1970's favorite memories!

Cars: My first was a 1975 Ford Pinto Hatchback, white with orange Landau Roof! Lots of mechanically awful cars were produced by US manufacturers while some high quality imports set the pace for the next few decades.

Aren't you glad you were never rear-ended in that thing?!
 
Cars: Mark's TR3 probably had a "Prince of Darkness" Lucas Electrics system! Lucas spawned dozens of electrical jokes!

You're not kidding, Julie. The big sedans were like boats that had no feel of the road, sat 3-across in the front, and had acres of rear seat legroom.

Drove the Pinto from 1975 to about 1978, a period well before Ford acknowledged the explosive gas tank! I replaced it with something horrific, a 1976 Audi 100LS, but that's a story for another thread....

High School: First two years in a strict Long Island New York public school. Moved to San Diego and had culture shock the last two! We had an "open" campus about 1 mile from the beach in a campus that dated to the late 1930s. There was even an unofficial "smoking section" outdoors; nobody cared whether you went to class or not. Lots of cool elective classes such as Surf P.E, Rock Poetry, Science Fiction English, etc!! Favorite teacher was born a Thalidomide Baby* and had a distinctive arm prosthesis she'd give to students as a "hall pass," not that school admin really cared - it was for fun. Ms. Martin was the very best English prof and wrote 3 books before an untimely passing. In that vintage driver education and training in school-owned vehicles with instructors was free of charge! IIRC there were a few old Chrysler Imperial "boats" and one very abused VW Bug manual. I didn't learn to properly drive a stickshift until well into my 20s! Attended my 10 and 20 year reunions, what a trip! Looking forward to the 40th in 2016!!


*Thalidomide was a morning sickness drug often prescribed in the early 1950s. Sadly, it interfered with limb growth for some during pregnancy.
 
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So I take it you have first hand experience with WindNSea... and Blacks...

Blacks always looked so much better from the cliff than it actually was when you got out there. Yeah, it was hollow in a closing out, everything coming down on your head sort of way...

I had to rewire that stupid car from top to bottom with aftermarket electrical parts... and a few months after I finished the frustrating as hell project, that took forever... the stupid car went for an ocean swim...

As bad as British electrical sysems are, they are even worse when they are full of seawater...
 
The 70s (and 80s) had the best horror flicks ever! I do remember that! The shining and and amityville horror.

My dad used to listen Paul Simon a lot and possibly Bread.

Remember SNL on Saturday nites with Rosanadana and Jane Curtain doing the news. Eddie Murphy and Mr. Robinsons neighborhood, also Jim Belushi and Mr. Bill the play-doh man!
 
MyFlock said:
The 70s (and 80s) had the best horror flicks ever! I do remember that! The shining and and amityville horror.

My dad used to listen Paul Simon a lot and possibly Bread.

Remember SNL on Saturday nites with Rosanadana and Jane Curtain doing the news. Eddie Murphy and Mr. Robinsons neighborhood, also Jim Belushi and Mr. Bill the play-doh man!
Click to expand...

I still haven't seen the big horror movies from the 70's! I also never (or very rarely) watched SNL in it's heyday. It came on too late, and I couldn't stay up. Nowdays it's the opposite, I have to take sleeping pills to fall asleep!
 
Scott, thank you for this wonderful nostalgia thread! Wow, definitely a stroll down memory lane. So much trivia I had completely forgotten about.

I was born in 1960, graduated high school in 1978. My first car was an orange Mazda, I don't remember the year, I remember skipping school with a lot of classmates crammed into my tiny car and Eve Of Destruction blasting from an eight track cassette tape, remember rewinding those suckers with a pencil eraser? More memorable was my first flight in a small plane, a Cessna 150.

Scott, you are so right about what people wore then and now on commercial flights.

Annual staff, gymnastics, driver's ed, school newspaper staff. I was a flag carrier in our marching band, I had no talent with musical instruments. I was constantly in trouble with our band director, I spent many hours in detention. Teachers had wooden paddles and weren't afraid to use them.

