What was daily life like in the mid-70s and early 80s? (kings, battle)

[Lorelilly]

Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90

I'm curious as to what daily life was like during this time period (roughly 1975-1984). Reading through various threads on this forum and hearing stories from relatives, I have this general image in my head, i.e., clunkier cars, lots of smoking, children always playing outside, going out to dinner was a rare treat, colorful appliances and interior decorating, etc. I knew smoking was allowed in restaurants (heck, the ban is relatively recent), but I was surprised to read that people also smoked in the grocery store. Overall it seems like it was a less sterile, dirtier, grittier time compared to the present. I mean that literally and metaphorically. How did the food taste? Was it better, worse, or on par with today? Did a cup of coffee or a cheeseburger in 1980 taste the same as it does in 2012? I'm especially interested in what was life was like in the early 80s since it doesn't seem to be discussed much for some reason. When did the 80s become distinct from the 70s? Was 1982 really that different from 1978? Was the disco era confined to the mid-to-late 70s or was there any spill over into the early 80s? I understand this was a rough time economically with high unemployment, inflation, etc. What was it like when the economy came roaring back (I ask that considering we're still in a malaise from the most recession)? Economically, politically, and culturally, how would you compare this time period in the US to the present?

I know this is a hodge-podge of both specific and broad questions, but I've been thinking about this for a while and would like to hear your thoughts.

If I could go back I would. Then and Now are totally different.

THEN - I got into bars at 15, some bars were so crowded you could actually smoke pot and not get asked to leave. NOW - bars are boring and you can't even smoke a candy cigarette inside and if they could ban it outside they would!

THEN - It was safe to go outside. Once when I was 16 and walking down the street a guy in a yellow Impala pulled up and asked me for directions. I started to answer then I realized he was ...spanking the you know what and I walked away. NOW - Nobody really goes outside anymore. I imagine today that the Impala dude would provoke a scream, a shot of mace or a gunshot to the face depending on who was walking down the street at the time.

THEN - Cars: Camaro's were cool, Datsun's were not. El Camino's were cool, Pinto's were not. Chevy Trucks were cool, AMC anything were not. Friday and Saturday nights were spent "scooping the loop" and admiring some cute guys car. Hanging out in parking lots and drinking Budweiser tall boys. NOW - I'm not really sure...gas prices appear to have put an end to the scooping of anything.

THEN - Parties: Kegs every weekend with live bands just outside the city limits on someones farm. Walking on uneven ground and falling over was the worst "risk" you'd be taking on that night. NOW - Dummies having parties while Mom and Dad work overtime and then a really dumb dummy tweets, or texts, or im's another dummy and here come the fuzz! Epic Fail.

THEN - Music: The Guess Who, Black Sabbath, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zepplin, Aerosmith, Peter Frampton AND then the 80's happened and everything sucked! NOW - Music: Aerosmith, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath and some rap-a-tap-tap kinda thingie.

THEN - Food: Greasy hamburgers from diners with 5 stools. 35 cents each and if you got 'em to go, by the time you sat down to eat 'em the grease would have covered the whole damn bag. Best burgers ever. NOW - Good Lord, over processed frozen patty's from China or Taiwan or something? Greasy but not in a good way.

THEN - Interior Design: Shag carpet in every color ever imagined and in some cases we're still not sure. Waterbeds. Getting in or out while drunk could take a minute or two but sleep was amazing! Wallpaper, everywhere, even bathrooms! Oh the humanity! Hammocks, again the whole getting in and out of thing... NOW - The ColorWhite and Dark Wood...everywhere...and no wallpaper which is sort of okay with me.

THEN - Clothing: Bell bottoms, jean jackets, Fry boots, leather sandals, long hair. NOW - Leggings, no jackets or coats (whats up with that?) these weird shoes that are half boot and half...not, flat ugly sandals in black and brown, hair of every length color and feather.

THEN Lingo: To the max. Far out. Let's book. Airhead. Peace. NOW - Like...is every third word

IN CLOSING - The 70's were alive with fast cars, rock music, good weed, oblivious parents and we were free
2013 kids are alive, they don't do anything fast except hit the buttons on the video controls,
their parents are yelling at them to get ready for soccer or baseball or football or... (parent is
now looking for the car keys that are in their hand and trying to remember which practice
they left Tom Jr. at ) and the kids are not all right. ilovemycomputer90, you would have loved
the 70's. You dear friend were robbed. Goodnight and Amen.

