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Fascinating about Idaho! In what ways is Idaho ahead of CA?
No, I don't live in CA. But I live the same way I did back in the 80's, except I have a car now. No cable/satellite TV, no microwave, no cell phone or MP3 player. The only difference is that I have a PC on my desk. Life is as simple as it ever was. I've never been into popular culture, so whatever changes have happened there--music, Hollywood, whatever--are outside of my experience. Life is as routine as ever, I still get out into nature on the weekends, or go to concerts, or whatever, take walks, visit friends. The economy goes up and down, same as ever.
The only difference now is that the gov't surveils its citizens and terrorism has come to the US, and there's global climate change to worry about. But back in the 60's, there was COINTELPRO, when the FBI spied on citizens, and there were nut jobs like the Unabomber and the Zodiac Killer, and Timothy McVeigh, so there was domestic terrorism.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, Except for the climate change part, and all the people who lost their homes in the sub-prime mortgage scam.
McVeigh was the 1990s. A similar sub-prime meltdown happened in the early 1990s with the savings and loan crisis. It wasn't as widespread but ended up being expensive to work through the system.
McVeigh was the 1990s. A similar sub-prime meltdown happened in the early 1990s with the savings and loan crisis. It wasn't as widespread but ended up being expensive to work through the system.
I've been reading about that, and other odd economic and investment phenomena in the 90's. Joseph Stieglitz's book, "The Roaring 90's" explains why all that stuff happened. A certain amount of voodoo accounting that gov't regs allowed banks to engage in, and flip-flopping in gov't banking regs every couple of years, too. Unbelievable! Great book, if you want an inside view of how that sector works.
The only thing I can add is that there were no microwaves in the 1970's. Meals were cooked on the stove or in the oven. There were TV dinners, but most of them (to me) tasted awful. I'm thinking Mr. Coffee was invented sometime in the 70's, until then coffee drinkers used electric percolators and bought Maxwell House or Folgers already ground. I didn't see my first whole (gourmet) beans until the early 80's.
Actually there were microwave ovens for home use back in the 70s but they weren't common. Really the closest many back in those days had got to a microwave was seeing Monty Hall or Bob Barker giving them away on their game shows since such things for quite awhile was strictly for the rich. Just like with VCRs in those days. By around 1977 maybe 1978 both were becoming more common though the process was quite slow at first since those things were still expensive.
Fascinating about Idaho! In what ways is Idaho ahead of CA?
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I really noticed it in public infrastructure, education and quality of life.
We moved to California in 1961 after immigrating to the US in the 50's. My parents did not speak English, and for me English was my fourth language. Needless to say, my accent and speech patterns were a mess. At the California school, I was pulled out of classes twice a week and sent to a speech therapist. After three years, I had NO accent and spoke English just like a normal Californian.
At that time, California ranked first in education in the nation. Idaho was nowhere to be seen!!
I got an amazing education at a community college, and thanks to the first Governor Brown I got to transfer to UC Berkeley as a junior.
Nowadays, I suspect that speech therapist is long gone. And that college education is way out of reach for most normal Californians. California ranks next to Mississippi in education today.
Take a look at the test scores for Common Core in Idaho and California today.
The downhill slide in education in California is matched by the slide in public infrastructure. We have had fiber in a small eastern Washington county for 15 years now. In California, in counties with much larger population we were told the best high speed internet was at McDonald's. ONE Mbps!
I remember commuting to work on the BART system in the early 1970's. I went back in the 1990's and found the seats covered with DUCT tape to hold them together!! That was just twenty years later.
The rural road systems were never upgraded or fixed. Except these days they have 10 to 20 times the traffic load on them.
Even the pride and joy of California the freeways are in bad shape. A few years ago I towed my tent trailer up from Arizona on I-5. The road surface was so bad that the battery box actually broke and various other items fell off of it. I stopped in Oregon to get a new battery box and fix things up. You know how slick a tent trailers roof is?? Well, I forgot and left my swiss army knife on the roof and started up the freeway. A couple of hundred miles later in Oregon I stopped at the rest area and noticed that my knife was still on the roof of the tent trailer.
Go to Boise, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls or any of the other larger Idaho communities. There is no public urination and there are social services for the down and out. I really do not understand how a state like California can be so callous to leave the homeless adrift.
I stopped at a isolated gas station on I-5 and noticed two people eyeing me. Since there was nobody around except in the store, I was starting to feel nervous. I was drinking a coke and when I threw it away, both of those two scrambled to get it out of the garbage. I cannot imagine that happening in Idaho. I can not imagine people thinking that is acceptable in today's America.
I really do try to avoid California on my travels throughout the west. That is a shame, since I spent some wonderful years there and know the backroads and special places throughout most of the northern part of the state.
It is sad. Such a wonderful place in 1970, such a disaster in 2016.
[quote=Caladium;26411997]What I recall from our daily life:
1. clunkier cars? Heavier cars that had low gas mileage. People cared about mph, not mpg.
2. lots of smoking? Nobody in my family smoked, but it wasn't that unusual to see people smoking everywhere you went. Not many restaurants had no smoking areas.
3. children always playing outside? Absolutely!
The rule of thumb was not to let beam of light from a street light on you for more than a second. A foot ball field was measured by light posts out out of bounds was the curb. The only time outs were for cars and they would result in immediate timeouts even in the middle of play. No one gave a dam about the NBA MLB was all that mattered. Giants Dodger were the big deal on the west Coast and we spent a lot of time trading baseball cards.
4. going out to dinner was a rare treat?
Swanson TV dinners were the big deal and you ate them on TV trays in front of the TV. Children served as remote controls and antenna adjusters. Match book were important tools you used them to wedge the channel knobs that couldn't hit the station. If your TV went out you could take the bad tubes to the grocery store and test them, buy a replacement and head home to put them in the TV.
