I wrote a list of 100 things on my old blog but decided to update the list and reduce it to 50 facts that would have been hard to believe.

If someone from 2025 had traveled back to 1977 and sat me down to tell me these 50 things I most likely would not have believed a word they said. There are maybe a couple of things on this list that probably would have made since at some point but some of these would have blown my mind.

Before you read this list you have to put yourself in the mindset that you are living in the 1970s and have no idea about the future. Have fun!

1.) Saturday morning cartoons have been eliminated from network TV channels.
2.) Dodgeball becomes a popular movie but is rarely played in schools.
3.) TV’s equipped with remote controls becomes standard, dials all but disappear.
4.) Old faded blue jeans with holes are now vogue and bring top dollar.
5.) Bruce Jenner, “World’s Greatest Athlete”, becomes a woman.
6.) Painting racing numbers on turtles is animal cruelty.
7.) Shag carpet, yellow kitchens and pink bathrooms lowering the value of homes.
8.) Members of KISS play a concert and sit down for interview with no makeup.
9.) Kids are buying water in a bottle, avoiding garden hoses and drinking fountains.
10.) Elvis’s daughter marries the singer of The Jackson 5.
11.) Old rusty metal lunch boxes on sale for $100 without a thermos.
12.) Photographs are being developed in a split second but are never printed.
13.) Parents track kids every move and text when dinner is ready.
14.) People work, get paid, deposit money, buy things but never have cash.
15.) Kids that took computer class are now tech billionaires.
16.) Harvest Gold and Avocado Green kitchens have been replaced by White and Black.
17.) Kid performs Evel Knievel style jumps upside down while spinning backwards.
18.) People carry phones in their back pockets, phone cords no longer exist.
19.) Bill Cosby from Fat Albert was sent to prison for sexual assault.
20.) Kids no longer play “Cowboys and Native Americans”.
21.) Sonny and Cher’s daughter officially becomes a boy.
22.) There is always a human living in space, but man hasn’t walked on the moon since 1972.
23.) The majority of modern TV’s are hung on the wall.
24.) A drop of DNA tells you how many unknown siblings you really have.
25.) While letters can take days to deliver, packages are now delivered overnight.
26.) Speed limits on highways in some states range from 75 to 80 mph.
27.) People don’t smoke in schools, restaurants or on airplanes.
28.) You have to be searched and take your shoes off to board an airplane.
29.) Long distance calls are unlimited and pay phones cannot be found.
30.) The predicted “global cooling” and “imminent” ice age did not happen.
31.) OJ Simpson was accused of murder in the trial of the century.
32.) Kids are required by law to wear seat belts in the back seat of a car.
33.) On average, people spend 42% of their waking hours looking at a phone screen.
34.) 70s bands still play concerts but have no original members.
35.) Records, 8-Tracks and cassettes all disappeared. Only records have returned.
36.) You can buy weed in many states on almost every corner legally.
37.) TV’s have hundreds of channels but there’s sometimes nothing to watch.
38.) The World Trade Center Twin Towers were destroyed by commercial airplanes.
39.) American Bandstand is gone so you watch people dance on your smart phone.
40.) Cars don’t fly but they drive and park themselves and run on batteries.
41.) Danny Bonaduce got buff and started beating people up.
42.) A website on the Internet replaced every encyclopedia and dictionary on earth.
43.) You can get fast food delivered to your house… by a flying drone.
44.) Dick Tracy’s watch actually became a real device.
45.) Devices tell you exactly where to drive to find a location.
46.) Teenagers make millions of dollars creating dancing videos.
47.) Blockbuster movie releases can now be watched on your phone or at home.
48.) You can track the exact location of an approaching storm on your phone.
49.) People sit in long lines in their cars waiting on cups of $6 coffee.
50.) A rover was landed on Mars and it sends continuous photos back to earth.

These are the things I never would have predicted back in the 70′s. Makes you wonder what 50 things will happen in the next 30 years that we’d never believe!

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At 13 years of age I had a huge crush on Farrah Fawcett Majors due to Charlie’s Angels coming out earlier that year. In December of 1976 I turned 14 years old and just 5 days later I celebrated Christmas. I don’t remember if I asked for the Farrah poster or if my mom just purchased it because she knew I was a big fan.

Early Christmas morning I unrolled that poster and my mom snapped the photo. The poster ended up on my Charlies Angels wall that was filled with other pictures of Farrah, Kate and Jaclyn. On opposing walls in my room there was a black light poster as well as posters of Linda Ronstadt, Cheryl Tiegs, Cheryl Ladd and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that I was able to see the Christmas photos because they had to be sent off to be developed. At the time the photo didn’t seem to mean much or have any significance. But that one snapshot had captured a moment of happiness for many teenage boys in the 70s.

Fast forward to the 1990s when blogging became very popular online. I started a website under my own name at CurtisTucker.com and decided upon a 70’s dad blog theme. I began to scour everything I had for memories of the 1970s.

It was at this point that I ran across the photo again. The original photo from the film processor is only about 3 inches wide by 2 inches tall. It’s not a very big photo at all. I scanned the photo into a computer and added a short story about how the photo showed me holding the iconic Farrah poster in the 70s.

At the time, I was pretty good at SEO and was able to add the right tags and title on the photo for it to rank high in Google images for Farrah Fawcett poster searches. I toyed with the blog for several years but was never able to spend much time making it grow.