The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, SNL, Head East, Credence Clearwater Revival.... Has anyone mentioned The Rocky Horror Picture Show or the rock opera, Tommy, platform shoes, The Pinball Wizard. Pinball machines at all the convenience stores with the local kids' past top scores posted beside the machines?

Thanks again, Scott!!! :) I feel ancient now!
 
Mark: Mostly Swami's and Moonlight Beaches in Encinitas. Black's may still be an unofficial nude beach!

Julie and MyFlock: Classic 70s movies are terrific and widely available, even on standard TV. Occasionally big screen theaters will slot them in on anniversaries or as filler.

Allee: Skipping school seemed a right compared with modern standards, and especially alluring if you had wheels!

I had some 8Tracks and was happy when the cassette was born! Technology has been kind to music lovers; ironic vinyl is making a comeback. I'll pass! Surviving bands of that era frequent the many Native American Casinos with amphitheater so. Some remain excellent!

Hard to imagine you needing detention!! Schools in most SoCal districts weren't able to use corporal punishment - might have saved a few kids I knew!!

Ah, the venerable Cessna 150! Honest and safe aircraft that could be passed up by cars on the highway if flying into a strong headwind!

Rocky Horror Picture Show screens at least monthly at a late 1920s single-screen theater in northern San Diego. (La Paloma Theater in Encinitas)
 
Space invaders!!! The beginning of my video game addiction was in the late 1970's.

I love horror movies and the 70's definately had a lot of greats.

David bowie was at his best in the 70's. :)

My first horse was in the 70's, a pony named Tinker.

For some reason the 70's also brings to mind those little magic 8 balls that you shake and ask a question.

I was a child during this time, so I think it had an effect on life view.
 
Drive-in theaters! Great fun though the focus wasn't always on cinema! Awesome place to hang out with friends and eat some awful food. AFAIK there is only one within a 90 minute drive from home. Ironically I live less than a mile from a drive-in complex that has been shuttered since the early 1980s. Four tattered screens remain and is now the site of a weekend swap meet. Would have been developed long ago were it not a quarter mile from a small airport. Seems the trend in cinema is toward multiplexes with luxury recliner seating. Haven't been to a drive-in, well, since the 70s!

Edit: Mimsy01's post reminded me of Mood Rings! IIRC they reacted to skin temps and came with a mood-scoring sheet.
Anybody willing to admit having a Pet Rock?? Also from the 70s!
 
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RavensGryf said:
MyFlock said:
The 70s (and 80s) had the best horror flicks ever! I do remember that! The shining and and amityville horror.

My dad used to listen Paul Simon a lot and possibly Bread.

Remember SNL on Saturday nites with Rosanadana and Jane Curtain doing the news. Eddie Murphy and Mr. Robinsons neighborhood, also Jim Belushi and Mr. Bill the play-doh man!
Click to expand...

I still haven't seen the big horror movies from the 70's! I also never (or very rarely) watched SNL in it's heyday. It came on too late, and I couldn't stay up. Nowdays it's the opposite, I have to take sleeping pills to fall asleep!
Click to expand...

I was into everything, probably why I remember things so much from that time period, while my dad was quite strict, my mother let me run loose to do and see pretty much anything I wanted, not sure if that was a good thing. I could never sleep as a kid, I think I slept maybe two to three hours a night and that's all I needed. Nowadays, I'm usually in bed by 900 pm! I do feel old and run down lol....
 
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LOl Scott, I had a mood ring AND a pet rock! hahaha

In the 70's we could run rampant, parents were not nearly as concerned with predators during that time.

I was raised a good catholic girl. So I was not allowed any R rated movies UNLESS they were horror...horror made it perfectly ok no matter how gruesome. Love my Mom. haha
 
Yes, I had a pet rock and a mood ring. My teen neighbor had a magic 8 ball. Interestingly, I had a poster on my wall of a sun with a face purchased at a local department store. Years later I went online searching for that same sun face and found out it was a tarot card! The sun card from an artist in the 1970s who made a pack of cards called the Aquarian tarot deck!
 
Scott said:
Mark: Mostly Swami's and Moonlight Beaches in Encinitas. Black's may still be an unofficial nude beach!

