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I spent the 70's living and working in Berkeley California,, Vancouver Canada, and various places in Idaho.
Smoking must have been a east coast thing. Hardly, anybody smoked out west.....the green stuff excepted.
Watergate had a major impact particularly in places like Idaho. I think Merle Haggard said it best...."before Nixon lied to us on TV". That was huge. People started to doubt government.
The 70's were awful in terms of economics. In 1974, I worked for a small consulting firm. They had to layoff people for the first time in their history. There were TWO of us left that were not part owners of the company
I missed the first round of gas shortages since I was living in Canada. I do remember the second round in Idaho, but living in a tourist community we had plenty of gas once the tourists quit coming.
Vancouver, Canada was just becoming a world class city. Canada was more of a cultural backwater than Idaho. A Queen?? Really?? How quaint. It was still 1950 in 1975 in Canada.
Computers were becoming quite common in California. In 1974 my employer told me to take night classes and learn to program.
The big difference was how far ahead California was relative to Idaho and Canada in technology. The rest of the west really did feel like a third world country. Today, every time I go to California it feels like I am going to a third world country!!
That is a huge change. Idaho was a backwater. Today, Idaho is way ahead of California in so many ways. We live in a fairly rural part of eastern Washington and have had fiber for over 15 years. Going back to California is really a trip back into time. I suspect that is why some poster say things have not changed much.....they live in California.
Socially, the values in California like acceptance of gays, etc. have moved into other parts of the country including Canada.
When it comes to the economy the 1970's are quite similar to America since 2008. Slow economic growth and lack of trust in the government. I remember filling up my gas tank in 1979 and paying $1.95 a gallon and saying "crap, I can't afford this". I remember thinking the same thing in 2013 when I was paying $5.00 a gallon!!
The big difference was that in the 1970's the economic stagnation hit everybody rather hard, today the 1% escaped the downturn.
I think the 80's showed up when my C-Band dish and I got an account with CompuServe. But living in a rural area I still had a party line so had to explain to my neighbors how to disconnect me if I was on-line. Those two items changed everything.
Interesting comparisons between California, Idaho, and Canada. I am under the impression that New Jersey was a pretty cool place 30+ years but now it has become too expensive and crowded. Some might say most of it was more of a backwater considering it was mostly farms and wooded areas to the Hudson River until the 1950s.
Could you elaborate further on it still being like 1950 in 1975 Canada? I'm not well-read on Canadian history, so I'm not sure what the general atmosphere was like in post war Canada (cultural, social, political, etc.).
We immigrated from South America to New Jersey. So my experience in New Jersey was living in a ghetto of poor people. Lots of them. The only good thing is that we were ALL poor so did not know any different.
California was a eye-opener. Even a 12 year old in 1961 knew it was different and special. The world does need places like California in 1960-1980.
Canada...well it was 'conformist'. I was in graduate school there and the Dean of our professional school told us to "shut up, be quiet, graduate and get a good paying job". This was in 1973!!!
I wrote an article on becoming an American......Canada played a very important role in that. Here is the Canadian portion from that article.
Shortly after becoming an American citizen, I started my junior year at the University of California, Berkeley. At that time it was probably ground zero for the native anti-American movement. It was unbelievable to see American college students carrying the red flags of communism. To my parents, the hammer and sickle on the Soviet flag symbolized death and famine.
I was still unsure if I was an American, but I was quite sure that the solution to America's problems was not socialism. Canada started to become attractive.
Foresters always have a strong attraction to blank places on a map. Canada had a lot of blank places. Canada felt like the frontier country that America use to be. Friends who had moved to Canada to go to school all spoke well of the country.
Confused and unsure of America's future and my own, I decided to move to Canada to attend graduate school.
Canada, while appearing to be similar to the United States, is a very different country. The first clue was when I changed my greenback dollars to the multicolor Canadian bills. There on the front was a picture of her, the Queen of the Commonwealth. When I went to the post office, there she was again beaming down behind the postal clerks. I remember thinking, "Who elected her queen?"
I was thinking like an American.
In response to the kidnapping of government ministers, the Liberal government in Ottawa imposed press censorship throughout the country. I read the Vancouver Sun with big white spaces on the front page where articles had been pulled.
Nobody complained or demonstrated. It dawned on me the First Amendment did not apply north of the border.
I had a hard time adapting to Canadian society and even a harder time with Canadian higher education. As I walked into a seminar on forestry research, little did I know this presentation would change my life.