Fast forward again to June of 2009. That month I had gone to Cancun, Mexico and was enjoying a vacation when news came on the TV that Farrah had died. I was instantly heart broken. Farrah Fawcett had passed away at the age of 62 due to cancer.

At the time, all of my businesses were online and I was able to keep an eye on them from my computer. Later that day I noticed that my CurtisTucker.com website was no longer online. I did a quick investigation and discovered that all of the websites bandwidth had been used.

After scratching my head for a while I realized that people were searching for photos of Farrah Fawcett to go along with stories they were writing. Dozens of people had started linking to that photo causing the loss of my bandwidth. It wasn’t long before I had to add more bandwidth just to keep the website online.

A couple of days after Farrah’s death, CNN.com contacted me and asked if they could use the photo in a story and interview me for the article. I agreed and the photo was soon viewed by millions of people worldwide. HERE is the link to that CNN story.

Within the next few weeks I received requests for the photo to be used in magazines, blogs, books and even in a museum. The iconic photo has been posted and shared enough online that even when I took the website offline for a short period of time it could still be found.

2019 marks the 10 year anniversary of Farrah’s death. Earlier in the year I received a request from CNN again to use the photo in a 4 part docuseries they were producing called “American Style.” Part of the series included Farrah Fawcett along with her famous poster. They used the photo in her segment of the show.

Soon after the CNN show I was contacted by ABC News. They were putting together a 2 hour prime time special called “This Is Farrah Fawcett” and they wanted to include the photo. The show airs on Thursday, May 23, 2019 on ABC at 7:00pm CST.

Once again you’ll be able to see a younger me, with hair, holding that iconic Farrah poster. An image of her that will forever be locked in the memory of her fans and a photo of me that will forever hold the innocence and youth of growing up in the 1970’s, the greatest decade known to man.

The iconic photo taken on Christmas Day in 1976.

A second photo taken in January 1977.

A portion of the story on CNN.com in 2009.
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A clip from the CNN docuseries called “American Style.”
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A clip from the ABC News spcial called “This is Farrah Fawcett.”
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Listen to “Farrah Fawcett & 70’s Pinup Posters” on Spreaker.
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Listen to Curtis Tucker and Todd Wheeler talk about the Farrah Fawcett poster on The 70’s Buzz Podcast.
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The post My Iconic Farrah Fawcett Poster Photo appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

As we got into junior high they built a twin theater out west that was near a Pizza Inn and local arcade. This is where we started seeing movies and meeting girls afterwards which made them much more memorable. Around 1977 we were able to see movies on the weekend at night without our parents which gave us that sense of independence.

Seeing a good movie in the 70s had a pretty long lasting impression on me as a young buckaroo. This is my Top 20 list of those movies that left really great memories. These are not the best movies from the 1970s, but these are my favorites and the ones that were released at memorable moments in my life. I actually saw these first 10 films at a movie theater in the 70s so all of these were before college.

You will notice two huge movies left completely off of both lists. These movies almost always rank at the top of the best films of the 1970s. They are The Godfather and The Godfather II. For some weird reason I never saw either movie back in the day. I actually didn’t see either movie until I was in my fifties. I likes the movies but still would not put them in my top 20.

Enjoy the list and let me know which ones left lasting impressions on you. These are in no particular order.

1.) Close Encounters of the Third Kind – 1977 – This movie was the coolest. I still watch it every time it comes on. I think this was the first movie we went to see as young junior high students on the weekend at night without a parent along and then got to hang out afterwards. And we didn’t ride bikes to see it.

2.) Jaws – 1975 – The best suspense movie of the decade. If only every kid could see this at the movie theater as their first thriller movie. Everyone I knew stopped hanging their arms and legs off the side of the bed after seeing this one. I think we rode our bikes to the downtown movie theater to watch this one without parents but it was during the day.

3.) Star Wars – 1977 – Wow! Who would have thought you could do that on a movie screen. Special effects before there were special effects. This was a movie you HAD to see at the theater. I did really like this movie but never bought into all of the newer movies and series.

4.) Animal House – 1978 – Oh my gosh! The best boob movie for any young man in the 70′s. Most likely the funniest movie of the decade. I can still quote at least half of this fraternity flick.

5.) Saturday Night Fever – 1977 – Can you say disco? The songs alone were enough to remember for a lifetime. Loved the dancing, not so much the acting. This movie is a huge part of pop culture especially 70s pop culture.

6.) The Poseidon Adventure – 1972 – An awesome adventure movie! Non-stop action. This movie was way cool in the 70s and holds up today. A great story that was very unique with an awesome cast!

7.) Rocky – 1976 – Yo. Gonna fly now. A great underdog story from the 70s. I liked this one so much I bought the 45 record of the theme song. I think we rode our bikes to see this one in downtown Enid during the day.

8.) The Goodbye Girl – 1977 – I thought Richard Dreyfuss was a great actor. This was a fun movie and I really like the theme song. I think this was my first chick flick.

9.) The Warriors – 1979 – If you saw this movie and didn’t want to go out and start a fight you just weren’t normal. The best gang movie of all time. Great soundtrack. This was one of those movies our entire group of friends went to see together.

10.) Phantasm – 1979 – A little known horror flick that was ahead of its time. This movie had a cult following and that cult was my buddies and I. There were several sequels released later but none ever made as much of an impression. This movie left a lasting impression on us and left us very spooked when we left the theater. I remember being in the restroom afterwards checking behind me to make sure nobody was there.

