What it was like being a kid in the early 1970’s

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.

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.

That was a very long article, but fun to read! Here was my life between 1970 and 1973...:)

I was overseas (military dependent) at that time, and we had been in the Far East for about five years, coming back in 1971 when I was 13.

When we landed at Kennedy Airport in New York, I dropped to my hands and knees and kissed the tarmac, I was so glad to be back in the USA. As a thirteen year old kid.

Cars all seemed to be disheveled and rusty. Now, you look around, cars are shiny and new looking, even older ones. But back then, everything seemed a bit dingy to me as a kid.

I remember having nearly absolute freedom. I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. I could hitchhike. I could get up to my chest in mud, fully clothed, wash off with a hose, and that would be that.

I had the black plastic glasses I later came to refer to as “BCD” glasses (Birth Control glasses)

My prized clothing was a pair of bell bottomed blue jeans worn by sailors that I saved up enough money from my Washington Post paper route on the base to buy at the Exchange.

I built plastic models obsessively.

I pitched a pup tent and slept under bushes on the base.

Saw my puppy dog Ginger get run over by a car completely, but she lived and spend several weeks with her front leg in a cast and her hind leg in a frame.

I shot a BB gun for the first time

Made napalm by accident

Kissed a girl for the first time in a rain culvert playing spin the bottle. She came from a family of nine kids. Marilyn Bangle. Her older brother was my age, the biggest kid in the class, and he good naturedly picked on me, headlocks with accompanying noogie.

Drove a car alone for the first time (at 13, on the base, trying to make money washing cars, and the guys just gave me the keys!)

I was in Boy Scouts. Got poison ivy all over my body.

Got kicked out of a Scout Jamboree with the rest of my troop for hurling eggs randomly in the air as far as we could into the mass of tents.

Got drunk for the first time on beers we got out of a vending machine on the base by putting our arms up inside.

Had a fabulous rope swing that took you out over a road as cars went by underneath you.

Threw things at monkeys and got chased by them.

Played chicken with a kid on another bike, collided, I got sore front teeth, he got stitches in his head from my teeth, and the front forks of my brother’s bike bent.

Fixed my high bike handlebars with a tin can shim, but as I went down a hill at full speed, they folded up on me and I went into the road and got road rash.

Saw a huge wooden crate being blown during a typhoon.

Saw the skies filled every day in the evening with giant fruit bats that flew somewhere in unison.

Got hit in the forehead with a line drive after digging a trench in right field with my toe. Wasn’t great at baseball.

Went horseback riding for the first time, had the horse dig in and throw me over its head.

Went swimming at a waterfall a mile or so into the jungle, skinny dipping, had a bunch of people show up and had nowhere to go.

Had all four of my front teeth broken when a friend accidentally hit me in the teeth with a hammer.

Tried to catch a greased pig, and climb a greased pole.

Took a sledgehammer to a car for a quarter a blow.

Got attacked by fire ants in the jungle.

Made a homemade skateboard from a plank of wood and one of my sister’s metal skates I hammered flat and screwed to it. I have quarter-sized white scars on both the insides and outsides of my elbows from that skateboard.

Got paddled by Mr. Woods for talking in Geology class.

Had a longing crush on Denise McDaniels, daughter of a Captain. Held her hand one magical night on Dungaree Beach. And that was it...:)

Got my hand put in a vice by Mr. Stauffer in Shop for putting fountain pen cartridges in the vice and squeezing them until they exploded.

Was an altar boy, served mass on the USS New Jersey, got fed an entire plate of jelly donuts by the mess cook who promised to give me anything I wanted.

Saw a huge whale shark hoisted in a net at the carrier pier.

Had my swim trunks ripped off swimming in the ocean and getting crushed in the surf the day after a typhoon.

Swam in the tropical ocean at night in 20 feet of water, hundreds of yards from the shore with no moon, and didn’t give it a second thought.

Walked across an active military runway and got nabbed by the Shore Patrol.

Walked all around the parked planes on the tarmac, nobody around, F-8 Crusader pilot let me sit in the cockpit with his helmet on, then did a near vertical takeoff with barrel rolls for my benefit after telling me to watch closely.

