I should have added that 1976 was the only time in which I voted for a Republican for president. I just didn’t like Jimmy Carter.
well one of the most exciting things happened to me unexpectedly on a cold damp and generally cruddy early spring day on the 31st of march (which is just about the weather on that day every year )
Mom went into an regular pre-natal checkup at the hospital on the base ( fort ord) and dad was either paying bills because they lived off base or taking a nap in the car (depending on who ya asked ) and I was born 8 weeks early at a pound in a half and 6 inches long and allegedly was the first kidlet to use the expensive shiny new unit for built for preemies in which I spent 8 weeks residing in
my parents claim to this day that was the last time I was early for anything ever ……….
1976? Dungeons and Dragons. Writing sonnets. Getting laid.
I started off the year by having a bunch of nightmares, including one where a female terrorist put a bomb in my house. ISIS, however, was a cool goddess with a show on TV back then.
Later I got interested in the Nordic myths and my sister and I would re enact the battle of Ragnorak. That was far more interesting than the bicentennial–I can scarcely recall the Liberty Train. I also learned to identify most of the butterflies in the area and taught other kids in the neighborhood about butterflies.
I started the 7th grade and our social studies teacher taught us about Russia and communism. She said that the Russians were going to take over. I told my mother, who yelled “What is she, a Goldwater republican?” Somehow all this led to a lifelong fascination with Russian history.
One day at my school a kid got on the bus and everyone suddenly started yelling “Carter sucks!” The kid yelled back “Ford is a fairy!” I liked Carter and was glad when he won in spite of the rumors that he would turn the White House into a peanut farm.
I swear this is true.
In 1976, I was starting my second year of grad school in Chicago. My wife and I were used to living in the city and we did not have a car. I finally broke down and bought a car…a used bright-red 1975 Chevy Vega station wagon. As I have learned, I apparently had the ONLY Vega that ever ran well and made it to 100K miles. That car gave me absolutely no problems at all. It got around in the snow well (it was a manual), always started, had a small battery I could haul up to the apartment when it got really cold outside, and it maintained its compression for as long as I had it. All of a sudden, we had the freedom to go where we wanted to. There were trips to NJ, MO, NC, FL, and a dozen other places, including just getting out of Chicagoland when we had a chance. With an after-market Sanyo cassette deck, it was always full of good music.
Summary: Bought it with 12K miles on it for $2100, drove it for 6 years and put another 80K miles on it, and then sold it for $1000 in 1982.
I graduated from high school that year too, got the hell out of that smug, isolated suburban town, and discovered college and the big city and freshman year.
Finished my freshmen year at University of Michigan as a EE major and started my sophomore year. Lived in West Quad in the Spring semester, pledged and moved into a fraternity in the fall. That summer my girlfriend’s mother called me to break up. I went down to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor to see the bicentennial festivities, which included visits by the tall ships, and a free Maynard Ferguson concert. I played the guitar in the backup combo for the aMaizin’ Blues, a traveling UM song & dance troupe.
9 year-old me was into the first Fleetwood Mac album with Nicks/Birmingham, Silly Love Songs, and our Pong game from Sears.
… and I’m pretty sure this was the year I discovered Mad Magazine.
One year out of high school. Crappy but well paid factory job. Owned the fastest commonly available motorcycle at the time. First real girlfriend, getting laid fairly often. Smoking lots of weed, drinking lots of beer. “Agents Of Fortune” by Blue Oyster Cult, “Live” by Robin Trower and “Masque” by Kansas were getting plenty of play in my under dash cassette deck. October and November were really good that year.
Seems so great in retrospect but I probably wouldn’t have said so at the time.
- A teenager in high school, and off for the summer. Too young to get a decent summer job, but too old be under parental supervision and accompanied at the playground (heck, too old to be at the playground). Just that weird middle age in the teen years.
As I recall, a friend and I built an awesome treehouse in the tree in his front yard, where we’d hide out from his parents while smoking cigarettes and listening to Top-40 AM radio.
I was four years old. Dinosaurs, I’d bet.
Second year of college, dating my serious college girlfriend. Disco and leisure suits (God help us).
Cripes, I am old.
Regards,
Shodan
Went to the Blue Frogge disco in Ann Arbor but thank God I never owned a leisure suit.
Sex, drugs, rock and college. I didn’t actually meet my wife until that winter so it was footloose and fancy for me. Adulthood had begun but not totally dug its fingers in yet and it was a time of feeling the freedom the nation was celebrating all that year. Very good times and good memories.
I turned 14 in July of that year. In the school’s I was going to that meant that I completed eighth grade and was going into 9th grade. Like a lot of teenagers music loomed large in my life. I was listening to Peter Frampton, Yes, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, a lot of Billy Joel, and so on.
My deep involvement in the school theater program meant that I had been in the spring Musical. I was Hugo Peabody in our production of Bye Bye Birdie. 
( the most memorable event in that entire production is that nobody told me how to use hair gel. I got a container of Vaseline and combed it through my hair. It took 3 or 4 days to get out and left a horrifying greasy ring in the bathtub. Mom was not impressed. )
The owner of the local used bookstore where I spent all of my allowance and other money I earned sold me several books that changed my life. “Carrie” and " The Hite Report on Female Sexuality" loomed rather large in my psyche that year. Consequently I masturbated with the furious and gleeful abandon of a 14 year old who thought he had all of the answers.
1976 was of course the Bicentennial. I grew up in Philadelphia and so there were lots of school trips down to the Independence Hall area. Rocky also came out. Since we had all played on the Art Museum steps and in the fountain at the base of the steps as small children on hot summer days, it was pretty neat to see those steps and that view of Center City in an entirely different context.
That was the second year of my 3 year stint as a boy candy striper. I volunteered for 5 hours every Sunday morning on the Pediatrics ward of a large Hospital on North Broad Street. It was one of the formative experiences of my entire life.
My local community installed lights for playing tennis at night in the local park. That dominated my entire summer time.
It was a pretty good and interesting year.
1976 was one of the crappiest years of my life. I graduated from college in the midst of a huge recession, and it wasn’t like I had any idea what I wanted to do after college anyway. So the months before graduation were filled with dread, and the months after were filled with depression.
Needless to say, I don’t think about that year much. And now that I’ve thought this much about it, I’m ready to post this and return to more pleasant topics. The world is full of them. 
The first half of it I was in 4th grade. We had 2 baby chicks in the classroom called “Carter” and “Mondale”. Magic Mountain (amusement park) was debuting what I *think * was the first 360 degree loop roller coaster called *The Revolution *. The commercial for it was on tv constantly ("Magic Mountain’s Revolution it’ll knock your socks right off). I’ll never forget riding it for the first time.
I read Tiger Beat magazine but was transitioning to Cream and Circus, because I needed to read all the latest deets on my idols, KISS 
There was a 360 degree loop in the Flip Flap Railroad at Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park in Coney Island in 1896. It wasn’t the first one. It was, however, too far ahead of its time. It was too dangerous for the technology of the period. Good idea, scary execution:
I was three years old and in a Bicentennial parade on my Big Wheel. The photos of that event show me red-faced and crying, miserable from the heat and just wanting to go home.
I was 12 so my bicycle was a big item. It’s good that BMX wasn’t a thing or I probably wouldn’t be here to have this conversation.
Also plastic models.
I won a national bicentennial painting contest and my entry was hung in the white house for a while. So that was newsworthy.
And it was around that time I discover Playboy, Penthouse, and Oui at the local 7-11.