A graduate student spent 10 minutes talking about the historical differences between Canada and the United States. He pointed out that Canada was founded by a corporation - the Hudson's Bay Company. There was no revolution in Canada and its independence was at Britain's insistence, rather than Canada's. He joked that the reason Canadians have socialized medicine is it began as a corporate benefit. Like most businesses, the emphasis is on fitting in with the corporate culture. Creativity and individualism are not encouraged, but solid contributions to the existing state are.
This is why Canadian research is focused on practical application and also why scientific breakthroughs tend happen in the United States.
An individual will take more risks than groups or committees.
The United States was founded by revolution, brought on by the overriding principle of individual rights. People of this "new world" feared government would impinge on their rights as individuals. So the United States became a country where people felt pride in their government, but also kept guns to use against that same government if their individual rights were trampled. When people became fed up with their government, they headed for the frontier to live their lives as they saw fit.
During that brief lecture, I realized I was never going to fit in Canada. Being born in one country, raised in another culture, and educated in a third, you are always sure of being different. I needed to live in a country where individuals are valued and given the opportunity to make a difference.
America requires only that you believe in the social experiment that was started over 200 years ago. As a naturalized American once said, "I could live in France for a lifetime and never become a Frenchman. But here in America, after five years I can become an American complete with a accent."
You just have to believe in America and the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Shortly after that lecture, I packed my truck, stuck Allman Brothers into the tape deck and left Canada playing "Southbound" at maximum volume.
When I hit the border at Blaine, the immigration agent asked why I was entering the United States. With a grin, I said, "I'm coming home.".
He said, "Over to the side, kid, and start unpacking the truck."
Most people paid with cash and some people wrote checks, credit cards were not common like today
They didnt arrest people so easily for DUI back then, unless you were really drunk, they didnt have a breathalyzer test to check your blood alcohol level. They would just tell you to go home.
there was a lot less interracial dating, back then the white guys wouldnt be dating asian women, they would be making fun of them and calling them racial slurs or spitting on them and laughing about it, probably because of the Vietnam War, lots of racism towards asians.
the food was about the same, but they didnt have the super size and unlimited refills, if you wanted a refill you had to buy another drink.
there was a lot less variety in foods, they didnt have all the different ethnic cuisines like today
They mostly only had the basic Chinese take out, Pizza, Taco bell, Hamburgers
they didnt have "Taquerias" back then with the more authentic Mexican street food
No Vietnamese food, No Thai food, No Middle eastern food,etc
Clothing was more expensive back then, they didnt have all the low cost made in China clothing and all the clearance sales like now,
back then it wasnt 100% customer satisfaction, if you bought something in a store they usually woudnt take it back and give a refund, it was a lot of trouble and the store manager would usually say sorry no refunds.
then sometime around the 90's everybody got FAT? people started being very heavy at a young age? possibly from the hormones added to foods?
We immigrated from South America to New Jersey. So my experience in New Jersey was living in a ghetto of poor people. Lots of them. The only good thing is that we were ALL poor so did not know any different.
California was a eye-opener. Even a 12 year old in 1961 knew it was different and special. The world does need places like California in 1960-1980.
Canada...well it was 'conformist'. I was in graduate school there and the Dean of our professional school told us to "shut up, be quiet, graduate and get a good paying job". This was in 1973!!!
I wrote an article on becoming an American......Canada played a very important role in that. Here is the Canadian portion from that article.
Shortly after becoming an American citizen, I started my junior year at the University of California, Berkeley. At that time it was probably ground zero for the native anti-American movement. It was unbelievable to see American college students carrying the red flags of communism. To my parents, the hammer and sickle on the Soviet flag symbolized death and famine.
I was still unsure if I was an American, but I was quite sure that the solution to America's problems was not socialism. Canada started to become attractive.
Foresters always have a strong attraction to blank places on a map. Canada had a lot of blank places. Canada felt like the frontier country that America use to be. Friends who had moved to Canada to go to school all spoke well of the country.
Confused and unsure of America's future and my own, I decided to move to Canada to attend graduate school.
Canada, while appearing to be similar to the United States, is a very different country. The first clue was when I changed my greenback dollars to the multicolor Canadian bills. There on the front was a picture of her, the Queen of the Commonwealth. When I went to the post office, there she was again beaming down behind the postal clerks. I remember thinking, "Who elected her queen?"
I was thinking like an American.
In response to the kidnapping of government ministers, the Liberal government in Ottawa imposed press censorship throughout the country. I read the Vancouver Sun with big white spaces on the front page where articles had been pulled.
