Posted on 10/09/2018 7:29:41 PM PDT by vannrox
This is a walk down “memory lane” as I relate what it was like growing up as a young boy in the early 1970’s. I was in my early teenage years. I went to school, watched a lot of television, and played with my friends. Enjoy…
As strange as it seems, there is very little on the internet about what it was like growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It’s almost as if it was scrubbed from existence. In it’s place we now have the Obama narrative of a racist nation and terrible injustices. That narrative has nothing to do with reality. It is a scripted lie intended to manipulate people into believing something that just isn’t true.
Here, in my own little way, I would like to relate some stories of what it was like for me growing up as a kid. For “shits and giggles” I have chosen the year of 1971. It was the last year that I had as a kid before I had to go out and work at 14 in the coal mines.
This narrative takes place in Western Pennsylvania. We lived in a small town about a two hour drive from Pittsburgh. It was a hilly and tree shaded world, with railroad spur lines that snaked in and out of the hills and crossed over viaducts and into tunnels. I well knew those lines as I would often walk along them with my friends on hikes and adventures.
Visiting my Aunties
Many weekends my parents would drive into Pittsburgh to visit my relatives. Both were from Pittsburgh, though from different areas. We would take turns visiting the families. In the morning we would visit my father’s family, and in the afternoon we would visit my mother’s family.
(Excerpt) Read more at metallicman.com ...
I totally forgot King of the Mountain. Could have been due to a fall. Thanks for the memories.
....looks more like “Honkie” or “Cracker” bars to me. Great times!
I was 7 in 1970 living in Bowie MD.
We had over 80 kids of all ages on our street alone. We counted.
At night we played chase (usually 10-15 kids per team).
We played Red-Rover, hopscotch, 4 square.
Bike races, bike riding, far away from home, no helmets, not phones, just kids on bikes.
We made ramps, jumped them with bikes, skates, and big wheels.
We would treasure hunt on bulk trash days.
Summer, would wake up leave and only come home for a late lunch or dinner.
If the street lights came on, everyone went home.
Winter, snow forts, snowballs at the bus when it went by.
My mom would drop us off at a fishing pond, leave, pick us up hours later no supervision. Same with ice skating on that same pond.
Never heard of a kidnapping, rape, or anything worse than a stolen bike.
Good times.
LOL!
I was a military brat in the 60s/70s. Most of the places we were stationed had 2 TV stations, tops. None in Taiwan. One in Iceland, but it only came on at 5PM and played OLD movies.
So we read or played outside. I have no idea how many miles I covered on my bike. When the streetlights came on, we were expected to head home ASAP. Any adult around was a substitute parent - free to break up fights, take you out on a canoe, teach a diving technique, etc. Feral kids wandering around in packs, supervised by any adult within earshot.
The military was culturally behind the times by 20 years, so it was kind of like growing up in the 40s/50s, only without WW2.
Bob Wilkins Creature Features.
(CDR. Morel driving the VW bust through Europe)
All Hands Magazine: The Odyssey of A Navy Family
It is stored on Dropbox, just click the button that says " to get rid of the "Not Now" dialog box)
elcid1970 made me go find the article, we landed in Saudi Arabia, not Wheelus AFB (in Libya)...I remembered it was really hot there!
Join the Navy and See The World indeed!
Yes...you hit on it perfectly. I remember in Japan watching some thing where it was a still picture and only the mouth moved, and it was in Japanese...
I must say...living on bases, our parents didn’t really care what we did or where we went, they figured the Shore Patrol would get us if we were doing stupid stuff...
But, yes...it did feel more like the Forties or Fifties, from what I can tell.
The movie of the week on Sunday night. Wide lapel jackets, long hair, bell bottoms, pop warner football, 1972 camaro with 307, 8 track, Deep Purple
"...Naples is still the favorite Navy city. While CDR Morel was visiting the Navy, picking up his pay, Joan and the children toured castles and museums. Joan was wearing a black sweater and black slacks and found out that the color worn by a woman accompanied by children has a special meaning to Italian men. By the time her husband picked them up, she was more than ready to leave..."
My mom was sick as a dog, but with six kids, she had to watch us while my dad took care of things. So she was a good looking woman, dressed in tight black sweater and tight black capri pants if I recall that day correctly, with her black hair all done up in a bun and her black Jackie Onassis sunglasses on, and took all us kids out with her so she could go shopping.
