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The Seventies As I Remember Them

The Seventies As I Remember Them

Apr 29, 2021

 Generation X never had much of an identity, but allow me to explain the world we grew up in:

 Mine was the generation that witnessed the arrival of Doritos. Prior to that, chips consisted mainly of potato chips, BBQ potato chips, sour cream and onion potato chips, and Fritos. Oh, and shoe string potatoes in the can. If you’re unfamiliar with them, just think of what you find in the very bottom of a chip bag, only infinitely greasier.

 We witnessed the arrival of the Tombstone Pizza, the first frozen pizza that passably resembled what you might find in a restaurant. Before that, an announcement by your mom that you were having pizza for dinner was often a cruel joke.

 We were there for the birth of the boop. We all witnessed that moment when a rectangle representing a paddle made contact with a square that represented a ball, resulting in the boop heard ‘round the world. Imagine if you can a world where nothing booped and very little beeped.

 We were the first generation to have portable music with headphones, so that you might ignore those around you, and the first with boomboxes so that you could annoy them.

 The toxic sludge that is Mountain Dew made its nationwide debut while we were in the target audience. Prior to that we were a predominately cola nation, the principal alternatives being 7-up and root beer.

 We were the ones who witnessed the hybridization of foods. Prior to then, we only had tacos, burgers, and pizzas. Suddenly we had options like taco pizzas, taco burgers, pizza burgers, and cheeseburger pizzas. Things started getting crazy from there. Suddenly people were eating breakfast burritos, breakfast pizzas, and burgers with eggs on them. Regular brownies were no longer enough. Suddenly people were putting frosting on them, and chunks of anything they had on hand inside them.

 Vegetables came from cans. Peas were the color of something you bought used from an army surplus store. Beans were soaked in bean juice, an unimaginable idea, while I’m pretty sure broccoli hadn’t been invented yet. I seem to recall getting lettuce fresh, but it was only available in the iceberg variety.

 There were two types of breakfast cereal: the type that was drowning in sugar and food coloring and the kind you had to spoon sugar into to make it palatable. As often as not, you’d pour your milk from a cardboard gallon container which was the big brother of the half-pint you got for lunch at school. And like the luncheon version, it was rare that you were able to open it in a way that made pouring it a predictable endeavor. Before you made the initial pour from a newly-opened cardboard gallon milk container, you had the paper toweling at the ready, fearing the worst.

 Your fast food options were McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, or some local chain. KFC used to be called Kentucky Fried Chicken before the word “fried” attained negative connotations. On a related note, Super Golden Crisps were called Super Sugar Crisps and Honey Smacks were called Sugar Smacks. We may have had sugar-coated the cereal back then, but we didn’t sugar-coat the truth.

 If you wanted a hot snack, you had to plan ahead, because we had no microwaves. If you wanted a hotdog, you had best get the water boiling. If you wanted to reheat leftovers, you had to preheat the oven, put them in a pie tin, and then wait an hour. If you want to know why people were skinnier prior to the 80’s, you have your answer.

 I remember my older siblings buying my parents their first microwave. My parents were pretty sure it was going to give them cancer. It didn’t, but for thirty years we all forgot that popcorn made in the pot was way better than the alternative.

 We were the last generation to live in a world without microchips in everything: our stoves, our TVs, our cars, our phones, our dogs. Even our computers didn’t have microchips. If we had one, which we didn’t.

 There was nothing strange about someone knocking on your door unexpectedly. You could call people and they wouldn’t know who was calling until you told them. This led to all kinds of fun for prank phone callers.

 If people didn’t answer their phone, it just kept ringing. If you thought someone was home but they were avoiding you, you could just let it ring until they went crazy or gave in.

 The distance between the top of your socks and the bottom of your shorts was about the same as now, but they were both five inches higher. Team sports could be and often were played without officials or managers. Nobody owned a $500 bat.

 Your choices for coffee were Folger’s or Maxwell House. Sanka didn’t count because it was not coffee.

 If you wanted hot chocolate you heated milk up in a pan and put chocolate syrup in it. Chocolate syrup came in a can. Fruit Juice came in a can, vegetables came in a can, fruit came in a can, ham came in a can, spam came in a can, but soda came in glass bottles. Water came from a tap.

 It took three minutes to get an accurate temperature, and that was only if you hadn’t recently had anything cold to drink. If you broke the thermometer, the whole family died from mercury poisoning.

 TV stations ended their programming day. No sporting events were held on major religious holidays. March Madness was played entirely in March.

 It was really weird to have a last name different than either of your parents.

 Every year you’d get a catalog the size of a Family Bible from Wards, Sears, and Penny’s, necessitating large end tables with doors or drawers for storing them.

 Everyone had a magazine rack and many people had pedestal ashtrays.

 Everything was made in the U.S.A. by union labor and you could make a decent living as an underwear inspector.

 You couldn’t pay for TV channels if you wanted to but everybody paid for the news articles they read, and we had better television programs and news articles for it.

 You could smoke anywhere. I’m pretty sure doctors smoke while delivering babies. There were ashtrays in confessionals and next to gas pumps. I’m pretty sure. I think it was common to apologize to smokers if you DIDN’T smoke.

 The first video cassette players were the size of a loveseat, and the cassettes were the size of a pizza box.

 There’s much more I could tell you, but I might need a coffee first, if you catch my meaning.

 

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