I decided to add another 10 films to my favorites list. This group of movies is different in the fact that many of these I saw these for the first time on video, TV or some other venue rather than in a movie theater.

11. Halloween – 1978 – Of course the best Halloween movie of all time. This one I try to watch at least once every Halloween. I distinctly remember seeing Halloween for the first time at junior college. They were showing it in the library and I went by myself to see if I could meet some new people. It was a great film to see in a college library!

12.) Smokey and the Bandit – 1977 – Trans Ams and CB radios! Two of the coolest things you could want as a teenager. Sally Fields wasn’t bad either. I did see this film in in the theater. As much as I loved it I never had a desire to buy a Trans Am.

13.) One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest – 1975 – I kinda remember this movie being available to watch but I would never sit down to watch it because I thought I wouldn’t be interested in it. Boy was I wrong. I loved Jack Nicholson and all of the actors in this film.

14.) Alien – 1979 – Crazy movie. This one was a little freaky but one of the best sci-fi movies ever. This was our Jaws in Space!

15.) MASH – 1970 – I was a huge MASH TV show fan before I saw this movie. I am a fan of the movie but had already connected with the actors on television so I’ve never considered this better than the show.

16.) American Graffiti – 1973 – another Richard Dreyfuss favorite. I really enjoyed things form the 50s while growing up in the 70s. This movie is one reason I was such a huge Happy Days fan.

17.) Dog Day Afternoon – 1975 – Al Pacino sucked me in on this one. I remember catching this randomly on video or TV and at the end wondering why nobody had ever told me about this movie.

18.) Young Frankenstein – 1974 – We laughed until we cried watching this. I’m not sure where I saw this first but because it was 1974 I’m thinking it was on video.

19.) King Kong– 1976 – I remember going to this movie theater to see this thinking to myself that I was going to love it. And I did! I was a huge fan of the old black and white monster movies that came on TV on Saturday’s. I couldn’t wait to see this updated version of King Kong. It did not disappoint.

20.) Breaking Away – 1979 – This was a great feel good flick. I think I rented this on video and have now watched it several times. One of those movies that reminds me of me and my friends.

That’s my list! Lots of reasons these were my favorites but mainly because they were at a good point in my life or really struck a cord with me. Hope you enjoyed!

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Throughout the 1970s we mainly lived in three rent houses in the same neighborhood. My sister and I were 70s latchkey kids. The first house was directly across the street from my great-grandmother when we were younger. I’m sure it was so she could keep an eye on us after school. The second one was four blocks away but closer to our school as we got older. That’s the house this post is about. Four years later we moved to another rental just three blocks back the other direction.

This is the yellow rent house we lived in from about 1974 to 1978. That would have been from sixth grade through ninth grade covering my entire junior high years. I created dozens of great childhood memories while living in this two story home. It’s where I was living when I met my best friend Stayton. It made me one of the five Broadway boys which all lived on W. Broadway.

This house was located one block west of my elementary school on W. Broadway. Stayton lived one block east of the elementary school. Further east the street was filled with the other kids in our neighborhood gang. I was the furthest away from everyone so we did not spend a huge amount of time at my house as a group.

The house had two stories, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Being the youngest, I don’t remember how I ended up with the entire upstairs to myself but I did. My sister had a regular sized bedroom downstairs next to the main bathroom. The house sat on a pretty busy corner so there were lots of cars driving by on both streets.

The upstairs was large with almost the same square footage as the main floor. There was a creaky set of wooden stairs that took you up into the middle of a large playroom. The stair entrance had a white handrail that went around three sides at the top to keep people from falling in. So you could walk completely around the stairway entrance once upstairs.

The upper floor was divided into a large play area with the stairway towards one side of the room, a bathroom with an old white bathtub, sink and toilet, and a bedroom with a large walk-in closet. My bedroom was on the east side of the house and had a single window in a nook that looked out over the neighborhood towards our elementary school.

There was a large gas heater in the big room that heated the upstairs. For much of the time that we lived there I had a ping pong table setup in that room and that’s primarily what it was used for. I believe there might have also been an old couch up there. From time to time I would invite kids from our sixth grade class over and we’d hang in that room. The upstairs had a wooden floor and I think we had one of those 70s oval rugs in the big room.

My bedroom had an old piece of carpet in it that covered most of the floor. It was a basic square room with that one nook in the corner. When I first moved in I put up a bunk bed and the head of the bed fit perfectly into that nook. I was able to lay in bed and look out the window which I did for hours and hours. I could see my friends riding down the street on their bikes when they came over. In the summer I slept with the window wide open and had a nice breeze on me all night. The upstairs had no air conditioning.

On the south side of the bedroom was a door into a walk-in closet. The closet was in a weird part of the roof so it had a low ceiling that had a thin flat area in the middle with slanted areas on either side. At the end of the closet really low towards the floor were two odd shaped windows that looked like those in the Amityville Horror house. From the outside there was a window on each side of the chimney. I could open the windows and the little screens they had on them.

The bathroom had a tile floor and a small gas heater. All of the fixtures were white and very dated looking. Because there was a bath only I took my showers in the downstairs bathroom but got ready upstairs. Outside of the bathroom was a small space that went to the the north side of the house. There was a window that led onto the roof over the back porch and easy access to the top of the entire house. Standing on back porch area you could look over the garage and see into the backyard.