[MaryleeII]

Originally Posted by berkeleylake

People smoked a lot, the highways were more littered with trash, and people didn't wear seatbelts that often. I have good memories as well being really young, but those are the first things I wanted to mention.

Yep, even teachers smoked during class!

[soonerguy]

Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90

I'm curious as to what daily life was like during this time period (roughly 1975-1984). Reading through various threads on this forum and hearing stories from relatives, I have this general image in my head, i.e., clunkier cars, lots of smoking, children always playing outside, going out to dinner was a rare treat, colorful appliances and interior decorating, etc. I knew smoking was allowed in restaurants (heck, the ban is relatively recent), but I was surprised to read that people also smoked in the grocery store. Overall it seems like it was a less sterile, dirtier, grittier time compared to the present. I mean that literally and metaphorically. How did the food taste? Was it better, worse, or on par with today? Did a cup of coffee or a cheeseburger in 1980 taste the same as it does in 2012? I'm especially interested in what was life was like in the early 80s since it doesn't seem to be discussed much for some reason. When did the 80s become distinct from the 70s? Was 1982 really that different from 1978? Was the disco era confined to the mid-to-late 70s or was there any spill over into the early 80s? I understand this was a rough time economically with high unemployment, inflation, etc. What was it like when the economy came roaring back (I ask that considering we're still in a malaise from the most recession)? Economically, politically, and culturally, how would you compare this time period in the US to the present?

I was born in 1968, graduated high school in 1986. I miss those days. I think they had a lot going for them.

Cars were clunkier. No seat belts. Lots of people could pile in a big Chevy or Ford. An adult could sleep fairly comfortably in either the front or back of those old cars if all the beds in the house were taken. A/C in vehicles was uncommon. We rolled the windows down and hung our heads out the window. Car radios were generally somewhat static.

There was lots of smoking. I remember teachers smoking in their lounge and one in particular I remember stepping inside the class storage room to have a puff. Cars came w/ built-in ashtrays and lighters and I remember ashtrays on the arms of seats at the movies. People also smoked in hospitals. Basically wherever they wanted.

Kids did play outside all day long. My grandma turned us out after breakfast (we may have already been out some), and we returned for lunch. Out again until parents came to pick us up. I remember those as very fun childhood times. The neighborhood kids played together and you knew who lived in every house for several blocks. We rode bikes, built clubhouses, visited with or helped the neighborhood elderly, made up all sorts of games, fished for crawdads in the bar ditches, had dogs, splashed in the water of the garden hose, looked after the younger kids. Some days we might be allowed to walk a few blocks to town. Twenty cents or a quarter bought a coke. If you had a dollar or so you could fill your pockets with treats.

I grew up in a town of about 20,000. We did go out to eat and it wasn't that unusual. Food might have been better before all the additives and nasties that it contains today and because it was mostly made from scratch. I remember knowing just about everyone in the restaurants and cafes when we would eat out (usually Friday night and other times too). I remember seeing my teachers and once, to my mortal horror, actually sharing a table with one of them. Sometimes the extended family would gather and eat at a restaurant. I remember homemade pies made by a little old lady born in another century (not the 1900's). We kids sat quietly and minded our parents. We might have been allowed to play the jukebox or pinball games if we were good. Dining out was one of the few times we were allowed soft drinks. Waitresses chewed gum and knew your mother from school.

At home, all meals were cooked on the stove. We never had a microwave and my grandparents didn't get one until the late 1980's. We occasionally had TV dinners, the kind in the foil trays. We rarely had chips (maybe only at picnics or parties) or cookies unless the cookies were homemade. Popcorn was popped in a skillet on the stove. We drank milk or tea. Parents had coffee. If you didn't like what was being served, you could have an apple or go without and you didn't cry and throw a fit about it. Most people kept some kind of a garden and canned or preserved food from it. We almost always had homemade jelly and pickles that someone had made. We traveled to the country to pick fruit from orchards or wild plums and berries along backroads. What a treat! Especially with homemade (hand-churned) ice cream.

