What Life Was Like Growing Up In The 70s

Hey Shaggheads! The podcast has a new name which matches the blog and all social media accounts. I also now have a sub stack using Curtis Tucker.

Now that I’m 63 things are really starting to seem old. I was born in 1962 and was ages 8-18 in the 70s.

Seems crazy to look back 50 years and realize how different things were compared to today. Here’s what I remember from the early to mid 70s. The majority of these things are no longer a part of everyday life.

Freedom, Bikes, and “Be Home When the Lights Come On”
* We rode banana seat bikes and skateboards everywhere — across town, no helmets, no tracking, no check-ins.
* We’d disappear for hours and nobody panicked… because that’s just what kids did.
* Summer rule: stay out until the street lights came on, which felt like midnight.
* Spending the night at a friend’s house was a weekend routine — but you had to go inside and use their phone to ask.

Neighborhood Games, Porches, and Ghost Stories
* Kids played outside constantly: tag, hide’n go seek, red light/green light, kick the can, and a bunch of made-up variations.
* Porches mattered. We’d sit out there and tell ghost stories like it was a whole event.

Smoking Was Everywhere (and Totally Normalized)
* Smoking was everywhere and it was considered cool.
* Cigarette ads were in magazines and on TV.
* You could buy cigarettes from vending machines like it was candy.
* People smoked in hospitals, on airplanes, in cars, in restaurants — everything smelled like smoke.
* Ashtrays weren’t “decor,” they were equipment. You needed them all over the house.
* Kids even made ashtrays in school and gave them to their parents as gifts.

Phones: One Line, One Chance
* Most houses had one wall phone.
* If someone was on the phone, you were basically cut off from your friends.
* If somebody called, they got a busy signal. That was it.
* If you had a sister on the phone? You might be dead socially for an hour.
* Long distance cost real money, so people watched the clock.
* Rates dropped after 7pm, so that’s when people made their “serious” calls.
* Answering machines weren’t common — and if you had one, it used little cassette tapes.

TV and Living Rooms: Heavy Screens, TV Trays, and No Rewinds
* TV meant three channels and that’s it.
* TVs were huge and heavy — some were full console TVs built into wooden cabinets.
* Most TVs didn’t have remotes — you sat close and physically flipped channels.
* Stations signed off around 1am. After that? Static.
* No VCRs, no streaming, no catching up. If you missed a show, you might not see it again until next season.
* Daytime TV was mostly soap operas — and kids absolutely got hooked on the lunchtime ones.
* Cartoons were mainly Saturday morning. That was an event, not background noise.
* Prime-time was heavy on detective shows, variety shows, and sitcoms.
* When families ate in the living room, it was TV trays — and TV dinners were common.

Sports and Spectacle on Free TV
* You could watch major sports on regular TV for free.
* Big championship boxing matches were a huge deal.
* Evel Knievel stunts were appointment viewing.
* Monday Night Football felt like a national holiday — and Howard Cosell was a celebrity.

Music Culture: Radio Ruled
* People spent hours listening to the radio, especially on weekends.
* American Top 40 with Casey Kasem was a ritual.
* If you wanted a playlist, you made a mixtape by recording off the radio — and you almost always missed the first second of the song.
* Portable music meant battery radios and cassette players.
* Building a music collection meant vinyl, 8-tracks, and cassettes.

Fads 
* CB radios
* Pet rocks
* Rubik’s Cubes
* Clackers
* Mood rings
* Lava lamps
* Smiley faces
* Shag carpet
* Streaking (yep — it was a thing)

Collections, Toys, and Trading Culture
* Kids collected stuff like it was our version of “apps”:
* Baseball cards
* Comic books
* Marbles
* Hot Wheels
* Barbie dolls
* Troll dolls
* (and whatever the current craze was that month)
* Trading was constant — at school, in the neighborhood, on the porch. There was always somebody claiming they got ripped off or scored a “legendary” trade.

Posters, Bedrooms, and Teen Culture
* Teenagers had posters all over their walls.
* Popular ones: Farrah Fawcett, Charlie’s Angels, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, blacklight posters, band posters, and whatever looked cool under a blacklight.