A couple of times we would take a Wham-O Frisbee on the roof with us. The valley on the roof in front led to an easy slope over my moms art room on the east side. We would sit on the Frisbee at the top of the house and slide down to that valley which would take us to the lower part of the roof. Just as we would get to an edge we would put our feet down and stop ourselves from falling to the ground.

The house had a two car garage with some really bad sliding doors that barely worked. Without a garage door opener my mom rarely parked her car inside. There were a few times that Stayton and I would perform our magic act in that garage and charge neighborhood kids a quarter to watch. I even had a large bird cage in my bedroom and had two turtle doves that we were going to use in the dove pan trick. I never was able to get it to work well enough to use in an actual performance.

I also remember using the garage as my skateboard track going around and around pretending I was playing Rollerball. I could slide both doors to the middle and leave enough space on each side that I could even skateboard out of the garage and use part of the driveway and street. Our house faced south towards W. Broadway but the garage faced east onto N. Johnson. Stayton and I did lots of skateboarding on Johnson and even filmed ourselves with my mom’s 8mm movie camera.

The backyard had an old wooden picket fence around it. In the very back of the yard was a group of trees and bushes that had grown up against the fence. We dug out an area in the bushes and made an in ground fort that was almost camouflaged by the trees. We spent countless hours back there with G.I. Joes, plastic army men, horny toads, turtles and my wrist rocket.

Stayton and I got in a bit of trouble one time shooting little berry looking things at cars as they drove by on Johnson St. We were using my wrist rocket and actually hit someone in their car as they were driving by. Two guys walked up to our fort and asked what we were doing. We sheepishly told them we weren’t doing anything and they told us that we had hit the guy on the passenger side because he had his window down. They weren’t out to get us but wanted to warn us that the next set of characters might not be as easy going.

I had the privilege of getting to mow the lawn. I think at one time we had an electric mower which was high tech for the 70s. Unfortunately it was not battery powered but cord powered so I had to string two long extension cords together just to cover the entire yard. One summer I left the letter T uncut in the backyard for several weeks hoping the Air Force pilots could see it when they flew over. My sister and her friends spent many summer afternoons in the backyard smothered in baby oil sitting in lounge chairs. They even put reflective mirrors around their faces just to bake them even more.

My favorite part of the entire house was my walk-in closet. It was a space that I could let my imagination run wild. One of the first big things I used it for was to build a city surrounding my HO scale train set. My uncle Richard helped me take two wood panels for walls and connect them to make the base. We then ran the train track around the platform and then we built a paper mache mountain with a tunnel going through it. I added tiny gravel, trees, roads, buildings, signs and cars. I can’t believe we never took a photo of our creation.

I then removed the train set and built a miniature amusement park. The main ride I created was a roller coaster made out of Hot Wheels track. I would add multiple racing tracks together to make a huge roller coaster that spanned the entire closet. The roller coaster cars were marbles! I spent so much time playing with marbles. They could be roller coaster cars, cowboys and Indians or just opposing armies. I still have my large collection of vintage marbles kept in a bubble gum machine.

I built marble roller coasters all over my upstairs. The more race car track I could find the longer my coasters would get. A marble dropping in on a track that starts high go can for a very long time. The best part of my coaster was the double lane start using the orange Hot Wheels track that plunged down into the side by side loops! Both tracks started out from a plunge into a loop and then the tracks would merge using some wide black race car track with a really high bank. It was hours of fun.

I pulled some of my best kid pranks while living in that house. It’s where we would unscrew the talking piece to my sisters rotary phone and take out the voice thing so nobody could hear her when they called. We hid under her bed many times eavesdropping in on her conversations with her friends. The top of the stairs was where I peed on Connie with a fake clay ding dong squeezing water out of it with my arm pit. One time we hung out on the roof over the back porch so we could spy on Connie’s party in the backyard.

This was the house I was living in during the Christmas of 1976 when I received my Farrah Fawcett poster! I was 14 years old and unrolled the poster when my mom snapped a photo of me. When I started blogging about the 70s I posted that pic on my website. When Farrah died that photo of a kid unrolling her posted became very famous. It was used on CNN.com and many other websites at the time. It was been included in most Farrah documentaries since her death and is in few books about Farrah. With the popularity of 70s groups on Facebook the photo has also become a popular meme that gets posted somewhere almost weekly.

I was in this house when my moms best friends called to tell me to tell her that Elvis had died. This was where I ate Zingers and watched the Banana Splits after school almost every day. I got my first Kalamazoo electric guitar while living here and ordered 11 vinyl records from Columbia House for only a penny. Stayton and I tried to roll the states largest snowball in the front yard one year for a radio contest. It was huge and didn’t melt for weeks.

And now that it has been well over 40 years since I’ve lived there I can divulge that we spent many weekends throwing eggs and water balloons at cars from the bushes in the front yard as they drove down W. Broadway. Fitzsimmons convenience store was just behind our house across the railroad track and we would buy a dozen eggs each Friday and Saturday night. This was the same store that I stopped at in the mornings to buy 2 cent Jolly Ranchers which I resold at junior high school for a nickle. This was the beginning of my entrepreneurial career.