As we walked down the street, all six of us in tow (BEHIND her, of course) the men started madly catcalling her clicking, whistling, and when I saw this picture some years later, all I could think of was that day in Naples as we all walked like ducklings behind her:
I remember her getting madder and madder, but still standing up straight and boring ahead. Boy, was she ever pissed and gave my dad hell for years after for leaving her that day! (I guess the Italian guys thought she was a hot young widow with a lot of kids?)
And of course, having spent a lot of times in the "Armpit of Europe" myself when I served, the comment "Naples is still the favorite Navy city" makes me roll my eyes...yeah, favorite if you like transvestites, piss-flavored Peroni, and a harbor so toxically polluted if you fell in your skin would melt off!
We had no TV in Japan in late 1950’s, just AFN radio. There was already Japanese TV but no set in our quarters. Two years with no idiot box, just books to read. Better in the long run.
“I remember in Japan watching some thing where it was a still picture and only the mouth moved, and it was in Japanese...”
Sounds like that el cheapo cartoon series “Clutch Cargo”. No animation; just a talking mouth.
LOL, I guess that may have been it. I remember seeing “Pulp Fiction” and there was a scene with a kid watching television, and I sat up and said to my wife “Hey...I saw that in Japanese when I was a kid”
At least I think that was it, it sure looked like it with the mouth moving! (I had never seen it since, and didn’t know that was what it was called!)
Wow.. Bookmarked. What an adventure of a lifetime.. You have an amazing family!
I remember hearing “Smoke On The Water” at the school I went to in Maryland...some dance I went to with a girl named Karen Baldwin...everyone was outside and that song was playing on speakers.
Different times!
My Dad proposed to my mother when he was on a destroyer on a round the world deployment during or right after Korea (I think)I also have an interesting story about the USS Rooks (DD-804) that my dad was on in Korea.
He reported to her as a LTJG in June 1951 at San Diego, CA, they went via the Panama Canal to Newport, RI, where they operated up and down the East coast until April 1952, when they went BACK down to the Panama Canal and on to Korea where he spent four or five months operating in and around Korea. They went into the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and back to Newport, RI in April 1953.
During that deployment, he had proposed to my mom in a letter, and the wedding date was set for May 9th, 1953. When my dad's ship came in just a couple of weeks before the wedding, and he was able to finally get off and head up to Massachusetts for the wedding that was to take place in the next few days, he realized he had forgotten his dress shoes and the marriage license in his rack after he arrived home.
He drove all the way back to the ship in Newport got his shoes and license, but when he got back up the Massachusetts, he couldn't find the wedding license. He went back down again and went aboard the ship where he scoured the compartment and his rack, to no avail. Crestfallen, he had to go back without the license, but the office was closed for the weekend and he was unable to get another one. Someone he knew pulled a few strings, got the guy to come back in and he got a license, so the wedding went ahead as planned.
In the early Eighties, my mother got a call from South Korea (I think, but not sure) and the guy said they were breaking up a ship for scrap, and they had found a wedding license with her and my dad's name on it. They were breaking up the USS Rooks, and when they were tearing the compartment apart, they found it in a bulkhead. Apparently what had happened, was my dad had got the certificate, put it on his rack, raised the mattress up to get the shoes underneath, and when he did, the license must have slid down a minuscule gap into the bottom of a dark bulkhead where it lay for 30 years until they tore it down. They offered to send it to her, but I think my parents had been going through some tough times at that point, and the last thing on her mind was a piece of paper from her past, so I don't think she had them send it!
Heh, I LOVE that. It seems to capture it perfectly...the log with the plank of wood.
I tried that with a bike one time, and the plank broke, I went over the handlebars...nothing worse than grass stains and aches!
But I guess that is how you learn...when you don’t have any commonsense!
That is Incredible they actually found the marriage license and were willing to send it to your parents. Sorry they were going through a rough time.. My parents had their share of rough times, but always loved each other, as I’m sure yours did, too.
Thank you for that.
You are now responsible for me not getting the work I had planned to do so I could mow this afternoon, but I couldn’t think of a better excuse. LOL
What an amazing adventure
My dad was an alcoholic (not a mean one, just quiet) but a great dad. he kicked alcohol and was able to live the last fifteen year of his life sober, and it was a wonderful thing to see between the two of them.
How I miss them both.
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