Nobody complained or demonstrated. It dawned on me the First Amendment did not apply north of the border.
I had a hard time adapting to Canadian society and even a harder time with Canadian higher education. As I walked into a seminar on forestry research, little did I know this presentation would change my life.
A graduate student spent 10 minutes talking about the historical differences between Canada and the United States. He pointed out that Canada was founded by a corporation - the Hudson's Bay Company. There was no revolution in Canada and its independence was at Britain's insistence, rather than Canada's. He joked that the reason Canadians have socialized medicine is it began as a corporate benefit. Like most businesses, the emphasis is on fitting in with the corporate culture. Creativity and individualism are not encouraged, but solid contributions to the existing state are.
This is why Canadian research is focused on practical application and also why scientific breakthroughs tend happen in the United States.
An individual will take more risks than groups or committees.
The United States was founded by revolution, brought on by the overriding principle of individual rights. People of this "new world" feared government would impinge on their rights as individuals. So the United States became a country where people felt pride in their government, but also kept guns to use against that same government if their individual rights were trampled. When people became fed up with their government, they headed for the frontier to live their lives as they saw fit.
During that brief lecture, I realized I was never going to fit in Canada. Being born in one country, raised in another culture, and educated in a third, you are always sure of being different. I needed to live in a country where individuals are valued and given the opportunity to make a difference.
America requires only that you believe in the social experiment that was started over 200 years ago. As a naturalized American once said, "I could live in France for a lifetime and never become a Frenchman. But here in America, after five years I can become an American complete with a accent."
You just have to believe in America and the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Shortly after that lecture, I packed my truck, stuck Allman Brothers into the tape deck and left Canada playing "Southbound" at maximum volume.
When I hit the border at Blaine, the immigration agent asked why I was entering the United States. With a grin, I said, "I'm coming home.".
He said, "Over to the side, kid, and start unpacking the truck."
Fascinating perspective. Thanks for sharing.
What was so special about California 1960-1980? Because it was modern and progressive?
It's kind of hard to summarize daily life that totaled 10 years. Although I didn't read every post, I would
say that (speaking for myself and where I lived) there were more choices and options as a consumer
(and at that time I was a high school and college student). This included more mom and pop
stores, restaurants that were not corporate owned, a variety of cuisines from Europe, wonderful
department stores that had almost everything you needed (like Marshall Field's and I'm sure
other cities had a similar type of store i.e., Hudson's is just one I can think of). And I was able
to buy quality items with my part-time job especially when they had a sale or some friends and
family could use the layaway plan if the store had that.
There were great old- fashioned ice cream parlors, skating rinks, bakeries, going to the movies and
concerts were affordable.
99% of the time - customer service really meant something because
they wanted your business and for their patrons to come back.
What was so special about California 1960-1980? Because it was modern and progressive?
It was a godsend to the middle class. Full of opportunity.
I am an immigrant to this country. We came during a low period of immigration. My father could fine a good job paying middle-class wages without speaking English. He retired as a union carpenter in 1982 at $30/hour. Carpenter wages are much, much lower these days due to mass immigration. Given the number of immigrants today, there is no way we could have made it out of poverty in my opinion
I was a horrible student in high school, but took all the tough math and science classes and did poorly. The junior college system gave me a second chance. It was affordable (free to the student)...paid for by California taxpayers. Also UC Berkeley HAD to admit me IF I met grade and class criteria. Graduating from Berkeley was very helpful and the tuition at that time was low enough that working for the Forest Service in the summer's paid for most of my education.
There is a long list of what was special, but I think the two above are what's really different today.
There was an expectation in California, that people can do anything when it came to solving the states problems. I think the political leadership in the state was much, much smarter in those days and more focused on helping people instead their friends.
Some of the so-called " investments" California is making these days are shall we say interesting. Look at the infrastructure in today's California and make note of when it was built. I think you will find a very large portion came in that time period of 1960-1980.
California in those days made some pretty smart investments in public infrastructure. These days it appears they are spending large sums of taxpayer money building "shiny baubles".
As a Forester, California has rather special public lands and ecosystems. None of those are faring well today. The destruction of California's wildlands is disturbing, but I understand how most urban folks just don't see it. Out of sight, out of mind.
We only have ourselves to blame for electing leaders that are frankly not very smart. People are more focused on politics instead of intelligence.
In this, California is not unique. Washington state is following right behind California.
