1975

In late summer of 1975, I turned eight years old. Here are some things that were different, and a few things that were the same.

Note: I'm not talking about what existed somewhere in 1975, but what was part of the world of ordinary Americans.

• There were ashtrays everywhere, and in most public places you were likely to breathe some cigarette smoke.
• "Regular" gasoline meant it had lead in it.
• There were no video games except pong. Arcades were mostly pinball.
• There were no digital watches. And wind-up watches were cheap.
• Phones had disks with holes, not number pads. Long distance calls sounded scratchy and were expensive. There were no cordless phones, and cell phones were in the same category as flying cars.
• Computers were giant things in research institutions.
• If you wanted to look up some fact, you might find it in home encyclopedias or otherwise you had to go physically to the library.
• Word processors were still ten years away. You either hand-wrote it or you used a typewriter.
• Photocopiers were rare and used weird plastic paper. You could make one or two copies of something by using carbon paper while you typed it. Any more and you needed a printing press or a ditto machine, which made terrible copies in smelly purple ink.
• To fly on an airplane, you just had to walk through a metal detector, and if someone was there to meet you or say goodbye, they could go all the way to the gate without a ticket.
• If a flight was longer than a couple hours, you got a free meal, sometimes two, and it wasn't bad.
• Supermarkets had automatic doors that swung open when you stepped on a pressure pad. Everywhere else you had to push the door. Cashiers punched in all the prices by hand, but it was only a little bit slower. You paid by cash or check.
• There were no ATM's. To get cash out of your account, you went to a bank teller, and there was no fee.
• Only rich people had credit cards. If you had debts, a credit card was harder to get.
• Only rich people invested in stocks. Middle class people were content with savings accounts.
• Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or worked your way through, which was realistic.
• There was no food delivery. Even supermarkets had much less pre-made food, so people had to at least try to cook.
• There was no portable way to listen to music except transistor radios. Headphones were giant things you used in the basement to listen to Pink Floyd.
• Radio stations played a great variety of really good new music. There were actual humans who would physically put records on, and decided themselves what to play.
• CD's were still years away. Recorded music was a little scratchy, but sounded better because engineers didn't kill dynamic range to make it louder.
• Only a few people had cable TV. Most everyone had four or five channels that came through an antenna.
• Fictional TV was much worse than it is now, and TV news was much better.
• There were no DVD's or even VCR's -- movies could only be seen in theaters, or older movies on TV.
• No one thought to make a sequel to a movie just because it made a lot of money.
• If you really liked a movie, you would see it two times.
• George Lucas, who would later change all that, was still a good director, having just made American Graffiti.
• No high-budget movie had ever been based on a comic book.
• There were no "play dates". You'd go over to another kid's house and ask if they were home.
• When kids played, we would actually run around outside and make stuff up and do whatever we wanted.
• Playground equipment was more interesting, and there was some risk of getting hurt on it, so we had to take some responsibility for our own safety, and it was more fun.
• The work week was five hours shorter. You can still see this in the old phrase "nine to five." People actually did work nine to five, with a paid hour for lunch. Now it's usually 8-5, with lunch unpaid.
• Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.
• It was popularly believed that Japanese products were junk. Almost nothing was made in China.
• Most Americans had never heard of espresso. Coffee was watery and cheap. So was beer.
  
  
• A lot of people thought the end of the world was near.
• Everybody was afraid of "crime" (illegal acts by people of lower social class) and "terrorism" (political violence outside a state monopoly).
• Doomsayers were worried about what they called the "greenhouse effect". They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have ecological disasters.
• Large scale fusion power was only a few decades away.
• Wherever you lived, the fields and woods on the edge of town were being turned into ugly developments.

[original draft January 1, 2007]