:)
Posted on 10/09/2018 7:29:41 PM PDT by vannrox
Glad you liked it, Roccus...:)
I grew up in the 70’s. We played smear the queer, tackle football in the back yard and really enjoying them in the snow after sleigh riding. We had bb/air rifle BB guns and stayed out of trouble with them, we were taught gun safety. We went to the mountains with our air rifles, winter and summer and the only rule was take a book of matches in case you get lost.
We rode our bikes to little league practice and games and rode them all over town and we made ramps and did the evil Knievel jumps, pimped them out with lights and speedometers. We had apple fights, rock fights, bottle rocket fights and the occasional fist fight with a brother or neighbor. We watched Gilligan, Batman, the Brady Bunch and Specter Man and waited for cartoons on Saturday morning.
We also had responsibilities. At age five I was splitting kindling up for my great great parents wood cook stove. At age seven I was cutting grass with a push mower. We cleaned fence rows each fall and spring, we dug waterline ditches by hand when needed and we washed dishes and did chores around the house. Our parents both worked and we would be left at home starting around age seven in the summer. Our great grandparents lived down the hill from us and we would go down there and eat lunch, she always cooked dinner as she called it.
When we screwed up we got punished, spanking with a switch or belt or grounded as we got older. If you got paddled at school you got a spanking when you got home. Older kids were responsible for watching out for younger ones if no parents were around. Unless you were bleeding profusely or had broken bones you rarely went to the doctor. OTC and home remedies for colds and such. Mumps, chicken pox all par for the course. It was a fun time to grow up!
For some reason the explanation is not easily found through a normal Internet search. So this explanation is largely from my memory and could be a little off.
The compression ratios were lowered along with other power robbing modifications to help reduce nitrogen oxides and other smog producing emissions. These emissions were largely responsible for the eye stinging smog that had become a daily occurrence in places like Los Angeles. Nitrogen oxides turn into nitric acid when combined with water.
Then in 1974-75 catalytic converters became mandatory in passenger cars which further degraded power output. Fortunately, all of these pollution reducing measures have evolved over time and become less harmful to performance. But cars from the mid 70s to early 80s are generally dogs. I had a 1977 Mazda GLC tiny 4 cylinder car that got worse gas mileage on the freeway than my V8 powered 1967 Galaxy 500. This was quite a surprise and education.
The other issue is that before the “clean air act” came into effect you could modify your engine in any way that you wanted to get more power out of it. After the “clean air act” modifying your engine in any way that affected your emissions basically could make your car unable to be considered street legal.
I still have a 1967 Ford Galaxy 500 with a 390. This car had no pollution control measures at all. Any modifications can be made to the power train and it will still be street legal in all 50 states. The same goes for the rare 1942 Cadillac that I am working on.
In practice if you don't live in a place where you have to have your car emission tested you can get away with pretty much any modification that you want. Here in Washington once your vehicle is 25 years old it becomes exempt. So you can swap any engine that will fit under the hood into it and drive it around all that you want. But if someone living in LA wanted to buy it, they could be in for some difficulties. Here is an interesting article:
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2011/06/13/classic-cars-and-the-smog-police/
:)
Outstanding!
Eh. I told a young man last week that there are things about getting old that aren’t so bad, but...those things weren’t part of them, for sure.
I guess we all gotta go through that. Hang in there...
What was it like to be a kid growing up in the early 1970s?
Fun.
All kids were free range back then.
Always LOVE that pic. Ahhhh freedom. What a difference.
Absolutely.. It makes us appreciate what we have all the more.
I am reading your Dad’s article. I really enjoy it. It somehow captures the wonderful feelings of that time. I loved the feelings of being a kid in a loving, but of course not perfect family in the 60s. Nothing can be compared to those feelings of fearless abandonment to adventure and fun. We were wonderfully naive, and in the world of the 60s that was just fine. We were really blest to be able to experience the love and freedom children grew up with then.
Also, I know how you felt about not believing you were long on this earth. When I was a kid I often would get terribly sharp pains in my heart. I often froze in spot and couldn’t move. I didn’t tell my family because I didn’t want to upset them. When I was about eight I begged God to let me live until I was eighteen, which seemed a lifetime away.
When my eighteenth birthday came around I had the feeling that I might die that day, and was happy when I kept on living. At that point I was an atheist, but still said a faint thank you in my mind to the God I didn’t think existed.
In 1964 and 1965, before I turned ten in September ‘65, my best friend’s mom would drop us off at Milwaukee County Stadium to go see a Braves game. My mom listened on the radio and would pick us up at a designated spot, blocks from the stadium, after the game.
Sure couldn’t imagine my sister doing that with her son in the early 2000s in Minneapolis.
Good memories! I remember going to watch the Braves with my mom and sisters in the cheap seats. We didn’t get any peanuts or hotdogs, but still had a great time. Hoping the Brewers go all the way this year.
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