In a world of blogs, internet radio, podcasts, instant messaging, online gaming and message boards, it's hard to remember a time when the ramblings of the average joe could only be projected roughly 20 miles, on a good day, from a hill top, from behind the hand held microphone of a Citizen's Band radio. Yet, for many people, whether alone in their bedrooms, or on the road in their long-haul trucks and cars, the CB was the only way to reach out to others nearby behind the cover of an anonymous handle.
Yes, CB radio was the first attempt at electronic social networking.
One of the appeals of CB radio was the inherent anti-establishment nature of the device. You could say what you wanted, without being subject to FCC rules or regulations. It was commercial-free. It allowed for instant feedback, both good and bad. Most of all, it was used a tool primarily by people who didn't want the law to know what they were talking about. CB radio had its own rules, its own language, its own way of starting and ending conversations, it could be used as a way of warning other drivers of a speed trap up ahead, or as a way for people to catch up with nearby friends. Most of the time, though, yeah, it was used to warn people of speed traps.
In the UK, CB radio wasn't made legal until 1981. There had been a campaign running for about 6 years prior to that, and strangely, as soon as we got what we wanted, the fad quickly died. Like Usenet, it devolved into a mess of pointless roger-beeping and people playing their own records over other people's attempts to hold a conversation. CB radio wasn't meant to be your own pirate radio station, it was meant for you to tell us where the pigs are.
So, despite my own memories of CB being from the 80's in London, the dream belonged to the golden age of CB radio, about 1976 to 1979.
There were two small movies in 1975 called Moonrunners and White Line Fever, both of which outlined the outlaw aspect of trucking and smuggling which fed into the Rednecks with Radios genre. The core principle was that, like many other genres in a post-Watergate 70s, the government, and by extension, the cops, were corrupt and couldn't be trusted. They were agents of mild totalitarianism, and, like rebellious Robin Hoods, the outlaw truckers and moonshine runners were the good guys, just doing what they have to do to make ends meet in a world where the man is trying to keep them down.
In the same year, C. W. McCall released the awesome novelty single, Convoy, the story of three truckers driving from Los Angeles to Tulsa, who start a convoy, quickly picking up a long line of trucks, buses, cars and vans, until the authorities try to take them down with a roadblock. They bust through the roadblock, and now they're all outlaws, careening across the US with no real destination until their convoy has over a thousand vehicles following behind lead trucker Rubber Duck. By the time Rubber Duck enters New Jersey, Pig Pen, a hog carrying truck that began the convoy as the third truck, has been forced back by people complaining about the smell so far that he's still in Omaha. The song was a huge hit both in the US and the UK, and brought the language and romanticism of the new knights of the road and their CB radios to a whole new level of popularity.
Cashing in on the success of the single came the movie Convoy in 1978. Smokey and the Bandit, Citizens Band and the Chuck Norris movie Breaker! Breaker! had beat them to the punch in 1977, but Convoy had all the main ingredients: trucks, fascist cops, corrupt politicians, hot chicks, and plenty of CB radio action.
It's said that during the making of this movie, director Sam Peckinpah was so out of it on coke and booze that James Coburn, who had been brought in as second unit director, actually directed much of the principal photography while Sam was 'sick' in his trailer.
For all the setbacks that besieged it, Convoy is a much better film than you would expect it to be. Kristofferson is a charming and charismatic image of masculinity as lead trucker Rubber Duck, and Ali McGraw, who previously worked with Peckinpah in The Getaway, looks as stunning and sexy as always, even with a perm. The film's ending is a little contrived and corny, but the ride from the original fight with Ernest Borgnine's Sheriff Wallace, to the Thelma and Louise style leap of faith is well worth jumping aboard for.
You just can't have a conversation about things that weren't considered dangerous in the 70s without mentioning Lawn Darts. Lawn Darts were mini javelins with wings that you were supposed to throw up in the air and have them land within a certain target area. Problem is, they had a habit of landing on kids instead of lawns. Oddly enough, so did acid rain, and I never saw anyone crying out to ban that 'for the children'.
9. Fast Food
There was once a time when children were taken to McDonald's as a treat. Now it's like a punishment. "Do your homework, Ashley, or I'll make you eat a Double Whopper with Cheese, then berate you for two days until you wallow in a mire of weight issues and turn to bulimia!" Yeah, back then, burgers were a simple pleasure. You even won prizes for knowing the ingredients of a Big Mac and being able to recite them in under 3 seconds. These days, however, you'll be better off spending those 3 seconds thinking about whether any of those ingredients are are genetically modified or destroy the rain forest. Oh, and remember that Super Size Me movie? Yeah, I haven't touched the stuff since, either.
