New History - Can anyone give their experiences on what the 1970's were like?

Question

I know there was a lot of the 'drugs, sex, and rock and roll', but what about the LEGAL activities? I know roller disco was big, but were there a lot of cars or was everyone into walking/biking/taking public transport everywhere?

How big were drive in theatres, fishing, skateboarding, yoga, hanggliding, stuff like that? What did kids do for fun in the 1970's? What about schooling? Did a lot of kids want to go to college/university? was it open to both men and women?

Any help on education and activities during the 1970's would be appreciated, thanks! :)

Answer 1

As a kid of the 70's, I can try to tell you some of what was big. This was the decade of the 'Blockbuster.' "Jaws", "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", were towards the top of the list during this time. As for the drive-in, it was already on the way out by the 70's and the rise of the multi-plex was happening. Toys were very different. I remember Stretch Arm-Strong, Big Wheel and of course the Star Wars Action figures. I remember skateboards during this time. They were much narrower than they are now. 10 speed bicycles were very popular also. On TV, we watched "Happy Days", "The Love Boat", "Little House on the Prairie", "The Waltons", "All in the Family", and "MASH."

I am not sure about colleges during this time, because I was in elementary and middle school during the 70's, but it was open to all. I am pretty sure a lot did go to college during this time.

Answer 2

My experience during the 70's in the south was great. We mostly went the the roller rink to skate and drive inn's. There were a lot more drive inn's back then. An I enjoyed them a whole lot better than the walk-in's today. Yes there were a lot of cars back then. But mostly they were owned by the adults. An if you were in high school had a car. You bought and paid for it yourself. Today I have noticed in most case's the parents buy the car.
As far as college most kids did not even think about going to college. Back then a high school education was good enough. It was open to both men and women. For fun we use to ride our bike's, played sport's, and invented other games to play. During the 70's is when the video arcade's really took off. High school was really good. The two main difference's that I can tell is then you earned your grades and the violence. You either passed or failed. A teacher was not afraid to fail you. An it was the good old grading system with A-F for grades. The violence was no were nearly as bad. If you were going to fight you did it hand to hand. You did not need to worry about them bringing guns and knife's to school. I hope I have helped you. Have a Great Day!

Answer 3

Well I was attending Batavia (IL) Senior High School from 1970-1972 and Eastern Illinois University from 1972 to 1979 (BA and MSLS), so I can give you some of perspective on education at the time.

Legal activities in that period, hmm. Well, abortion on demand was legalized in 1973, though that didn't really have much impact that you'd notice in a college environment.

We went to movies, football games, basketball games that kind of thing in High School. We did demonstrate after the social worker hired by the School District was let go. I circulated a petition in 1972 to get leaf burning banned in Batavia, I was big into ecology in those days, and the city council banned it in 1974. I'm afraid I wasn't appreciative enough to the council member who pushed it through, my only question to him was why it took so long, ah, 19.

Most of the kids in my graduating class went on to either Community College or University. Most of our schools were coed in those days. Harvard and Yale had admitted women in the late 60s, and the rest of the country followed along, grudgingly sometimes, but followed nonetheless after Title 9.

My dorm was Taylor Hall, and it was coed, but the guys were in Taylor North and the girls in Taylor South (4 floors no elevators, as an ex girlfriend would say).

In Charleston, there was no public transport, as in Batavia, where the bus on the Aurora Elgin line ran infrequently, we (or I should say I, since I was too cheap to pay for a cab) would often walk to Geneva (3 miles along Rt. 31) rather than wait for a bus that didn't arrive. The RTA has taken care of that now thank goodness. Charleston had Yellow Cab, one of my first jobs was driving 6-Noon 7 days a week before I started Grad school in 1977. Amtrak ran into Mattoon (which doesn't rhyme with spittoon, by the way).

I saw Klute on a double bill with Jules Feiffer's Little Murders at the Charleston Drive in on Rt. 130, my first summer in Charleston, and Summer of 42 there a few weeks later.

Most people had cars, except freshmen and sophomores at EIU couldn't have cars on campus in those days. We also had to live in the dorms until we finished our Sophomore year.

My personal preference for music was Beatles, and later what we called Rockabilly. Pure Prairie League, Eagles, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and so forth. I have never liked disco. I used to tell a joke about the commercial where the girl comes in and says to another girl sitting at a desk "Hey, disco's making a comeback" that if I had been sitting at the desk, my response would have been to pick up the phone and say "Dr. Kevorkian, I'd like to make an appointment".