LOL: sure sign I'm getting older, I remember c. 1982 very well. I was 14.
My mom smoked indoors. Many adults did. My dad didn't like it, but tolerated it. I know of few who would do so today. The few cigarettes I smoke are outdoors (I sneak a pack every few months). Smoking inside seems gross to me, the house would reek of it. I am pretty sure this contributed to allergies as a kid. Mom died of cancer from all the smoking and drinking. She hardly knew better, people obviously smoked more then and even more-so in prior decades.
That year or thereabouts, my dad bought a Chrysler K-Car. I had no use for Chrysler, then or now, but ironically that particular K-Car (a LeBaron) was pretty solid. It was silver with a landau top in dark red. Front wheel drive. The engine was by Mitsubishi, and a fine engine it was. When the rest of the car would break, the engine would not. First time I saw a true joint effort between American and JPN car companies, though I assume it wasn't the "very" first time that happened. Those who don't know what K-Cars are or were, look it up.
Quality of cars was all-around lower then. Tolerances, metallurgy, everything was more primitive. Cars just wore out faster, 100K miles was big news and few made it that far. The Chrysler K-Car made it nowhere near that long before being traded or sold off for scrap by the old man. Many were manual transmission, though roughly same number were automatic. I learned to drive on a manual. Today, I have to special-order manual transmission cars. Seems a shame, but that's Luddite thinking and I know it. More fun, though, those manuals (though today I have a car with an F-1 PDK paddle-shifter and damn it's slick and high tech). Something like an F-1 transmission would have been Buck Rodgers exotic back then. Oh, and Buck Rodgers (the new version) was on TV about that time, too. Dorky, but enjoyable.
We had cable, but only a year or two at that point. It was a bit exotic. A guy came through the neighborhood and sold it to many of us one year. We thought it was cool to have those channels, I grew up with maybe ten channels and rabbit ears on the TV (can we say, "snow"). Another guy taught us how to removing the "jamming" chip so we could get all the premium channels for free. So, we did. My mom and dad had a tough moral time with that one, with me, and I remember it well. Kids notice these things, how parents make moral choices. My mom and dad were basically honest people, but let's call it what it was: stealing that cable was dishonest. They knew it, I knew it. Interesting to remember that.
Reagan was in office. He'd been shot by a nut a year or two prior. We were nose-to-nose with the Soviets. That would have been the Andropov years, give or take, and he was a scary guy. So was Reagan. Nuclear war was as unwinnable then as now, but was on everyone's mind. There was fiction and stories that made it seem inevitable. "the Day After" showed up on cable about a year later, and seemed plausible. Obviously we dodged it, but it was very serious between the two nations and the Cold War was never anything to chuckle about.
Movies were on ...now here I'm reaching...tape I think. The VHS vs. Beta war was about that time. I don't remember seeing a VCR until about 1984. Friend of the family had hundreds of movies by about that time, in a huge tape library. That was his hobby. Quality was horrible, but hey: that's what we had, and 19" or so CRT TVs, so we made do. We didn't know better, so who complained? Rich people had 27" TVs that would be laughable, 125lb junk today.
My music was also on tapes, cassettes to be specific. I made copies of albums on TDK brand tapes. We debated the merits of different kind of tape. Having a good ear, I could tell the difference, but couldn't always afford the good tapes (TDK "Metal", they were called). Obviously there was no online anything. We taped each other's albums, little pirates that we were. I had maybe a hundred tapes and tens or a hundred albums. That's as close to "file sharing" as we got. My dad had a Sony tape deck that I talked him into, being the family's musical talent (kid that I was, he knew I was right). I wanted a Nakamichi, but he couldn't afford one and in today's dollars they were $500 to several thousand. Doubt that company exists anymore.
My dad worked for a computer company he'd been with for decades. He retired a thirty year many years later, (almost) at end of the 1980s. I've been with few companies longer than three years, much less 10x that. In adjusted dollars, I make 2x what he ever did, and he raised a family on his salary alone since my mom never worked for long, so I'm grateful. Back then a man could have a home, wife, and kid(s) in the suburbs with two cars and modest vacations on one salary. I wouldn't try that in a nice suburb of Seattle today, unless the breadwinner is an executive. My dad was not, just a mid-manager.
