...and maybe you been suffering from
a few too many plans that have gone wrong
and your trying to remember
how fine your life used to be
running around banging your drum
like it's 1973...
The Waterboys - "This Is The Sea"
I've just returned from vacation at The Cabin, and during that trip I found myself thinking quite a bit about the 1970's. I actually had a 70's flashback at The Cabin, when "the dads," beer in hand, were lighting off fire crackers with the kids. My sons happen to have rather long hair right now that curls out from their baseball caps to create a "Bad News Bears" image - circa 1976. That, my friends, was a 1970's moment. Fireworks, dads, kids with long hair and beer. The only things missing were cigarettes and polyester pants. I could have sworn I heard "Silly Love Songs" by Wings playing somewhere in the background.
Admittedly, I have fond memories of the 1970's. Bikes with banana seats, The Bicentennial, feathered hair (hair in general), Little League Baseball (Plaza Furniture Padres!), Lawn Jarts, The Pop Shoppe, Three's Company, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, the Hillcrest pool, Tom Snyder's pool, In Search of, etc. etc. etc. There were no Blackberrys, BlueTooths or e-mail. Hey, if you were on vacation, you couldn't be reached. And, the kicker, I had never heard of cholesterol back then. Nobody had heard of it, really. People didn't know smoking was bad for you, for God sakes.
Recently, there was quite a "70's fad" in which fashion, music, trivia, etc. from the decade was back in vogue. I read an article somewhere in which a guy being interviewed about "what he loved about the '70's," hit the nail on the head when he remarked "...in the 70's I could go out for a steak, cigar and martini and nobody gave me a dirty look." Amen, brother. Now we know the fat (saturated, trans, polyunsaturated, & monounsaturated), salt, sugar, fiber, potassium, carbohydrates, sodium, folic acid, and Vitamin A, B, C, D, E, F, G content of every frickin' thing we eat. And don't forget Zinc - it wards off colds if you take it at the right time. You need them all, in some capacity, but too much of any of it will kill you. We think.
In the 1970's, I could walk virtually anywhere when I turned five. I used to walk four blocks to buy baseball cards at Thriftway almost every day. (The cards had bubble gum in the package, by the way, WITH SUGAR!) Today, we get nervous if our kids go into the next aisle at Target. And I am not saying this nervousness is unwarranted. There are a lot of 21st-century jack-asses out there to watch out for. And that is part of the problem.
Now, I realize that not everything about the '70's was peaches and cream. High-unemployment, gas-lines, the end of the Vietnam war, DISCO, etc. And, speaking of lawn jarts, I was almost killed by one. I also admit that smoking and not knowing the ingredients in food led to quite a few health problems for people. If my dad knew more about healthy eating and cholesterol back then, he might be here today. But at least he didn't spend all of his waking moments obsessing about it, which is more "the 21st Century Way." People may live longer but stress levels are way up. I guess that means ignorance is bliss, baby.
Oh well, what can you do? Would I go back? Not a chance. I am having too good of a time as a husband and father. Maybe, I'll make "my own 70's." I happen to have a leisure suit, and I could try and grow the feathered hair back.
Ah, maybe not. There is no way I could grow my hair out that long. And, by the way, where is my iPod?
Peace,
Jeff
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7 comments:
The seventies seemed to be a huge and independant phenomenon, like a war or a drought. It was the domain of baby boomers coming of age. Their hedonistic lifestyle evolved to no longer include the dream of making the world a better place and they entered a golden age of self indulgence. Think about how the boomer generation has invented one brand of self absorption after another since their birth at the end of WWII. Anyway, I would put the tipping point of the ordinary person's acceptance of the seventies mojo at the release of the "Sgt. Pepper" movie featuring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. At that moment, the shark had been jumped. Seventies boomers looked at that movie, took an embarrassed look at themselves and moved on (to their 80's consumption and greed).
Everything containing the magic seventies mojo quickly became taboo once the party was over. All things seventies were roundly avoided until enough time went by and 70's gems could be marched out again, this time by Gen-X hipsters trying to be ironic.
Tito - nice comment. Everything is relative, of course. I was lucky to be raised in a household that was probably more "fifties" than "seventies." And I am thankful for that. Most of the Big Brains that study generations, however, have concluded that many Gen. X'ers have such a cynical outlook is due to (in part) the lack of parenting in the 70's, rising divorce rate, etc. Every generation is a reaction to the previous generation, they say. (for instance, punk music was a reaction to hippy music.)
I wonder how this decade will be remembered 30 years from now?
What do you, the readers, think?
Thanks Tito.
great post tito-I hated the 70's. it was a cultural sinkhole. where to begin? bad hair, bad music, bad fashion. the doobie brothers, debbie boone, the bay city rollers, bell bottoms, skanky tube tops, sweatbands. fondu pots, butterfly collar shirts, rayon, my god, I could go on and on. tito summed up the self-indulgent baby boomers better than I could. my god, will they ever go away? this decade will be remembered as the post 9/11 fear decade. maybe the beginning of the end of empire, maybe a blip on the radar of a long period of slow decline. hard to tell. this is what is not hard to tell. the 70' sucked, and were an embarrassment to everyone but the boomers. long live the eisenhower era.
Swing Shift - thanks for the comment. I'd offer The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones, David Bowie, The Godfather, Gram Parsons,Rod Carew, etc. There was alot of good in the 70's, but you had to know where to look.
Granted, I was ages 3 to 13 in the 70's, so I didn't know where to look.
Plus, the Pop Shoppe still existed in the 70's, man. I loved that place.
It's all realitive.
Nice comments Tito and Jeff although I would place jumping the shark at the Pinball Wizard movie, specifically when the baked beans and what all come out of the TV onto Ann Margaret. Granted that was only 1975....
Jeff had a good response to Swing Shift: For every Debbie Boone, I'll raise you a Sex Pistols. 70's music was top notch, from rock, to punk, to country (obvious exception was disco). Also unless you were white, male, middle class, and a conformist the Eisenhower era didn't have a lot going for you.
I think we'll look back on the 2000's as a darkness before a great awakening. We're becoming more accepting of all human conditions whether it be your race, hair length, sexual preference or spirituality. Medical and computing advances continue to astound and increase; The internet is changing how we get and synthesize information and news.
In 30 years we'll look upon these last few decades as very primative. Much like someone from the 1930's looked upon the 1890's.
Thanks Free - music from the '70's was very underrated. Disco and bad pop music get most of the publicity, but a bunch of the great music from the 80's and 90's was rooted in 70's music.
U2 credited the Clash, The Police credited The Jam, and Ryan Adams, The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, etc. owe a lot to Gram Parsons. The Replacements have often said thta some of their main influences were Big Star, Faces, and (believe it or not) Cheap Trick - all 70's bands.
But you didn't hear them in the Top 40.
s-a-tur-day -NIGHT!
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