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What are your thoughts on life in the 70s and 80s?

Or being asked to get 25 copies made on the ditto machine…ah, the sweet smell.

Yessir.

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70’s an 8 track in your car - but in the 80’s cassette tapes. First time there were real car seats and safety belts for the kids.
And how about being able to install a radio, 8-Track or cassette player of your choice in your car yourself. Speakers also.

I overhauled two 70’s era car engines in parent’s garage with nothing but some ragtag tools and a Haynes Automotive Manual. Today’s automotive technology has eliminated the ability for kids to learn how to do those types of things….which were a blast.
 
A lot of people doing using the nose candy back then. Strippers and pornographers had thick bushes and hairy chested men. Kids grew up wanting to be like the Marlboro Man and there were smoking areas in high schools for the 18 year old students. The vehicles were kind of shitty but no one really cared. If you were a young boy, on a hot day, a good chance you were wearing extremely short shorts and one of your balls was hanging out the side.
 
Remember talking at school with your friends about plans for after school? Or for the weekend? And trying to get things worked out by the end of the day to avoid confusion? Remember calling your girlfriend on her landline and having a parent of hers pick up another home phone and ask her to say goodnight? While saying hello to you. Do you remember reading the paper for the most immediate sports statistics? Yada, yada, yada. Keep adding to this post.
Friday nights on ABC in the early 1970s

Brady Bunch
Partridge Family
Room 222
Odd Couple
Love American Style

Than on KCRG channel 9 — Creature Feature
 
Life was a LOT simpler back then. Born in 1962, so it was my teenage years mostly.



Good to at times great music. This old school medium called "radio" was incredibly important back then as far as finding new music.

"No money fun" was abundant. I somehow during those entire decades had the most fun of my entire life and partied my ass off - while being mostly poor.

Economic times were mostly rough, just about everybody I hung out with was middle class on down. I didn't know a single person in my school class (around 200) that was anything close to rich, so all my classmates were more or less equal socially.

Social media was non-existent - so one had to actually go out and meet people the ol' fashioned way.



About the only thing I wish I would have done differently is be better with what little money I had. Like I say, I partied my ass off and while I had a great time...the 80's (ages 18 to 28) when looking back at them - I simply refused to "grow up", and in a lot of ways I'm still paying for all that fun yet today.
I may have just read my autobiography.
 
Bob Horner in Atl, John Grubb with Texas, Yaz in Beantown, Rod Carew, and Amos Otis in KC were some of my guys.
Thanks for the memories.

What year?

A buddy of mine deduced it in the following manner ... :)

Larry Biittner was on the Reds and he only played in Cincy in '81 and '82. He only had 61 at bats in '81, so it had to be '82.

Yes, I have friends like this.

 
Miscellaneous thoughts for the era:
1. Hearing "Afternoon Delight" played scores of times on the car radio as we drove to Wyoming for the summer.
2. Playing 'pin the badge on the sheriff' at my sixth birthday party in Laramie.
3. As a kid, sports, including football, baseball, wiffleball, basketball, tennis, soccer, and ultimate frisbee, were pickup games, and there was no - and I mean no - organization. Similarly, there were definitely no adults around when we would spend mornings navigating the miles of underground labyrinth that was my town's storm drainage system during the summer.
4. My parents, who were teachers and always seemed to be a bit on the edge financially, suddenly becoming comfortable after the election of Ronald Reagan.
5. Purchasing my first CD player (and being an "early adopter" among my friends). First CDs purchased: Genesis No Reply at All ('cause the horns sounded great on my Cerwin Vegas) and Dire Straits Brothers in Arms (because it was actually recorded digitally).

6. Edit...oh, and the king. My dad using the Heimlich maneuver to save my mom, before everyone was taught the Heimlich maneuver and instead would hit people in the back. Basically, my mom was choking at dinner, he did it while we kids sat there dumbfounded, and it worked. Broke a couple of her ribs though. Afterwards, my mom asked him where he learned that, and he replied "no idea". The next day he realized that every day when he would go to work as a teacher, he would pass by the "teacher's bulletin board" in the school office, and on that bulletin board, they had a psa poster depicting it. Never took the time to read the poster, just sort of internalized it subliminally from the routine.
 
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If you lived in the sticks, huge satellite dishes in the back yard to pick up free tv internet. Kids could finally watch the latest music in their living room, and the men could watch sports from anywhere in the country.
 
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I remember inheriting a black and white television in my bedroom from my dad and being thrilled to watch Iowa wrestling dominate in 1985. On Iowa PBS Channel 12.

I remember being able to watch fuzzy softcore p*rn on mute on Cinemax after like 11 pm as a kid growing up once I got an old tube TV in my bedroom......channel 99

Them tube socks didn't stand a chance as a teenager!
 
Watching Airwolf. Going to watch my dad and grandpa bowl on Wednesday night and playing with the cigarette vending machine there. The Empire commercials and the yonda “ this is the big one “ commercial watching the Cubs in WGN.

They're still in business (Janda), not sure they advertised on WGN but they did locally on the IC/CR local channels.

https://janda.com/
 
TV in general seemed better in the 70s and 80s. Good procedurals. I was channel surfing on the treadmill today during lunch and caught part of an episode of the Fall Guy. Just mindless TV fun, and at the end of the episode where Colt had defeated a gang of bikers, the leather jacket that Heather Thomas was wearing popped open revealing that she was only wearing a bikini, and then she had to wrestle the hot female biker into submission.
 
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