Livin Large in the Seventies

 

I really miss the 70’s

At least the parts I remember

 

In 1970, I turned 15. The war in Vietnam was in all the news. Nixon sent troops into Cambodia. The Beatles released their “Let it Be” album which was also their death knoll. The Mod Squad was one of the top shows on TV. The times, they were a changing. I was on my way as well, hanging out at Ronnie B’s house, painting the walls in the basement black and listening to the Rolling Stones with a state of the art HI-FI Stereo system. Man, we had it all. It was a simpler life in some respects but we knew somehow that the era ahead would be unlike any the world had ever witnessed.  Yes, we were young, but somehow we knew.

 

The Music

 

While there was still some bleed thru from the sixties, the lyrics had seemingly evolved to a higher level the first half of the seventies. By the end of the decade, that evolution faded and the music degraded.  Perhaps it was Woodstock which opened a door to a paradigm shift at the beginning. I also believe that the drugs that were prevalent at the start of the seventies (Pot, speed, psychedelics and unfortunately, heroin) played a major role in the music and by the end of the decade; musicians seemed to be more involved with recreational usage of cocaine and PCP. Now I have no scientific data to support my theory but the former groups of drugs tended to mellow users out and cause them to examine life, such as it was. The latter group (coke etc…) was more mind numbing in nature and tended to prevent any type of deep thinking adventure. Mind you, these are personal observations made during a period of intense testing. I was in the Beatles camp but many of my friends were solidly locked in with the Stones. You could like both but it seemed to me you could only be aligned with one or the other. Country music was not even a consideration. Disco, towards the end was tolerated only because that’s where the female of the species would be found.

 

I grew up in a working class, Philadelphia neighborhood. In the seventies, our priorities were sports, work and music in that order. It was a time when fights were handled man to man, weapons were fists. We had tired of wars. I lost more friends to car accidents and drugs then to Vietnam. We lived for the day, not afraid of anything but missing the next big party. And damn, did we party. Money was never and issue, at least it wasn’t for my crowd. Those that had always covered those that had not. No IOU’s necessary. Our plans for the future never seemed to look farther than a month ahead.  Hell, you can only fit so much fun into a day and we crammed it full.

 

The People

Where I grew up, it was more about the neighborhood than anything else. In the seventies, that seemed to be magnified by ten. There were no age or sex limits. We all gathered at the local rec center and split from there into sub groups. In 1970, I was one of the second groups of baby boomers to mark our entry into teen age. Our predecessors had blazed that trail in the sixties and we were destined to refine the passage. They had Woodstock to close out their decade and that would be the fuel that drove us. On an average night, our numbers could average close to one hundred with age spans running from 13 to 21. Likewise, our antics could run the full spectrum, mostly harmless but in some cases, life altering. I am 53 now, not old but not young anymore. Many of my comrades went away too early.  Death came from a variety of accidents, diseases and self inflicted wounds. I have traveled the US extensively and rarely found an area comparable to that which I grew up in. We live fast, in some cases, died young and left a good looking corpse. But in retrospect, most led lives fuller than some who lived to be octogenarians. We seemed to sense that life was meant to be spent and not saved for the future. Right or wrong, that’s how it worked. 

 

The Antics

I once woke up in Harlem, not knowing how the hell I got there. No sense of fear, which considering I was a 16 year old white boy from Philly, says a lot for my state of mind. Turned out I had decided to take a nap in one of my friends cars and they decided it would be impolite to wake me. Staying out all night was not uncommon, our parents knew that there was safety in numbers and it wasn’t uncommon for any of us to crash at someone else’s place. That’s not to say our parents were neglectful, but times were different. We would walk across the Delaware River on a train bridge often camping out for days at a time. Drinking age in NJ was 18 back then and it was easy to get served when you were 16 or so.

 

Once we became mobile, the sky was the limit. We split into smaller groups and traveled wherever and whenever we could. We rented seasonal homes in the Pocono Mountains and the JerseyShore. Primary groups of eight guys which would swell to 20 on weekends. We all worked, some harder than others and we played the same way.  I would tell stories of those times but I need to check on statutes of limitations first. And the catalyst was the era itself. For certain, we had learned from prior generations and put our own stamp of authenticity on this decade.

 

As time passed, priorities shifted. We matured like fine wine. There came a point where the decade of “we” became the era of “us”. I decided that driving a truck wasn’t my primary calling and enrolled in college. Some moved to the suburbs, some even farther. We still get together, maybe not in the numbers that we once had but together. And we raise a glass to the times that have passed and those who went with them. Our families have grown up and we have more time now. The only part that is really missing seems to be the sense of freedom that we had in the seventies. Man, I really miss those days.