As far as the economy goes, I do remember the dire predictions watched on the black-and-white television news, and I remember long lines for gas at times, but on the whole, people still knew how to make do and were okay with "making the best" of a situation.

Phones hung on the wall or sat on a table and used a dial. Rich people had push-button phones and long cords to move the phone from room to room. Most people only had one phone in the house. If you needed to get ahold of someone, you left a note or sent a message by someone, or, heaven help us today, wrote a letter. I remember in the mid-seventies, there were people still up and around who were born in the 1880's or 1890's--aunts and uncles of my grandparents. Some of the old ladies still dressed the part (bonnets, long dresses and aprons) or the men rode horses to town, sat on benches downtown whittling and chewing tobacco.

As I came of age, in the mid/late eighties, the drinking age where I lived was still only 18. I remember some kids at my high school buying beer during lunch time, off campus. Friday nights (before you or a friend had a license) you would meet your group at the movies or the mall. At driving age, Friday night was "drag night". Everyone drove the drag. Kids from smaller, outlying towns would come in, some groups would park in parking lots and sit on tailgates. We drank beer and it didn't seem to be that big of a deal and everyone knew where to get it. Rarely was there any trouble other than the occasional fight or busted beer bottles. Sometimes you would switch cars and ride with some other group for awhile. Saturday night parties were indeed epic--either at the home of someone whose parents were away or out on some deserted country road. Teenagers have always made and will continue to make bad decisions. LOL!

I think what separates the two decades most is the advent of technology. By the mid-80's we knew things were probably changing big time. The seventies were the last of a simpler time, a simpler way of life and a relatively uncomplicated way of looking at things. Computer type games were coming out in the 80's and we did have an Atari and Commodore in the mid/early eighties. I had my first computer class as a senior in high school and it was the kind of computer where you had to write a program just to spell your name. When I first went to college, we were still using card catalogs in the library and did so for the first two years I was there.

Back then, we learned to do things for ourselves. Today, we need things to be done for us.

I feel sorry for the young people of today. They will never know such happy simplicity. Most young people today just have no clue what they missed....

[Slater]

Heck, we didn't even know bicycle helmets existed back then (early-mid 1970's). And we're still alive somehow. I think even some of the toys we played with back then would be considered either unsafe or politically incorrect these days.

[reebo]

Stores were closed on Sundays.

[melaniej65]

Originally Posted by reebo

Stores were closed on Sundays.

I think that it depends where you lived as just about everything was open on Sunday (10 am) in Honolulu- it was one of the best shopping days.

[The Dark Enlightenment]

In the '70s and early '80s American kids did all the jobs "Americans just won't do" today. Growing up in Maine my friends an I, all of us white middle class teenagers, did farm work, landscaping, dishwashing, etc., etc. during summer vacations and after school. Nobody thought those kinds of jobs were fit only for brown people.

[Clark Park]

Umm ... late 70's ...

I remember disco dancing!

Donna Summer - "Last Dance"
Barry White - "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love Babe"
Carol Douglas - "Doctor's Orders"
Van McCoy - "The Hustle"
Village People - "YMCA"
Alicia Bridges - "I Love The Night Life"
Gloria Gaynor - "I Will Survive"
The Weather Girls - "It's Raining Men"
K.C. & The Sunshine Band - "That's The Way I Like It"
Chic - "Le Freak"

yeah baby!

Also ... AIDS was not discovered yet ... so: sex without condoms!

[tceffo]

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.

[elston]

I am not sure I am remembering the 60's and 70's distinctly. I graduated college in 1962.

I think it was still in the 60's and 70's when a good host or hostess suggested one more drink "for the road" before guests departed after visiting for an evening. Holding back on alcohol the last hour or so of a party and putting on a pot of coffee hadn't taken hold yet.

Yes, smoking was rampant and no one ever considered whether others minded or not. It would have been more rude to ask someone not to smoke than to light up in someone's home or in the office or where ever.

I remember food being better, maybe not as interesting or international.....but good quality meats and vegetables and mostly cooked from scratch....but much higher calorie however.