8. Babies in Cars
Before Britney Spears attempted to make it fashionable, there was once a time when kids weren't strapped into cars like a dancer in an Iron Maiden video. They just kinda hung out in the back, or on the passenger seat. There were no child-seat laws, hardly any child-seats to buy anyway, and a lot of parents had pick-ups which didn't even have back seats, so the kids would just hang out on the truck bed, or in the trunk of the station wagon. The back of a car was a play ground for kids. They pinched each other until full blown fist fights broke out, and then whoever was driving, could throw a hand back there and sort it out without even accidentally hitting the accelerator instead of the brake.
Kids of today, many people will tell you great tales of what happened in the back of the car when they grew up, and end those tales with the phrase, "and nothing happened to me, I'm still here!" Well, they're here via a combination of responsible parenting and blind luck, just most kids throughout history. Don't let them fool you into thinking that anything they did was safe, however. It wasn't. But Zowie, Cavey, it was a heck of a lot more fun.
7. Riding Bikes without Helmets
On the one hand it's fun to have the wind in your hair. On the other, it's stupid. Seriously, you could take an eye out with one of those things or something.
6. Chopping Boards
Here's what we know now. "Keep two separate cutting board for vegetables and meat,never cut on the same board to keep E Coli and Salmonella bacterias at bay." - Taken from the Aromahope Blog.
Here's what we knew in 1972. "My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli ." Taken from a much-bandied about, yet unattributed email that hit the blogosphere back in about 2005. Here's a good version of the whole thing from Agonist.org.
5. Other people Smoking
Believe it or not, the photo above is fairly recent. They just look like they live in the 70s.
Back in the 70s not everybody smoked, but few people believed it was really that harmful to you or to others around you. We smoked in the streets, in the bars and cafes, in the nightclubs, at home in front of the TV, in our offices, in hospital waiting rooms, on planes and trains, in our cars, in other people's cars, in front of our children, in front of other people's children, before, during and after pregnancy... Every-freaking-where. Nowhere was sacred from the dangers of first and second hand smoke. Also, smoking was considered something you enjoyed, rather than something you were simply addicted to. You enjoyed the first cigarette after a meal, and the first one after sex. So much was post-coital smoking popular, that it became code for sex. You'd see two people in a bed, then cut to them smoking with a smile on their face. The 70s was the last decade of guilt-free living for many things, and smoking was arguably one of the guiltiest pleasures of them all.
4. Disturbing Writing/Artwork
I'm not going to comment on this one actually, only to say that the below didn't really happen too much when I was a kid.
Kid suspended from school for DRAWING a gun on paper
Student Suspended For Drawing Gun 5-Day Suspension Cut To 3 Days
POSTED: 3:06 pm PDT August 21, 2007 UPDATED: 8:04 pm PDT August 21, 2007
QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. -- A 13-year-old student who drew a picture of a gun on his homework at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek was initially suspended for at least five days, but his father was able to slash it to three days.
The Mosteller family moved to Chandler from Colorado Springs only four weeks ago, but it's not the kind of greeting Paula Mosteller said she was expecting.
Her 13-year-old son was suspended from school because he drew a picture of a gun on homework.
"My son is a very good boy," Mosteller said.
"He doesn't get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form," she said.
The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing.
The picture was enough to get him suspended, initially, for five days.
"He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it," Mosteller said.
CBS 5 News tried to get more details from the Chandler Unified School District but were told, "Federal privacy law forbids the school or district from discussing student discipline."
"We're not advocates for guns," Mosteller said.
SURVEY: What Do You Think?
"We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said.
After the father went to the school and talked to the principal, the suspension was trimmed to three days.
CBS 5 News investigated the rules students must follow while at school. There's nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat.
There is a rule that says students should not engage in "Threatening an educational institution by interference with or disruption of the school." Copyright 2007 by KPHO.com. All rights reserved.
3. Tap Water
Back in the 70s, there was one popular make of bottled water, Perrier, and it was fizzy. And that was about it. Somehow, we have been convinced that drinking water out of the tap is badwrongfun, and that luckily, there are countless suppliers of water there to rescue us from the filthy Mexico City style tap water that the UK and the US have suffered for so long, it's enough to give you cholera. According to the chart below, from the National Resources Defense Council, the US alone has gone from drinking roughly 300,000 gallons of bottled water in 1976, to about 3.5 million gallons in 1997. The International Bottled Water Association gives preliminary statistics for 2008 as 9.8 billion gallons.
Gone are the days of heading to the tap to get a glass water, and not minding too much if was a little cloudy, as long as it was cold and wet and didn't send you to the crapper every 20 minutes. Now, in order to avoid crap like the drugs that end up in our water system, for every three swigs of water we take, we pretty much contribute to a landfill somewhere.
2. Losing
No one wants to lose, but everyone knows that losing is an important life lesson. My school system thought they were being smart buy practically eliminating all competitive sport from our schools. There was only one inter-school sport's day during my entire childhood. I was in the 4x100 meter relay, had to run last, came last and lost the race for the whole team. It sucked, and I was probably kicked about for it later, but in the end, at least I had a chance to compete against kids from other schools for one day. It was tres cool.
