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Aug 16, 2010, 12:40 PM
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Member Since: Jun 2007
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Posts: 5,518
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Hi Indie
My son was watching "Saturday Night Fever" the other day and said: "I wish I would have grown up during the 70s - you guys got away with everything."  In a way, he was right. We weren't surrounded by cameras and permanently connected to the internet and cellphones. We had the freedom to sneak behind the bleachers without anyone seeing us. 
It really wasn't that much easier. I grew up in the 60s/70s. There was only telephone line. I was allowed only 5 minutes per call - say what I needed to say, and hang up. I was not allowed to sit and chat over the phone with my friends because my father needed to keep the phone line open for an emergency.
The only music available was my little battery operated transistor radio, and there were only two stations. There was only one car in the family too, and my father used it for work. If wanted to go somewhere, we had to walk.
If your car broke down on the side of the road, you had no choice but to walk or wait for strangers to help you - but they didn't have phones either.
We had no AC (still don't), but we only had one fan in the living room. We didn't have central heat either, so my bedroom would get brutally cold in the wintertime if I closed my door. Even then, it was only one little heater for the entire house. As a kid, I'd wait for the heater to kick in - then race over there to warm up as I woke up. Our legs would turn blue on our walk to school, but girls were not allowed to wear pants. Even when they were, we had to wear them under our skirts and take them off when we got into class. It looked funny so we all put up with purple legs.
When my mother began to show symptoms of her amyloidosis, doctors blew her off as a hypochondriac because they didn't know about the disease at the time. They told her to shut up and drink wine to calm her nerves - then said she'd feel better if she went home and made a nice meal for her husband, like a "good wife" should. They told us to ignore her "attention-seeking" behavior. They finally threw her into a psych ward when she became too much trouble for them.
Certain foods were only available during certain seasons. If you wanted an apple, you had to wait for them to ripen in the fall.
If you were a boy back then, you would have to sign up for the draft and go to Vietnam. If you were a girl, you'd have to say good-bye to your boyfriend. If you had no boyfriend, there weren't many to choose from because the able-bodied boys were all in the military. Most of the girls just gathered around and cried about the war. The others turned to sex, drugs and rock and roll - they tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. Many of them died from heroin overdose or blew their minds out with acid. Counseling was not available.
Hollywood paints a great picture of life back then. Us old fogies do too sometimes - when we choose to remember only the good times.
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