Many of the guys would spend the night at this house and we would stay up late watching Saturday Night Live, Monte Python and The Goodies. We also recorded hours of ourselves on cassette tape acting goofy making up our own shows. We also used the cassette recorder to tape the Top 40 hits and I would use it to record Dr. Demento songs on Sunday night. There were many nights we would build blanket forts in my bedroom or in the walk-in closet. I would string up C9 Christmas bulbs in the closet to give it an awesome glow and we’d usually have a box fan somewhere in the fort.

1902 W. Broadway wasn’t that special as far as a rental house was concerned but it sure has a million memories that were created within its walls. I think of the good times I had with my family and my friends while growing up there. It’s nice living in town and purposely driving by just so I can take a trip down memory lane.

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I’ve seen myself and my friends being somewhat characterized in many movies over the years. Most of these movies are centered around a group of boys going on adventures and coming of age. I’ve become a big fan of this genre and would love to write my own book/movie about our experiences one day.

I originally created my list of coming of age movies back in May of 2009. My first list only contained ten movies. Over the years I kept watching more and more films that I thought should be on the list. In May of 2011 I updated the list of movies by adding an additional 15 films. This blog went offline for a few years and now it’s back with the list of The Best Coming Of Age Movies Ever!

Coming of age movies remind me so much of being twelve and growing up in the 1970′s. My dream story would be to take the characters from my neighborhood and put them in a story that combines “Stand By Me”, “The Goonies” and “Lost Boys”.

Our neighborhood gang spent almost every day together in the summer and would skip dinner just so we could play late into the night. We were always outside running around town playing games and tricking neighbors non-stop. We even invented a game that we’d play well past the time the street lights would come on.

The movies listed below are the closest examples of the good times we had as youngsters. I know there are many more coming of age movies but these top my list and have bits and pieces that remind me of days gone by. They are in no particular order. Enjoy and if you’ve missed any of these, they would make great weekend rentals.

This blog post was updated in February 2022 and again in July of 2022. There are many newer movies that could be added to the list and I will try to see as many as possible. I have recently added Super 8.

My Original Top 10 Coming of Age Movies (2009)

1. Stand By Me (1986)
four boys set off on a journey to see a dead body
2. The Goonies (1985)
a group of young misfits discover a map and set out to find a pirate’s treasure
3. Now and Then (1995)
Four childhood friends reminisce about their younger years when they were 12
4. Pretty in Pink (1986)
a true love story of the teenage heart about the divide between rich and poor
5. Dead Poet’s Society (1989)
set in ’59, a teacher dares to teach a group of boys life lessons not found in textbooks
6. St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)
a group of friends, just out of college, struggle with adulthood
7. October Sky (1999)
a 1950s boy from a small town overcomes challenges to find fulfillment in exploring science
8. Breakfast Club (1985)
five high school students meet in detention and find they have more in common than they thought
9. My Girl (1991)
a young girl nearing her teens finds her life turning upside down when she finds an unlikely friend
10. American Graffiti (1973)
a couple of high school grads spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies

This list had gotten so popular in 2010 so I decided to add another 10 movies. If you have not seen the first 10 watch those first and then check these out. Again these are in no particular order.

11. Sixteen Candles (1984)
a 16-year-old has a crush on the most popular boy, and the geekiest boy has a crush on her
12. The Sandlot (1993)
a group of scrappy kids playing America’s greatest pastime, baseball, set in 1960s
13. The Outsiders (1983)
two bitter groups of teenagers — rich vs. underprivileged — and their territorial battles
14. Almost Famous (2000)
a high-school boy in the 70s travels with a rock band to write a story for Rolling Stone
15. Dirty Dancing (1987)
summer of ’63 at a country club where a young girl falls for an older dance instructor
16. Breaking Away (1979)
a working-class teen obsessed with cycling searches for life goals with his friends
17. School Ties (1992)
in the 50s, a star-quarterback at an elite preparatory school but must conceal he is Jewish
18. Summer of ’42 (1971)
a teenage boy has an interlude with an older woman during a summer trip
19. That’s What I Am (2011)
set in 65, a 13-year-old paperboy is paired up with a geek on a project
20. The Man in the Moon (1991)
set in the 50s as a 14-year-old girl gets her first difficult lesson in love

Okay, I’ve had to add even more after seeing a few more movies the second and third time around.

21. 13 Going On 30 (2004)
a rom-com about a 13-year-old girl that wants to grow up too quickly
22. My Dog Skip (2000)
a tale of a shy boy and his dog in a small, sleepy Southern town
23. White Squall (1996)
in 1960, a group of prep school boys boards an old-fashioned sailing ship
24. Second Hand Lions (2003)
a story of a shy, young boy sent to spend the summer with his wealthy, eccentric uncles
25. Flipped (2010)
a Rob Reiner film about two eighth-graders having feelings for each other
26. Super 8 (2011)
set in 1979, a boy and his friends save the city from an alien

The post The Best Coming of Age Movies Ever appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

I also remember my mom recording the Elvis comeback special in 1968. I was six years old and my dad was still living with us. We lived on the Clinton-Sherman Air Force base near Burns Flat, Oklahoma. My mom used a reel-to-reel recorder with the microphone up to the TV.

Elvis died on August 16, 1977 while we were living in a rent house on W. Broadway in Enid, Oklahoma. My mom’s best friend Dottie called to tell my mom that Elvis had passed. My mom wasn’t home at the time so I got the message, this was before answering machines were in every home. I don’t think I really thought that much of it at the time because Elvis had faded from the spotlight for us kids.

