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.

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.

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