Candy, Convenience Stores, and Penny Prices
* You could actually buy stuff for a penny.
* Convenience stores sold Jolly Ranchers, bubble gum, and Sixlets for a penny.
* A couple coins felt like real money back then.

News and the National Mood
* There wasn’t 24/7 news. News had specific time slots: morning, lunch, dinner, and the 10pm news.
* Newscasters mostly just read the news — less “commentary” culture.
* Vietnam was on the news constantly, with protests and heavy division.
* Space travel still felt like the future arriving in real-time.
* Space hype created products and toys: Tang, Space Food Sticks, and space everything.

Travel and Airports Before Security Theater
* Airports were smaller and way more casual.
* You could show up 15 minutes before takeoff and still make your flight.
* No long lines, no security checkpoints like today.
* Friends and family could walk right up to the gate with you.

Money, Shopping, and How People Paid
* Fast food was mostly cash (sometimes checks). No debit cards.
* ATMs weren’t a thing — if you needed cash, you cashed a check somewhere.
* Grocery stores and gas stations might cash checks at night if the bank was closed.
* Layaway was normal — the store held it until you paid it off.
* The Sears Christmas catalog was a major event: mail order + weeks of waiting.
* People mailed money in envelopes to buy things from magazines.
* Returnable pop bottles mattered — you could get cash back for them.
* Green Stamps were like a parallel economy: collect them, paste them, spend them.

Houses, Heat, and Daily Life Details People Forget
* A lot of homes didn’t have central air.
* People used window units, swamp coolers, box fans in windows.
* Many houses had one bathroom, sometimes no shower.
* Floor furnaces were common — warm your feet, burn your feet, melt your shoes.

Kitchens were different too
* Most refrigerators didn’t have ice makers.
* You filled an ice tray, put the divider in, froze it, then used the handle to crack the cubes and dump them into a bucket.

Sun, Water, and No One Acting Like It Was Dangerous
* Skin cancer wasn’t something people talked about.
* People used suntan oil and baked.
* Sunburns were basically a normal part of summer.
* No bottled water — paying for water sounded ridiculous.
* Kids carried canteens and drank from garden hoses.

Cars, Seat Belts, and Playgrounds That Tried to Kill You
* Nobody wore seat belts.
* Playgrounds were intense: metal slides, merry-go-rounds, high monkey bars.

School: Discipline and Gym Class Reality
* If you got in trouble at school, getting spanked was normal.
* Gym was mandatory.
* You bought gym clothes.
* You showered after gym and teachers made sure you actually did it.

Movies and Games: You Had to Leave the House
* New movies weren’t just “available.” They weren’t shown on TV like that.
* No VCRs, no home movie library.
* Video games existed, but you had to go to an arcade and pay every time you played.

Teen Social Life: “Dragging the Strip”
* Teenagers cruised the local strip on weekends.
* That was the social scene — you drove around to see who was out.

Getting Information: Encyclopedias or the Library
* If you needed info, you either had encyclopedias at home or you went to the library.
* That was it. No quick search, no instant answers.

Photos, Maps, and Communication Took Time
* Photos meant a 110 camera or a Polaroid.
* Film took days to develop, and you paid even if the pictures were bad.
* Maps were folded paper maps — glove box full of them if you traveled.
* If you got lost, you stopped and asked directions.
* Messages meant letters and postcards — pen pals were real.

Seeing Bands Before Music Videos
* Shows like American Bandstand, The Midnight Special, Soul Train, and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert were how you saw bands.
* No music videos. No YouTube.

Religion and Sunday Culture
* Almost everyone went to church on Sunday.
* And you dressed up. No debate.

Social Reality and Language People Used
* Many towns still had racial divides and unequal access.
* People rarely talked openly about being gay — most kids didn’t have a framework for it.
* A lot of everyday language was casually offensive by today’s standards, and people didn’t think twice.

Fears and Weird Collective Paranoia
* Nuclear war, an upcoming ice age, quicksand, the Bermuda Triangle.

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