Times were somewhat rough, and my dad worked hard as a white collar manager, but he had good spirits. Everything was done via paper, with memos and etc. He managed a group, then team, then about thirty people. I hear he was authoritarian, very "Don Draper" in how the office was handled. That's just how it was. Women were "girls" or "secretaries." People of color were "that Black fellow" (or Asian, or Indian, or whatever). Casual racism came into the conversation from time to time, from my dad and everyone else. I'm glad that era is done, we just didn't know better.
You know, I don't know much about inflation and unemployment then. Paul Volcker, Reagan's man, helped solve all that. He's still around, we may need him yet. Yes, there was a Recession about that time. I was young and didn't notice, that was my dad's problem.
Compared to the present, broad strokes:
- If I wanted information, I went to the library. I was a curious kid and spent much time there. The library at Michigan (Ann Arbor), when I got to college, was stupendous and I've not seen such a thing before or since, compared to my home town library. I haven't been in one seeking knowledge in who knows how long, these days. Not necessary.
- Culturally: there were very few people of color in the suburbs where I grew up, north of Detroit. Detroit itself was the complete opposite. It wasn't very healthy, either place, due to the natural segregation.
- It was a golden age of Rock and Roll, that's for sure. I still listen to that hard rock and early metal with great fondness. Rock had just had it's more-or-less 25th Anniversary and bands like Led Zeppelin, Boston, Aerosmith, the Stones, Rush, and so many more were in their full swing. That was glorious. Music has moved on since but y'know, even at my age I love hard jams so my taste has always been that, and the Lord willing I'll die an old man humming along to AC/DC's "Back in Black".
- We had bad hair. Just look at the pictures. We didn't know better. Mid to late 80s, it was outrageous. At the time, I started to see how stupid it was, but style is style. Something we do now will be stupid in thirty years, I can't guess what. Wait and see.
- Food was less varied. Much less. Kids ate at McDonalds and Taco Bell for a treat, adults at diners and occasional evenings out. My dad took me to "the softee freeze" ice cream place that had stood from the 1950s. "The Coney Island" may be a Midwest or East thing: hot dogs with chili, cheese, onions, and other fixin's, usually run by Greeks. When last in Michigan, the Coney dog thing is still around and I've seen very few of those places before or since.
- A pizza was a treat, they didn't really deliver. Dominoes was very new about that time. Frozen food was in somewhat early days and was mostly bad. My mom was a good cook, but was liberated enough to not be chained to the kitchen. No one starved, but I had little ethnic cuisine other than "Chinese" until I moved out West end of the 1980s. I didn't have good, authentic, Mexican until moving to Reno. My mom visited and remarked how great it was compared to Michigan, early 1990s. Sushi? Not until the early 1990s, in San Francisco.
- Movies were a treat, and about five bucks to get into first-run. That was sort of a lot of money to a kid, or even adult. We went every few weeks or more if we could. Heck, movies are still an experience today, so that's changed not so much though back then the content did not exist on Netflix or any other rental. The heydey of video rental was more mid to late 1980s into the 1990s.
- There were no Starbucks or exotic coffee places, the idea simply did not exist in the Midwest. My parents drank Folgers or other crud in a can. It was pre-ground. When I started drinking coffee in college, much later in the decade, I didn't know better either. I really only had a good cup of coffee when I moved to San Francisco and ground my own beans. In retrospect, that canned coffee was mud in a cup and I gave my old many grief about it into his 70s. We laughed about it, and he remarked that the coffee he had in the Navy was both for sailors and to lube the ship's engines. I believe it. He loved my well-considered, properly-ground coffee and that's one habit of his I improved until he passed in his 80s.
So all in all, it was a simpler and grittier time, yes. We were more ignorant and relied on the Big 3 news channels. CNN changed all that, I remember when it was new in the 1980s or so. These days, ignorant pinko whacko news can be circumvented by finding out what is actually going on, through careful vetting of online sources that actually tell the truth. Back then, we assumed the stooges in the major media who were in the tank for various political causes were "the truth." We didn't know better. I remember that pinko Tom Brokaw and others trying to downplay how Reagan cleaned out the competition in the 1984 election, by (IMO) trying to impact the vote DURING voting by slanted coverage. That was a glorious year, when Republicans knew what needed to be done and the country was mostly behind it.
I personally am having a grand time here in 2016, compared to back then, but realize economically times are pretty tough for many these days. I get that. Our problems are bigger today in many ways, for sure. Few answers then, or now: history sort of lurches forward and we ride along with it!
The late 70's are similar to today. The country adrift and not respected in world. Economy was/is horrible shape and the Elites tell us to put on a sweater and tough it out.
