"THE 70s STORY," by BBHQ Insta-Trivia,
http://www.bbhq.com/sevente2.htm[What do you remember about 1970? In popular culture the Beatles released their last album, "Let It Be," while Brian Wilson
and the Beach Boys started their own Brother Records label and moved their studio to Brian's home, complete with a grand piano
in a sand box! Kent State University was the harbinger of a whole (sometimes violent) protest movement that swept campuses
across the USA, including the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, i.e., burning an ROTC building in 1970.]
Some
sociologists say that the events of one decade are a prelude to the next. In the 60's, 76 million boomers pounded at the doors
of the status quo; small cracks appeared. In the 70's the doors and the walls came tumbling down... and the mahem broke loose.
In the 60's we watched and learned from "Leave it to Beaver," and "Father Knows Best." The westerns were amazingly tame.
The Lone Ranger never killed anybody. Usually he shot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. You never saw any blood.
But
in the 70's, the networks tossed us "The Brady Bunch," a blended family, and "The Partridge Family." I'm not sure what they
were, but they weren't partridges, and they certainly were not the nuclear family that prevailed for the first 60 years of
the decade. Archie Bunker exposed all of his prejudices... right on the screen for us. And "The Jefferson's" introduced an
interracial couple to television. And in "Three's Company," nobody was married (except for the fuddy-duddy Ropers). We were
led to believe the young adults were just roommates. But sexual innuendo that you would not have ever seen in the 60's, permeated
every episode of "Three's Company." It was a complete reversal of the 60's.
In the 60's, comedian George Carlin performed
a 10-minute comedy sketch about the seven dirty words you could not say on television or radio. The boomer society whittled
that down to about two or three in the 70's.
In the mid-to-late 60's, many kids began wearing bellbottom pants. They let
their hair grow long; they wore flowers in their hair. Kid's stuff compared to the 70's.
By 1970, many kids wore platform
shoes and paisley shirts. Blacks, including Jesse Jackson, grew beards mustaches and and wore afros. The bizarre even went
mainstream: leisure suits became standard attire for some adults; we wore those horrible wide ties, and even ABC News dude
Sam Donaldson grew long, thick sideburns; and his superiors let him get away with it. What in the world were they thinking
of?
The sexual revolution may have been born in the 60's, but it came of age in the 70's. In the 60's, good girls did
not do it; and if they did, they did not talk about it. And if a girl "got in trouble," she either went away for several months,
or she forced the father into what our parents called a "shotgun wedding." That is how it was done. Very few adults lived
under the same roof unless they were members of the same family. The term "family" had a distinct and clear definition. The
birth control pill was not readily available, and abortion was still illegal. You were likely to be suspended if you were
caught with a condom in school. But the Supreme Court sanctified the sexual revolution by declaring abortion to be legal in
the early 70's. And the birth control pill opened the floodgates to sex without consequence -- or guilt. By the mid 70's,
adults and teens were living together... because they could, and nobody frowned on them for doing so. There was no such thing
as "living in sin," because there was no sin. Two popular phrases spoken widely by 1970 were "Do your own thing," and "Sock
it to me!" from Rowan and Martin's TV program "Laugh In."
[When I was a freshman at college in the fall of 1970, the girls
had a curfew at the dorms on the Tuscaloosa campus of the U of A. If they were going away for the weekend, they had to sign
out with their dorm supervisor. Really! And no guys were allowed past the lobby of the girls' dorms, but that rule changed
by the time I graduated in 1974.]
The practice of astrology reached a new high in the ealry 70's. The standard pickup
line was, "What's your sign?" And we bought all that stuff. (Remember the 5th Dimensions song, "Age of Aquarius"?)