Later in life, as an adult, I made a trek to Graceland on my way to the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Going to Memphis was a little out of the way but I thought it would be pretty cool to go see the Elvis mansion. In your mind you have visions of a huge place surrounded by all kinds of cool things. Upon arriving I was surprised to find that the mansion wasn’t all that big and it sat in a very busy, populated area.

There was a tourist area with restaurant and gift shop set up across the street. That’s where you purchased tickets to board a small bus which took you through the Graceland gates and dropped you off at the front of Graceland. There are multiple tours going on and each one has a very strict tour guide.

Much of the interior of the home is blocked off and protected by ropes. You are taken from room to room but cannot get near the furnishings. The guide explains what is in each room which is fun to see because they’ve left all of the rooms exactly like they were when Elvis died in 1977. It’s like a very 70s time capsule.

For some reason during the tour I felt the need to grab a tiny memento of the King. On the tour there were signs posted about not touching anything and cameras were watching our every step. It wasn’t like I could just nab a book or something from his library. I would have taken a light bulb from a lamp if I could have reached one. Everything that could be taken was kept pretty much out of arms reach.

As the tour began to wind down my urge to find a souvenir was almost out of control. I knew my chances were running out and I would have to leave without a part of Elvis lore and history. That’s about the time I saw a glimmer of hope. Something caught my eye that would save the day.

What I saw was the grooviest, greenest, lushest shag carpet I had ever laid eyes on! It was like there was a mile of it covering the famous Jungle Room. I’ll have you know that green is my favorite color and I immediately wanted some of that green shag carpet! Of course there were ropes keeping us away and dozens of people blocking my reach.

As the tour was about to end and enter the last leg of the home I noticed that the carpet actually went all the way up the walls near the stairs to leave the mansion! Wow! What luck. As we were about to exit the jungle room area, I backed up and stuck my hand behind me. As I began to break out in a sweat I plucked one single strand of green shag carpet from one of the jungle room walls. From the looks of the missing areas near my strand I knew I wasn’t the only that had pilfered a small part of Elvis memorabilia.

We exited Graceland out a back door to the Elvis museum. I prayed that a surveillance camera had not picked up on my dastardly deed. I slipped the green strand into my pocket and left quickly. I now possessed a tiny part of pop culture history and a fragment of the most iconic 70s room on the planet.

I left the tour feeling on top of the world. I had a very small part of the Elvis legend and a part of the famous Jungle Room. I still have that strand today and if you feel the need to be close to Elvis, just give me a call and we’ll break it out and watch Jail House Rock together.

The post My Small Piece Of Graceland & Elvis Lore appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

Much of the time my sister and I had a huge amount of freedom. My friends and I would ride bikes all over town with not one parent knowing where we were. We’d skip meals just to hang out longer.

Most of the time you headed home when the street lights came on but as we grew older that’s when things got started. We definitely spent most of our time outdoors running and playing games.

Spending the night with friends was always an adventure. Whether we were sneaking out or just doing goofy stuff it was always fun. In the summer we’d go a week in a row spending the night at different houses.

Here my favorite memories of growing up in the 1970’s. These did not take long to come up with so I might add to the list later. If you grew up in the 70s let me know what your favorite memories are.

