Posted on 05/10/2014 7:41:53 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Brainiac hopped in the time machine this week, set the dial for this week in April 1974 and traveled back 40 years to see what was happening in our fair towns back in the days of high inflation, the oil crisis and ’70s sitcoms both classic and cheesy.
Our time machine, of course, is the microfilm – it’s like Google before Google existed, kids! – of the Orange County Register, and what we found was a whole lot of ordinary. The big news of the day was pretty big indeed, we must acknowledge. “Patty Calls Dad, Boyfriend ‘Pigs,’” read the headline on just one of many stories about Patty Hearst, the kidnapped heiress-turned-terrorist Tania. “Impeach Agenda To Start May 7” declared the latest in a series of stories on the tumbling disgrace of the Richard Nixon presidency.
In the world of pop culture, a benchmark by which Brainiac has always tracked the passing of time, comedian Bud Abbott of Abbott and Costello fame died, as did Cordelia Knott – Mrs. Walter Knott, as the Register identified her in a front-page obituary.
“Serpico” was playing at the Hi-way 39 Drive-In in Westminster, while “American Graffiti” was at the Edwards Westbrook at Westminster Avenue and Brookhurst Street. One Garden Grove church advertised a special service themed around the horror film “The Exorcist,” promising to answer questions such as “Is there actually such a thing as demon possession today?” and “Is it safe to see the film?”
But the local news was very much just that.
Frederick Walter, a 14-year-old Garden Grove boy, got his Eagle Scout badge at a ceremony at First Presbyterian Church of Garden Grove, and you just know that a yellowed clipping of Fred in his Boy Scout uniform is glued into a scrapbook somewhere still today.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Wasn’t Brainiac from Krypton?
I recall reading somewhere that the Carl Zeiss company in Germany may have been the first purchaser of an early computer. Their lens designs required a tremendous amount of calculations.
I do remember living in 1974. Do you have some point?
I do remember living in 1974. Do you have some point?
Back when the Raiders actually were a good football team.
I remember living a few years earlier than that.
You old fart.
The song that topped the charts the day I was born is still one of the greatest. And a bit of an omen some might say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgTSfJEf_jM
No, but Brainiac visited Krypton, shrunk down one of its cities and stuck it in a bottle. DC Comics lore has the character coming from a planet called “Colu”.
My first cousin became a moderately successful singer tho never famous. I once mentioned to him that another friend of mine learned “House of the Rising Sun” as his first song.
He replied that just about everybody played that song early in their career.
It’s pretty much the first song people try to play when they are learning how to play the guitar.
When I was around 11, our local grocer who liked kids, would let me exchange comic books as long as I kept them mint. Superboy and Superman were my favorites. I would always fantasize about being able to fly.
I can recall the miniature city but not how it came to exist.
You were born in ‘74?
You got good instincts. I like you kid, You listen to me you’ll go far.
64
Holy crap, I’m Pre Hippie!
Indeed. It’s origin may go back to England before 1600, and it has been regularly recorded since the 1930s. Roy Acuff is probably the first ‘pop music’ artist to record it. Even Andy Griffith has recorded it.
Its kind of funny. When the Animals were just starting out in Great Britain they went by the name “The Kansas City 5”.
I still got 10 years on ya. I’m beatnik contemporary.
That was a great song, still one of my favorites almost 50 years after it was made.
What I wouldn’t give to take the world back to 1964 on some ways. Things have really gone downhill over the past 50 years.
I know exactly what you mean. But we live here. We live now. And we have to do what we have to do.
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