This country was very lucky to have Theodore Roosevelt arrive in 1901, and Ronald Reagan in 1981. I hope we are as lucky in 2017.
Even though this thread is about the 70s and 80s...the radio station where I was employed with allowed the staff to smoke at their desks and even in the studios and this was in 1993. Actually I can remember when the owners tried to ban smoking inside the station. The woman who did the morning show was a big time smoker of Virginia Slims. When the no smoking policy was first announced she drove all the way to Baltimore ( station was in Virginia ) telling the owners that if they would ban smoking then she would quit her job !! Since at the time she was the highest rated radio personality in town the owners backed away from the no smoking rule.
At my work in the 90s, smoking at your workstation was permitted at least until I left in 1999. The company owner was an old man who would smoke or chew a cigar the whole day. It was not a small outfit either, at least several hundred white collar educated workers. If you didn't like the smoke, too bad.
My married boss had an affair with a married female co-worker. Everyone - including the company owner - knew that. Another co-worker got offended by this and went to HR, ended up getting re-assigned to another facility. The girl was in her mid-30s, she'd spend the whole day staring at her computer, with a cigarette in her hand. She did do some work but was certainly not pulling her weight. She was not much liked, unlike the boss who was actually a very decent person, just a bit too outgoing .
Of the 6 people I shared the working area with, 2 smoked non-stop and another one smoked occasionally. I had a fan aimed at the 2 smokers (they sat near each other) and this was a source of constant good-natured bickering.
Every Friday the whole group would take a long lunch with beer in one of the nearby restaurants. We'd go through a couple pitchers and then return to work. Sometimes the higher ups (the chief engineer or the VP) would come to the restaurant and see us and buy us a pitcher. This would be unimaginable today. Actually this wouldn't be happening in most other workplaces back then either. We worked up to 70 hours a week sometimes when things got busy (5 x 12 and 10 on Sunday) and 55-60 hrs a week was the minimum for me, and being able to unwind every now and then was very therapeutic. And they paid the overtime very generously.
This was in the 90s but the whole place felt like it was stuck in the 70s. Both in good and in bad. If you screwed up, you heard it to your face without any velvet gloves. If there was an issue, everyone tried to solve it, and engaging in a blame game was frowned upon. As my bosses' boss once quipped in a meeting, "I don't care who f#cked up, if someone can't do the job it will be obvious, and if they can, they won't repeat the same mistake twice. Fix the f#cking problem and move on". This kind of attitude is a rarity nowadays.
This was in the 90s but the whole place felt like it was stuck in the 70s. Both in good and in bad. If you screwed up, you heard it to your face without any velvet gloves. If there was an issue, everyone tried to solve it, and engaging in a blame game was frowned upon. As my bosses' boss once quipped in a meeting, "I don't care who f#cked up, if someone can't do the job it will be obvious, and if they can, they won't repeat the same mistake twice. Fix the f#cking problem and move on". This kind of attitude is a rarity nowadays.
Yes that kind of attitude is unfortunately a rarity today. Very much reminds me of questionable behavior one can witness at a retail store, hotel/motel or a restaurant today. So many people are too scared to say and do anything to correct the issue. Just yesterday at Dollar Tree I saw a woman shopping with her pet rat. I asked the cashier since when did Dollar Tree allow people taking rats into the store. They said they didn't like it but can't do anything due to company policy. Meanwhile at the Walmart next door several people were taking their dogs inside the store while they shopped. Passing by many managers and store staff who of course said nothing. A few months ago having dinner at a Red Lobster a young couple came in with their child AND THEIR CAT even though some of the other customers who did complain only to get from Red Lobster management "..SHHHHHH we don't want to get involved". Back in the 70s & 80s unless you were blind and had a seeing eye dog with you one could pretty much forget about taking any animal into a store much less a restaurant. A customer creaming foul language in a store in those days would be enough for the store management to ask the customer to leave. My late aunt was a manger of our local K-Mart back in the 70s until ill health had got the best of her which forced her to retire in 1988. Scream the F word inside her store and if she would hear you..out you will go.
In September 1983 a few members of a high school football team had trashed a room at our local Days Inn motel. The damage was quite severe. When the players were arrested it not only made the local paper but the players involved were cut from the team as a result of their actions at Days Inn. Just about everyone in town had thought the school had done the right thing. But that was then..today if such a situation would happen there would be an outcry from the public saying "..they are just boys having fun..let them stay on the team !!".
Last edited by tantan1968; 05-29-2016 at 11:14 AM..
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