Ah, the venerable Cessna 150! Honest and safe aircraft that could be passed up by cars on the highway if flying into a strong headwind!
Click to expand...

Well, we never spent much time on the beach at Blacks. Though I didn't make it down to SD much. (Trestles was closer! And I lived 3 blocks from the beach in Huntington... in the 80's.) Take off, tube, and get munched... I don't think I made a single wave.

C150's. I've both flown them, and jumped out of them. Somewhere I've got a picture of myself hanging by my feet from the passenger side wing strut of a 150 at around 9,000 feet. (Vertical free fall from that height gives you all of about five seconds of freefall time...)
 
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This is fun! I had several mood rings, no pet rocks, but clackers where popular in middle school, I had to toss them when the bruises got too big.

Scott, I was a basket of contradictions, my scholastic scores where phenomenal, my conduct, not so great. I had the scores to be validictorian, but my conduct scores, not so much. I was vice president of our senior class, but I missed the class trip over an unfortunate argument with our class sponser.

I went to my first and only animal rights protest in Dallas with my bestie and her older brothers. I was a ninth grader, I stayed in trouble for weeks over that one.

I actually took enough flight lessons to solo in the Cessna, but then decided I knew enough GOOD pilots to fly with so I became an international freight agent instead. Haha, I can't fly a plane, but I can pack a lay's potato chip, get it through customs and send it to all points of the globe without breaking it. I know, useless info that once seemed important. Years later I learned to ride a Ducati, that's almost as good as flying.
 
What are clackers? I don't remember that one.
 
Mark, they were a fad like hoola hoops. Plastic balls (I hope a mod doesn't see that) attached to a nylon cord with a washer in the middle. You held the washer and made the balls clack together. If I remember correctly there were a lot of injuries, black eyes, fractured bones... Good Times, right?

I found a photo for you, I'm amazed they still sell these things.

 
Weren't those called Clackers? OMG I haven't seen those since I was little. Black eyes, broken bones I'm sure... just like playing with nunchucks lol.
 
They don't make clackers anymore? Sheesh Next thing you'll say is there is no more lawn darts or slip and slides
 
Nope. Clackers still don't ring a bell. Must've missed out on that one...

Slip n slides... running as fast as you can and then faceplanting onto wet plastic and sliding out of control. What could possibly go wrong...

AND LAWN DARTS... you stand there, and I'll stand here, and we'll throw sharp pointy, ice pick like devices at each other's feet, it's even more fun if you've had a few drinks. What could possibly go wrong... whoops to high! oh... that... Yeah, that might be a problem. Dude, that's definitely going to leave a mark.

And then, of course, there were the people you pissed off... if they invite you over for a friendly game of lawn darts, be afraid.... be very, very afraid....

Now remember you've got to make it look like an accident... we can kill him and then turn around and sue the manufacturer for the trauma of watching our friend die...
 
Birdman666 said:
Scott said:
Mark: Mostly Swami's and Moonlight Beaches in Encinitas. Black's may still be an unofficial nude beach!

Ah, the venerable Cessna 150! Honest and safe aircraft that could be passed up by cars on the highway if flying into a strong headwind!
Click to expand...

Well, we never spent much time on the beach at Blacks. Though I didn't make it down to SD much. (Trestles was closer! And I lived 3 blocks from the beach in Huntington... in the 80's.) Take off, tube, and get munched... I don't think I made a single wave.

C150's. I've both flown them, and jumped out of them. Somewhere I've got a picture of myself hanging by my feet from the passenger side wing strut of a 150 at around 9,000 feet. (Vertical free fall from that height gives you all of about five seconds of freefall time...)
Click to expand...

I remember the lawn darts! And Twister and Ouija boards, some things should stay in the past! Thankfully our kids had safer toys, paintball guns, skateboards, in line skates, but that was later.

Respect, Mark! I never had the urge to jump out of a plane, I like to watch though, I've seen a few amazing air shows, I saw the Blue Angels when I was about nine. Coolest plane I've ever had a ride in was a gorgeous little GeeBee, that was the eighties though.
 
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