The big controversy was Marvel vs DC comics, Marvel was way cooler DC was for little kids.
Collecting Coke bottles was a major source of income, 8oz bottles were worth few cents a 32.oz bottle was the gold standard with two you could buy a large Hershey bar and a comic book! Really cool kids had Mad Magazine, Playboy was beyond hard core!!
5. colorful appliances and interior decorating?
Appliance were white! Everything was white with a splash of chrome!
Every piece of furniture was covered in plastic! Hanging out in the living room verboten! People with color TV's were very popular and it was big deal to be invited to watch some program at friends house with color TV.
7. 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?
No burgers were way better, at least as I recall. We went to place that specialized in burgers one place I remember made all their burgers on a big oak pit and use real oak logs real flame broiled!! Not gas grilled!
8. When did the 80s become distinct from the 70s? No distinctive cut off. I'd say things began to change 1977-78 because the economy soured, which brought an end to some of the partying free-spending attitude of the 1970s. But even when times were hard back then you could quit a job and find another one.
9. Was 1982 really that different from 1978? IMO, not really.
I think this was the most racially tolerant era in American history, Discos were fully integrated and everybody partied together. The famous jazz drummer Max Roach once remarked that because white music the accent was on the 1 and the 3 and black folk put the accent on the 2&4 Discos 1,2,3,4, accents meant there was something in the music for everyone. I think he was right.
11. 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)? I don't recall the economy roaring back. Things got better in my town gradually. People started buying new clothes and going on trips to Europe again.
I remember parents of friend's dads got laid off from time to time, but for the most part it didn't mean a thing to us kids.
12. Economically, politically, and culturally, how would you compare this time period in the US to the present?
I remember egging houses with Goldwater posters. MY family despised Republicans. I live in hard core pro-union household. The rich people in my neighborhood had union jobs on the docks, the post office or school teachers, don't remember many professionals an architect of two, best friends dad was a chemist for the Dept of Ag, my mom worked local college, a lot of career folks in the military, one as fighter pilot he as the coolest guy hands down.
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People also need to call each other all day long--I can recall going off to college, calling my parents once to tell them I arrived, and then not calling them again for 2 weeks (and that was considered normal and healthy).
If you got busy signal it meant that folks didn't want talk you waited and called back later and hoped they were finally off the phone. You wrote letters and mailed them!
I had uncles who lived with my grandparents until they were in their 50's or until they had their own families.
Everybody out of high school were either in going to college or into the military.
Pot was everywhere folks just lit up everywhere on the street in parks, everywhere! Then coke showed up and pot was much harder to find there was so much coke it was like every party was in the middle of a Peruvian blizzard.I was so high in the 70's I'm shocked that I can remember anything at all about the era.
Last edited by TheWiseWino; 05-09-2016 at 08:41 PM..
Appliance were white! Everything was white with a splash of chrome!
[u]Every piece of furniture was covered in plastic! [/b]Hanging out in the living room verboten! People with color TV's were very popular and it was big deal to be invited to watch some program at friends house with color TV.
7. 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?
No burgers were way better, at least as I recall. We went to place that specialized in burgers one place I remember made all their burgers on a big oak pit and use real oak logs real flame broiled!! Not gas grilled!
8. When did the 80s become distinct from the 70s? No distinctive cut off. I'd say things began to change 1977-78 because the economy soured, which brought an end to some of the partying free-spending attitude of the 1970s. But even when times were hard back then you could quit a job and find another one.
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Wasn't there a long phase of avocado-colored and mustard-colored appliances? When was that?
Plastic on the living room furniture was definitely regional. More of a Mid-Western thing, AFAIK. I never saw that on the West Coast. But kids weren't allowed to play in the living room. There was no "family room", either; kids played with their toys in their bedroom, unless there was a basement recreation room.
The 70's was the decade of the Arab oil embargo and "stagflation": stagnation combined with inflation. There was no free-wheeling spending. That may have been the 1960's. Unemployment was high, and the gov't had a program for awhile, of paying out incentives to businesses that would hire recent college grads for entry-level jobs, to cut down on unemployment.
We played outside, didn't have internet or anything. We had 3 or 4 channel TV, radio and records. We didn't worry about being kidnapped or abducted. Played from dawn to dusk because our mom's kicked us out and told us to go play and get some fresh air. Things weren't as disgusting as today, what was vulgar then is nothing in today's media and society. People were more friendly and trusting.
I'm curious as to what daily life was like during this time period (roughly 1975-1984).
Much better than it is now!!!!!
GOOD TV PROGRAMMING,GOOD MUSIC ON RADIO,etc.......... Good arcade games (In the early 80s)
IT WAS ALL RUINED IN THE 80s SLOWLY....... What we have left is voidish digital crap of what used to be beautiful and PEOPLE ARE SO BRAINWASHED they think its so good!!
T
On the downside mortality due to cancer and other diseases was a lot higher. Smoking, as mentioned, was still common, probably 35-40% of adults smoked then.
Smoking, such a huge contrast from the 1970's until today.
I went to high school in the 1970's and we actually had a Student Smoking Court, a sort of park with benches in the middle of the high school where we all went to smoke before school started and in between classes, often the teacher's would come out and smoke too, right there with us! When you went to a restaurant, you could smoke right there at your table while waiting for your food to come. If you wanted to eat "non-smoking", they directed you to some lonely room in the back of the restaurant. We used to smoke right at our desks at the bank I worked at - in between customers. This was right up until the later 1980's.
I'm not saying it was a good thing. Even then, we knew the dangers - we just didn't seem to care at the time! I quit 20 years ago.
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