So it worries me when I read articles like this one, that we are wrapping our children in such a warm blanket that they may grow up looking like sheep by the time we've decided to them go. If they ever go. There are quite a few reports coming out now about the current crop of college graduates hitting the workforce, unable to cope with the basic rigours of life in the corporate climate. It's hot, kids, and you're going to need to drop that blanket or sweat to death.
1. Hairspray
Yep. Hairspray. It used to be pomade, and after that it was mousse and styling fudge, but back in the 70s, if you wanted to look like Charlie's Angels, you needed about one can of Aquanet extra strong per evening. We sprayed in the morning before going to work, in the evening before going to the roller disco, we usually had a can roughly the size of tube of Pringles just sitting in our handbags in case it didn't hold, or there was a sudden rain shower. Whenever we saw woman doing womanly things, which were back then, riding bicycles and swinging their hair and such, we were supposed to ask ourselves, "Is she, or isn't she?" Which was stupid. Everyone was.
So how the hell were we supposed to know that looking like the above, would create the environmental hell we're looking at below? Like I said, the last guilt-free generation.
Imagine a world where the internet belonged only to the military, and the world's fastest supercomputer is six feet high, about 12 feet across, and still 40 times slower than the machine you're using to read this. You're living in the 70s, my friend, where computers were strange devices that only mad scientists and war-hungry generals used. Us lowly peons didn't get to see a computer until about 1978, and then you could barely play Pong on it. Before that, we feared these infernal devices, thinking they would take over the world, like in Colossus: The Forbin Project, rape our women as in Demon Seed, kill all our astronauts like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in Dark Star, they control bombs that refuse to explode. For most of the 70s computers barely touched our lives, we lived in a world of typing pools, carbon copies, and real (as opposed to icons of) filing cabinets. We balanced check books, paid for things in either cash, Diners Club cards, or Green Shield stamps. Whatever we bought had a little sticker on it with the price, and the cashier at the register would check that, type it in and you'd see the price come up spelled out on big bakelite tabs in the register window. If you wanted money, you needed to go to the bank when they were open. If you wanted to call someone, you used a rotary dial phone and if you wanted to send a letter, you had to write it out with a pen and shove a stamp on it. And wait. Sometimes more than two whole days. For a reply. If you were lost, you needed to find a place that sold maps. If you're out somewhere and need to call someone, you'd have to find a phone booth. If you wanted someone to read an article you'd read, you would either handtype it and pay for a printer, and hope you can sell it on the street or at gigs or nightclubs, or you'd need to find an established magazine to publish your thoughts. In the 70s, your only possible ways of talking to the ether to people you've never met and getting some kind of instant reply was crank-calling the operator, or getting a CB radio. Even on radio the signal to noise ratio was about 100:1.
Ah... It was all so much simpler back then before that stupid Cray came out...
This was actually submitted to me from someone who watched the other Eurovision entrys below. BTW, submissions are always welcome, along with any other memories these pics and videos jog.
Not much you can really say about this, though. It's a glorious piece of German Eurovision nonsense about Ghengiz Khan, which references a little to Boney M's Rasputin, though it's much more energetic.
As with most 70s Eurovision entries, there's your typical heavy reliance on international sounds that mean nothing, such as Ding a Dong, Sing a Song or in this case, Hoo! Ha! HaHaHaHa! The rest, of course, in German, which to anyone who doesn't speak it is equally meaningless.
Interestingly while all the guys are dressed as Mongols, the girls look like they just walked off the set of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Back then, silver spacesuits were just sexier.
We never know his name, but his cat is called Charly. His mother's hair changes color every now and again, and he never really gets to have any actual fun with kids his own age. Or touch a teapot. Or go off with strange men to see their puppies. Shame that.
Years later, his cat is a codeword for cocaine, and Charly's advice will be heard, yet probably not followed, by tripped-out, loved-up, glowstick-waving ravers all over the planet. This is Charly's World, we just live in it.
Yes. While most Americans have fond memories of the PSA's that were shown on a Saturday morning ("I learned it from YOU, Dad!"), us Brits remember being scared poo-less by our Public Information Films.
Because there is already a "That 70's Blog", which has one entry and was last updated in 2005, welcome to Made in the 70's, a little blog about that long overlooked era of (mostly American) culture that made me the person I am right now. I was born in 1971, and missed much of the early 70's due to being very small and not very popular, so this is as much a journey for me as it is a repository for stuff and ideas that were Made in the 70's. Hope you like it. - Ridski.
NEW FEATURE: Feeling a little competitive? Check out the bottom of the page in the central section. We've added the classic 70s game Connect 4 to the site. Play against the computer or player vs. player (not against online players, unfortunately). It's so groovy!