Water skied for the first time, got dragged for perhaps 30 yards after falling, stubbornly refusing to let go.

Got run around the football field by Mr. McMahon until I passed out from heat stroke.

Slept in a parachute with three friends strung between two trees.

Played tackle football with no pads.

Got on the wrestling team, but was no good at it. Never wrestled in competition.

Was involved in forced school bussing when it began in Prince Georges County.

Waited for my bus every day in front of the Mary Surratt house, an old boarded up wreck of a house.

Went to Andrews AFB and welcomed the Vietnam POW’s home who landed there.

Got taken to my dad by “Pop” Soule for breaking all the bottles in the road that were stacked on the side of a soda machine.

Saw an entire 4th of July fireworks show go up all at once when a misfit sailor lit the flare to be used to light them and dropped the flaming starting cloth on the grass which set it on fire and set off the stacked fireworks. We were probably 30 yards away and had to run for our lives. It completely destroyed one fire truck and damaged the other one.

Got treed by a wild boar.

Tried to go steady with a black girl named Lolita who refused me with a gentle smile.

Rode a minibike for the first time.

Got into a five car wreck with my brother who was driving on the beltway outside Washington DC approaching the Woodrow Wilson bridge...we weren’t hurt, but the guy who hit us got demolished and injured, his face sliced open and then walked across two lanes of whizzing traffic before my brother grabbed him and steered him into a stopped car after instructing the driver to “take him to the hospital”...which he did!!!

Hunted for snipes in Boy Scouts.

Ran full speed in the dark in the woods into a tree stump while playing “capture the flag”

Fell into a loose manhole when drunk for the second time in my life.

Did a two and a half somersault off a low diving board at the base pool.

Set a field on fire playing with matches with a friend.

Nearly set the woods on fire trying to start a charcoal grill with some unknown flammable substance...I think it was mimeograph fluid.

Went into an abandoned building on the base that had a loose lock, broke off huge segments of asbestos insulation around pipes and hurled them against the wall where they exploded and covered me completely with asbestos dust from head to foot.

Nearly burst my appendix, father took me to the hospital in his truck with the siren going, spent five days in the mens ward with injured sailors and marines from Vietnam.

Had a cobra in our next door neighbor’s house.

Threw things at monkeys, who chased us and we ran for our lives.

Caught a monitor lizard in a homemade trap.

Hit my younger brother in the head with an egg sized rock while having a dirt clod fight.

Tried to capture a huge gecko that landed on my face when I swept it from the ceiling.

Lit off a firecracker in a French class and got sent to the Principal’s office.

Jumped on stage at the base teen club with a Filipino band and sang the Temptations “Can’t Get Next To You”

Saw a huge barracuda while snorkeling, and also saw a moray eel that nearly made me drown when I choked on water

Had the base doctor give me a “Grays Anatomy” and a dissection kit for a birthday present.

Read comic books.

Picked a lock with a paperclip my parents had put on our kitchen because we were eating them out of house and home, and next time I tried broke the clip off inside the lock.

Had a Filipino yard boy give me a machete he made from car springs.

Made a variety of slingshots from scratch, none of which worked well.

Had a fort inside a sewer drain with friends.

Went swimming in concrete culverts filled to the brim with raging white water during Monsoon season

Had a devastating crush on my summer school teacher who wore a miniskirt

Saw a friend hit his father in the head with a dart by accident, saw same father chase down son with a nine iron at 3 AM

Had a crush on the prettiest girl on the base, helped her carry food to about twenty beagles her father was raising on the base. She was out of my league. Carmen...:)

Had a Chief living nearby who owned a defective Myna Bird that tried to say “Merry Christmas”, but could only say “Meeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyy...”

Flew in a C-141 from Clark AFB to Saigon, stayed overnight in New Delhi and walked the streets with my dad since he didn’t want to get a hotel room for our 8 person family, landed in Wheelus AFB, then to Madrid. Went on a camping tour of Europe in a Rented VW bus...swam in Lake Geneva on July 4th, 1971 (brrrrrr)

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