Suspicion
and intrigue replaced replaced facts by 1970. Conspiracy theorists began to convince us that Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot
President Kennedy, that James Earl Ray did not shoot Dr. Martin Luther King, and that Sirhan Sirhan did not shoot Robert Kennedy,
despite overwhelming evience to the contrary. The U.S. Congress helped in this effort, too. They conducted hearings and found
portions of a tape recording from a police radio in Dealy Plaza on November 22, 1963 that suggested a second gunman. This
was actually an ego trip for several congressmen running for re-election. And never mind that later evidence proved that the
radio signals showed nothing at all. Apparently we wanted to believe the ridiculous. Many Americans honestly believed that
the moon landings were events staged by NASA in an abandoned airplane hanger in Arizona. The truth was too often white shirts
and straight pants. The conspiracies were paisley shirts and bellbottoms. In addition to the hippies, there seemed to be Hari
Krishna devotees [appearing regularly at the old Student Union Building on the Tuscaloosa campus]. These were young adults
who shaved their heads, wore white sheets, sold incense, and tried to get everyone to read their pamphlets. They were generally
harmless. But nobody could figure out exactly what their objective was. (And by the 80's, nobody could figure out where they
went.) One day... they were just gone; and that was that. Another bizarre 70's thing, just like the disco and 8-track tape
players.
In the 60's, the songs and the lyrics were generally gentle... or sometimes just goofy. The artists sang of love,
but only implied physical contact. And when they dealt with love, it was in the context of a true, complete, and permanent
relationship. The Beach Boys still wore suits and ties, or matching outfits, when they performed. In contrast, at Woodstock
(in 1969), some performers wore little or nothing at all. This set the tone for the music performers of the 70's.
Acid
rock and hard rock music took hold in the 70's. Hard rocker Janis Joplin died of a drug overdose in 1970. But where she left
off, there were dozens more to take her place. MTV was born in the 70's. In the 60's, rock musicians composed music to be
heard, to be sung. But in the 70's, they composed it to be seen. Elton John is indeed a talented songwriter. But in the 70's
he gained his fame by his outrageous clothing and jewelry as much as his music. The words mattered less, sometimes not at
all.
Beer was the popular stimulant in the early 60's. A few kids were puffing marijuana by the end of the decade, but
far fewer than you might have been led to believe.
But by the 70's, there was a shopping carts full of illegal drugs available
to boomers. And the fact that they were illegal made them more appealing, but no less available. Twenty years later, mainstream
politicians admit that they used illegal drugs in the 70's - not in the 60's. It is not true that "everybody did it"; but
... a lot of boomers did. Over half of us? Perhaps. But that still leaves 35 million who did not.
America decided it had
had enough of Vietnam in the 70's. Richard Nixon's "Vietnamization" strategy was a military failure, but it did give him a
diplomatic way to withdraw American troops from southeast Asia. So after the death of 50,000 Americans, the war ended, the
prisoners came home, and South Vietnam fell to the communists. But the wounds of that war have yet to heal, a quarter of a
century later. There are 76 million boomers who will remember the Vietnam War disaster till the day they die.
Popular
movies of our era were "The Godfather," "Dirty Harry," "Death Wish"... and "Deep Throat." Death, blood and guts, and sex...
was right out there, for all to see. Nothing was left to the imagination. Discretion was not the better part of valor; there
was no discretion... and precious little valor.
President Nixon imposed wage and price controls in the early 70's when
the inflation rate soared to an outrageous annual rate of three percent. The federal budget was balanced in 1971, though.
That would not happen again for another 25 years.
About 76 million teenagers coming of age was too strong a force to resist.
We represented 40% of the population, and we were used to getting what we wanted. So our parents saw that they could not keep
things as they were. There were just too many of us. And television spread the word too quickly. Life and society would not
stay as it had been. We had too much leisure time, too much money, and there were simply too many of us. So we did what we
wanted.
[Halfway through the the eventful year of 1970 we were graduating from A. G. Parrish High School -- the last of
the Rams -- the Selma City School Board changed the name of our school the following year. Due to rain, our outdoor graduation
excercise was moved at the last hour to the PHS men's gymnasium. Everything seemed a blur after that. Two years later, in
the spring of my sophomore year at the University of Alabama, my world view turned on a dime. From seemingly nowhere I was
"set upon" by the Infinite, Personal Creator God of the cosmos, Who revealed Himself to me in the only possible way --
through the Person of God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus of Nazareth. The apostle John, who penned the divinely inspired Fourth
Gospel called it "eternal life." It was a new beginning, and it constitutes the continuum in which I now persevere. Though
our cosmos appears to us msyteriously marred by a space-time fall that resulted in humans embracing evil in the
world, thanks be to God that we have resolution, initiated for us in these simple words from that same writer: "For God
so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son; that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish but have everlasting
life."]
