A young man would fancy a young woman and spend a few weeks getting up nerve to ask her out on a date.
Almost always dinner and a movie. That was the typical first date back then.
Back then, us boys had to decide everything on the date. Where to go, what to do, what to eat. Once the girls accepted the date, it was up to the boy to pick her up and get her back home at a reasonable time, lest her father get antsy.
The first date I went on was with a girl named Teresa and the movie we saw was "A Star Is Born" featuring Kris Kristofferson and Barbara Streisand. I remember nothing about the movie but I do remember picking her up in my father's Chrysler Newport and the fern bar we went to beforehand. We dined on some kind of Chinese chow mein with the Tiffany lamps all around us. I was underage but I tried getting away with ordering umbrella drinks for us until we were asked for our IDs. Total cringe moment. We ended up getting some frothy non-alcoholic fruit drinks that tasted like an Orange Julius.
On the way home, I decided to park up by the beach and pop in a cassette tape of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", which was the hot album of that time. The intention was getting Teresa to slide over to me so that we could neck for a little bit, like in the movies or on the "Happy Days" TV show like I was Fonzie. But she wasn't going for it. She was nice enough but she scrunched up on the passenger side of the car, keeping herself out of reach. We engaged in some non consequential conversation and finally I slid the car into gear and started driving her home.
She thanked me for a nice night, let me give her a quick kiss on the cheek, ran into her house and I never got a date with her again. So that was how my very first date with a girl went. Future dates with other girls would go better but that night, I was about as awkward as Napoleon Dynamite.
Oh well, that was dating in the 1970s. A lot different than today.