FAVORITE 70s MEMORIES

1. Jumping on my best friends trampoline

2. Catching tadpoles in Boggy Creek

3. Watching Saturday morning cartoons

4. Sneaking Space Food Sticks between meals

5. Dodgeball! Anytime, anywhere.

6. Recording Dr. Demento on Sunday night

7. Walking down the railroad tracks on the rails

8. Shopping pawn shops for comic books

9. Riding bikes across town without parents knowing

10. Going to see Disney movies in the afternoon

11. Buying Sixlets and Jolly Ranchers

12. Sliding down hills on cardboard boxes

13. Riding skateboards over wooden ramps

14. Playing hide-n-go-seek games after dark

15. Recording goofy skits on cassette tapes

16. Drinking cold water out of the garden hose

17. Stopping for a Dr. Pepper with good ice

18. Building scary box mazes at Halloween

19. Catching box turtles and racing them

20. Watching Charlie Brown holiday specials

21. Creating marble roller coasters out of Hot Wheels track

22. Chewing Bazooka gum and reading the comic

23. Listening to the Fleetwood Mac Rumours album

24. Watching Happy Days sitcom on TV

25. Collecting Farrah Fawcett posters and pictures

26. Trading and selling comic books with friends

27. Learning tricks and putting on magic shows

28. Doing wheelies on banana seat bikes

29. Exploring drainage tunnels under the neighborhood

30. Seeing Phantasm for the first time

31. Listening to Kansas albums with headphones on

32. Getting to see Evel Knievel jumps on TV

33. Muhammed Ali boxing matches on TV

34. Taking trips to Six Flags in TX and MO

35. Staying up to watch Monty Python on Saturday nights

36. Catching pennies dropped from our elbow

37. Wearing cut off shorts, tube socks and a half shirt

38. Reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper

39. Playing Murder In The Dark in a basement

40. Sewing my own puppets to perform puppet shows

41. Getting a new pair of Tracks running shoes

42. Spending the night with friends and not sleeping

43. Watching Saturday Night Live and reciting funny lines

44. Building HO scale train sets in my walk-in closet

45. Sticking my head out of the car window

46. Reading Mad Magazine and folding the back page

47. Clunking Clackers and smashing fingers

48. Playing in the sprinkler in the grass

49. Torturing our GI Joes

50. Hanging black light posters in my room

51. Listening to cicadas in the hot summer

52. Catching fire flies and putting them in jars

53. Spending an afternoon on a roof then jumping off

54. Making goofy movies with an 8mm camera

55. Making homemade rice crispy treats

56. Watching Elvis movies late on the weekends

57. Feathering my bangs and parting my hair

58. Sleeping with a box fan in the window

59. Making paper airplanes and keeping them in the air

60. Taking trip and sleeping on the hump in the car

61. Eating Zingers while watching the Banana Splits

62. Watching TV all day when home from school sick

63. Playing Kill The Man With The Ball

64. Shopping with Green Stamps after licking them

65. Decorating the Christmas tree with icicles

66. Shooting Roman Candles at each other

67. Eating 4-6 bowls of cereal a day out of butter bowls

68. Digging in a cereal box for the prize

69. Eating at the kid table at Thanksgiving

70. Calling into the Boogie Check radio show

71. Building snow forts and throwing snowballs

72. Talking on the phone with girls for hours

73. Pulling pranks on my sister and her friends

74. Raising mice, gerbils, hamsters and guinea pigs

75. Building blanket forts all over the house

76. Running around the neighborhood barefooted

77. Picking out 45 records at Woolco

78. Eating buckets of KFC chicken with family

79. Throwing water balloons at cars

80. Popping Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove

81. Swinging in a porch swing on a huge porch

82. Spinning friends really fast on the merry-go-round

83. Choosing 11 records and tapes for a penny

84. Telling ghost stories under the street light

85. Collecting pull tabs to make chains

86. Reading The Hobbit and writing a book report

87. Having pine cone and crab apple fights

88. Sitting around a campfire and sleeping in a tent

89. Hiding in the bathroom during tornado warnings

90. Taking trips to the Great Salt Plains

91. Drinking cold pop out of a bottle

92. Playing Frisbee at the park

93. Trick-or-Treating for hours in our neighborhood

94. Sticking my face in the water cooler to cool off

95. Doing can openers off the diving board

96. Standing over the floor furnace to keep warm

97. Finding a random horny toad in a field

98. Eating frozen mini candy bars

99. Going to the park to watch the July 4th fireworks

100. Watching Sonny and Cher on moms bowling night

Living in the 70s. That’s me on the right around 1976-77.

The post My 100 Favorite Memories Of Growing Up In The 70s appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

Todd and Stayton could sing and Todd played piano. We all fell in love with the rock and roll band Kansas after “Carry On Wayward Son” came out. That was the spark that got us to thinking about forming our own rock band.

In the fall of 1978 we made our way to high school. In Enid, Oklahoma, there were three junior high’s which all fed into Enid High School. Stayton, Todd and I came from Waller Junior High. At the beginning of the year we started to meet guys from the other junior high schools.

Enid High had a swimming pool in the basement at that time and we had to go swimming as part of gym class. That’s were I met Alan. Alan was from Longfellow Junior High and he played bass guitar. We started hanging out around school and talked about rock bands.

As we got to know each other better I found out that his buddy from Longfellow played drums. His name was Kyle. It didn’t take long before we were all hanging out after school and started to talk about forming a band.

That year we started hanging out in garages and living rooms testing our ability to play rock and roll. I believe Mr. PettyJohn let us use his garage for our first practice. Of course the first song we wanted to tackle was “Carry On Wayward Son.” We weren’t going to sign any record deals but we weren’t horrible either.

Since we started taking things a little more serious I found a brand new, black, Ventura Les Paul copy and put it on layaway. I also bought a huge Custom amp from one of my old buddies. Todd bought a Rhodes electronic organ and we bought mics and a sound system. We even got fancy enough to build a lighting system.

At the time we were taking those odd classes you have to take in high school. One of the classes was literature and Alan was reading Don Quixote. Rocinante was Don Quixote’s horse in the novel. Alan thought it sounded cool and proposed that we use that for the name of the band. I don’t remember there being much argument at the time so that is what we went with.

We played some Kansas, Thin Lizzie, Fleetwood Mac, Ted Nugent, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Eagles, Bad Company, Rolling Stones and others. Thin Lizzie songs seemed to be the ones we performed the best, especially Jail Break.

I wrote a couple of original songs and we collaborated on a few others. I believe I wrote the music to “Midnight Dreamin” and “Train To Reality” while Stayton and Todd helped with lyrics. Although we were very garage famous we did venture out one year to enter the high school talent show.

We performed our original “Midnight Dreamin” in the high school auditorium. Back in that day there was a group of teachers that auditioned us and scored the acts that would make the talent show. When the results came out we did not make the show.

Looking at our scores and comments it came down to Mrs. Hoad, the teacher of Greek Mythology. Her score for us was so low it bumped us out of the contest. Although we were upset it was her comment that made us feel a little better. She said in her comments that we were too loud!! That’s something any 70’s rock band wanted to hear.

Somewhere during the next year we discovered that nobody knew how to pronounce our band name and having to explain that it was the name of a horse fell a little flat. We decided to change our name to Reality based on our song “Train To Reality.” The change also had to do with the phrase, “reality is for people who can’t handle drugs”  because we weren’t high school druggies.