I got married in the 70s, divorced in the 80s.

That's about it.

Answer 4

I was born in the 70's, so have only a kid's perspective. There were a lot of cars -- US cities were built around the car, really, and suburbia started in the 1950's; things haven't changed that much. There was a rise in public transportation in the gas crunch in the early 70's though I barely remember that; but otherwise, people walked/biked/drove for transportation about as much as they do today in the US. The power jogger/walker (for exercise) didn't really rise until the 1980's, though, I believe.

I've never been to a drive-in theatre; their heyday was earlier, I believe, though some still existed and some still do. Normal movie theatres were popular; Star Wars came out in the 1970's and changed the face of merchandising. They really didn't have all the toys and branded items like sheets and toothbrushes and tie-ins with breakfast cereal and such before Star Wars did it. TV was of course popular, though stations SHUT OFF AT NIGHT -- at a certain time of night, they'd go off the air and you'd have just a test pattern on the screen until they started up again the next morning. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" came from the early 70's, while shows like "Mork and Mindy", "Happy Days", "Laverne and Shirley" and "Saturday Night Live" started in the late years of the decade. FOX didn't exist -- I remember thinking how daring they were to create a new public network in the 80's when it appeared. Home movies were reel-to-reel on projectors; I distantly remember our family checking out a few movie reels from the library to watch at home. Music was on cassette tapes and records, or the short-lived 8-track (while hugely popular at the time, I never knew someone who had one, actually).

Yoga? In those days if you heard the word, you'd think hippies. Kids would rollerskate (the kind with four wheels in a square; rollerblades, with the wheels in a line, were from the 80's) on the street or at roller rinks, or ice skate in rinks or outside in applicable weather in the north, and bicycle outside. I wasn't outdoorsy so didn't fish or hangglide (hanggliding is more an adult thing!)

The electronic video game era started in the 1970's -- Pong was released in the early 70's, and Space Invaders and Galaxia in the late 70's, joining pinball games to create the modern arcade, while the home based Atari 2600 brought video games into the house. Computers were starting to appear in the mainstream; in the early 70's, they were for hobbyists/enthusiasts willing to design and assemble their own from the component level, or for large businesses, but by the late 70's Tandy and Apple brought computing to the masses with the TRS-80 and Apple ][. Computers were not standardized until the 1980's with the creation of the IBM PC (thus, "PC Compatible") - until then, parts for one brand's computer would not work with another (unless you were very handy with a soldering iron and machine language).

Consumer electronics beyond computers were on the rise; radios were already widespread, but the 1970's were when FM radio became mainstream, and advances in technology made inexpensive personal radios, instead of family sets, increasingly common. Similarly, electronic toys were becoming popular; anyone with kids in the 70's would remember the iconic Speak and Spell learning toy, and recognize the distinctive sounds they made. (Ha! Many references online; an emulator at http://www.speaknspell.co.uk/speaknspell.html brings it back to life.) Perhaps the most famous sighting of this toy was in the movie "E.T." a few years later.

I knew from an early age that I would be expected to go to college, like my mother, and her mother before her. By the 1970's many, if not most, colleges were co-ed.

Answer 5

Drive- in theaters where on their way out by the mid 70s. The new concept of Paramedics was given a lot of attention. Couples living together was becoming popular. Political correctness was just getting a start. Computer programming was a very popular college major. Yes, drugs were more acceptable, but no less dangerous. I grew up in Phoenix, and I'd say 7 out of 10 high school grads in my class of 260 went on to either complete, or at least start college. Oh, and CB radios were popular. Rarely did someone's parents buy them a car. So only about one third of high school students drove to school. Had to have a job to buy one.

Answer 6

It was a time of some revolution, but what I remember is being able to vote at age 18. That was really something special. Also, the first time that girls were allowed to wear slacks (not blue jeans) to school (we still had a strict dress code).

In 1979, when my son was born, I was in the Marine Corps stationed in S. Ca, and he had to stay in the hospital a few extra days, I couldn't get enough gas to even go visit him! it was awful! I had to convince the hospital staff (it was just jaundice) that I could take him to the local clinic for testing so I could bring him home.

Answer 7

i think the full pre 1970 component became into all media hype. I mean i will undergo in innovations stuff like having to substantiate to alter the date I wrote in my workout e book in college from 1969 to 1970 yet that basically seems a splash to handy to me. i think of that even then the entire pre 1970 conspiracy became into underway.

Answer 8

the biggest impact what I remember was decimation and the introduction of the metric system which still is felt today with many imperial measurements still in common use,