floor 6 would summarily be expelled from the University, banned from campus, and would never be allowed to return. This was sobering, at least for me. Some “might” have found it to be a challenge, but I never heard of an infraction in this case.
(Of course there was an 8-story women’s dorm in the same complex, and they had two full floors unoccupied that Summer. Made no sense to me, but… This was the Summer of “Afternoon Delight” being played by every pop radio station two or three times an hour!)
Hey, me too. I had a good job, a 1970 AMC Gremlin with a license plate like this, and the knowledge that I was invincible.
And the concerts I attended. Kiss, Bad Company, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Edgar Winter, Yes, J. Geils, Springsteen…
BTW, **Czarcasm **(and you probably already know this, but just in case you don’t), the movie Dazed and Confused takes place during the last day of the seniors’ 1976 school year. Seek it out if you have not seen it, you will nod your head frequently in recognition.
mmm
I was 15. Pretty much just going to school, and working (paper boy), and playing football, basketball, and baseball. Life was simple. I didn’t get into too much trouble. I remember the buildup to the bicentennial as being a pretty big deal, and then seeing some of the celebrations on TV it was a big deal. I thought it was pretty cool, our 200th birthday and all.
76? That was the year I dropped out of college, moved to Alaska, and started hanging out with really strange people (ie your average Alaskan.)
I didn’t exist for the first several weeks of 1976, but by New Years Eve I could open my eyelids and possibly survived had I been born that early.
Junior in college. Pot and cocaine, but pretty good grades. Fun.
Fetuses bumming womb to womb was quite popular in ‘76, as I recall.
I was newly married, my overlords at work had figured out the best way to use my talents, and I wasn’t wealthy, but at least I was debt-free, and I had a full head of hair. I was the shitz.
1976 was a LONG time ago.