We played plenty of garages and even played a keg party one time. It was outdoors and of course it started to mist. We were getting shocked so that gig didn’t last long. We spent many hours in Todd’s parents living room practicing and recording ourselves on cassette tapes.

Even though we weren’t playing anywhere we decided we wanted some promotional band photos. Go figure. So we hired a photographer that was in our class. Joe met us in a field near Kyle’s house and he took some great photographs. We ended up with some smaller color pics and larger back and whites. The field we were in looked a bit like “weed” in the black and whites so we thought that added to our cred.

Looking back at the photos makes me smile. Not only for the memories of hanging out with those guys but because of our “look”. We all had the 70’s long hair going on and I even had bangs! It was a fun experience being in the band and kept us out of lots of trouble.

During our junior year we were still just goofing around with the band and Alan wanted to take it more serious. He decided to quit the band to play with another band that actually had paying gigs. Rob joined our band as the bass player at that point. He was the younger brother of one of our classmates.

At the end of our junior year we decided to rent a facility and have our own dance. We pooled our money, rented the Enid Activity Center and had flyers printed. I designed the flyers and we went around town sticking them everywhere we could.

We charged $2.50 per person and $4.00 per couple. The biggest part of the crowd was our parents and close friends. I think a few strangers wandered in but it was not a stadium sized crowd. We did make enough to pay for the venue I think.

We ended up having a falling out with Alan about our PA equipment when we were seniors that eventually led to a fight between Kyle and Alan. That was the biggest regret of the band. We did make amends but were never together as a group after that.

And after high school that was it! We pretty much let the band fade away as Kyle and I went off to college in Tonkawa. Todd went to work for his dad, Stayton went to a local university, Alan went to work for the city and Rob went on to play with several other bands in high school.

Listen to our podcast below as we get back together to talk about the band. Alan was not in on the call.

Listen to “Our 1970’s Garage Band Experience” on Spreaker.

The post Our Rock N Roll Garage Band appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

In 1978, Stayton, Todd and I were in Junior High and we would spend evenings listening to the radio show called Boogie Check. Boogie Michaels would come on and take phone calls from kids throughout the evening. The show was actually pre-recorded and then played back shortly afterwards.

For a teen to make it on the show it was a pretty big deal. Each night you had to start calling early on the old dial and push button phones. The first dozen times you called in you’d get the busy signal. Every now and then the phone would start ringing and you knew you had a chance of making the show. If you made the show your parents were charged a long distance phone call.

Most of the calls from kids were short and sweet. Usually Boogie Michaels would ask a question and hang up on the kids as they answered or didn’t answer. He seemed to talk to the girls longer than boys so getting much airtime was almost impossible. Todd was hung up on one night for not moving quicker on scoring with his girlfriend!

For months we’d call in, say something quick and then we’d get hung up on. If you said something really bad it would be edited out of the show by the time it was aired. We ended up being on air several times and had a couple of longer conversations.

One night I caught Michaels in a good mood and he decided to let me run his radio program. We had called in to say hi to the three girls we were trying to hit on even though they didn’t even know we were on the air. That night I was the one holding the phone when it rang.

Michaels picked up and we started talking. Out of the blue he said he was going  to leave the room and I asked if I could run the program. He said yes! Before leaving the room he did warn me about saying anything bad. He said his vulgarity squelch box would catch it if I did. I rambled on totally unprepared for as much airtime as I was given but snuck in a few jabs at Boogie thinking he wouldn’t know it.

Luckily we had one of those trusty Sony tape recorders with the microphone set up next to the radio. We would record ourselves every time we made it on the show. At one point we nicknamed ourselves The Animals and would just scream random stuff in the background. Listen closely to this recording and you’ll hear where he cut out me calling him a name.

Those cassettes have followed me for decades. They moved from many, many houses and have sat and collected lots of dust in several garages. I decided to listen to them again when I was in the 50’s and thought they were hilarious. With the advent of digital recording we were able to transfer the recordings to the computer. Our timing was pretty good because the little square piece of foam in the cassette tape wore out and crumbled as we finished.

Below is a recording of me calling into Boogie Check in 1978. I was 15 years old with Stayton and Todd and I believe we were at Todd’s house. If you listen closely you can hear them saying things in the background. Enjoy my first claim to fame as I became the teenage DJ to kids all across the state of Oklahoma.

The post The Night I Ran Boogie Check appeared first on Curtis Tucker.

This video was taken in the summer of 1977 on W. Broadway in Enid, Oklahoma. Bruce Bradley had snagged his parents 8mm camera and came to our neighborhood hangout to capture the fun.

This video sat forgotten until 2018 when Bruce was going through old boxes and rediscovered the footage. He sent raw clips to me and I got to editing the film together. It literally brought tears to my eyes when I first saw it. It’s documentation of all of the great times we had hanging out in our youth.

Most of the guys in our gang lived on or near W. Broadway. We would get together for hours of playing outside and creating fun games. We skipped meals just so we could play together longer. Must of us even stayed out beyond the street lights coming on.

The skateboard and acting footage took place on the block that we used for most of our games. There was a church on the corner that rarely had any people at it. If they were there we never knew it.

We played a fun game called Musklins which was a combination of tag, hide-and-go-seek and kick-the-can. The church was the main area we used for hiding and chasing.

This particular day we had several neighborhood kids show up that weren’t in the main crew. Our core group was Stayton, Brendan, Jason, David and I. More in a moment…

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