Saturday Night Disco:

Young man, there's no need to feel down. I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground. I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town there's no need to be unhappy.

Random fact:

I went to 2 separate high schools, and not once did we ever break out in song and start dancing. Nobody was in their 30s either...

Just sayin':

In '75, even though Cher may have been clothed, she was still basically naked. I mean why even bother..

They gave it their best shot:

In the mid to latter part of the decade, people tried to make soccer mainstream, to be on par with, say, baseball or basketball. Never happened.

Late '70s / early '80s decor:

I remember the above from the Sears catalog, but I forget the year. Back then, rainbows weren't a gay pride symbol and they were quite popular. I don't know how many people had the above, but I'm sure there were quite a few who did. I wonder if any still exist.

Laverne & Shirley season 2: "Steppin' Out"

The opening, part 1, and part 2.

It really is amazing how much faster time seems to pass as you get older:

"Who Knows Where The Time Goes" by Judy Collins.

Random:

Back in the day, my darkest nightmare would have been being locked in a room alone with Shields and Yarnell with no way out.

Who are the people in your neighborhood? They're the people that you meet each day:

Oh, a fireman is brave it's said,  His engine is a shiny red. If there's a fire anywhere about, Well, he'll be sure to put it out. 'Cause a fireman is a person in your neighborhood, In your neighborhood. He's in your neighborhood.

I guess she'll never make that mistake again:

For the Christmas of 1972, my childhood friend Lori received a Blythe doll. It was the above model with the platinum blonde hair and blue dress. She hated it and it eventually ended up in the garbage. If only she'd known that eventually the doll would've sold for over $3,000.00 on eBay if she'd just kept it. I guess it pays to be grateful. Sucks to be her.

Misc. Remembrance:

Back in the day, I was amazed at how TV show producers were able to find people who looked exactly like the show's characters to play in episodes in which the storyline required it. I mean, the above two characters looked so similar they could have almost been the same person

Braided Rope Bracelets:

These were extremely popular (at least where I was from) back in the mid-'70s. I don't recall seeing them after '75. I would have worn one, but they were a girl thing and not for boys. Boys didn't wear bracelets back then. The one mistake girls would make with these things would be that they would go swimming wearing them, then the bracelets would shrink so much that they'd have to be cut loose in order to get them off. I think they still sell them, and maybe a guy could get away with wearing one these days, but I'll always think of them as a girl thing...

KerPlunk:

I got this as a Christmas gift (I don't remember the year), but I never played it. Never even opened the box. To be honest I was a little afraid of it. With all those sticks sticking out, it just looked so dangerous.

A little family history:

In 1939, my great grandparents, along with their 1 son and 2 daughters (one of which was my grandmother), immigrated from Poland just before the Nazis invaded. They bought the above house in Taunton Massachusetts. It's a 2-family on Meadow Street, just down the road from the Reed & Barton factory where my great grandfather got a job. He worked there 'til he died, and he died shortly before I was adopted into the family. My great grandparents lived in the second floor 3-bedroom apartment, and my grandparents lived in the first floor 2-bedroom apartment.

My grandmother hated living there. She and my grandfather had never intended to move into the house, instead they had planned on buying a house in Brockton, but my grandfather was an alcoholic and he had invested their entire life savings into a questionable-at-best business venture with a friend. The business flopped and they lost everything, so they ended up moving into the house, and my grandfather got a job as a milkman. I don't think my grandmother ever forgave him, nor did my great grandparents. Up until the day they died, both my great grandmother and my grandmother could speak fluent polish, and they used to argue in Polish so nobody could understand what they were saying. It used to drive me crazy...

The house used to be sided with green asphalt roofing tiles, and there were large rosebushes  along the side of the house. There was a small garage at the end of the driveway, and there were two porches on the front of the house (one for each apartment). There was also an old brick barbecue in the backyard. They never used it by the time I came around. It actually hadn't been used since the early '50s, when there was still some semblance of a functional family. But honestly the family had never really been functional: between my grandfather's alcoholism and individual conflicting personalities it never really was a normal family. They weren't the Waltons....

The attic was partitioned into 2 rooms and could have easily been incorporated into the 2nd floor apartment, making the 2nd floor apartment 2 stories. In the attic were the old chests that they had brought over from Poland with all their personal effects: books, family portraits, old photographs from the early part of the century, lace wedding dresses, old suits, etc. I used to love going through all the stuff.

The house is on a river, but nobody seemed to appreciate that it was waterfront, and they let the lawn get so overgrown leading to the water that you couldn't even see the water or get to it. I think it was the river that powered the factory. My great grandmother had a friend (also from Poland) who had a house up the street which was on the river, and her back yard had quite a few apple trees growing on it. We visited her once, and I can still remember sitting in the back yard and the smell of the apples that had fallen on the ground, combined with the smell of the river.

I practically grew up in that house and to this day I still miss it. It was like home. Apparently it's become a really rough neighborhood with drugs and other problems, but it used to be a somewhat attractive and respectable working-class neighborhood. Time certainly has not been kind to Meadow Street.

Don't Blow Your Top:

The above pics are from an eBay listing. The game is dated 1972, and I'm pretty sure I received one in the Christmas of that year. We played this one alot until we ran out of balloons, then I think my mom threw it out. I don't know why we just didn't buy more balloons, but whatever. I guess whatever number the spinner pointer landed on was the number of marbles you dropped into his hat, and whoever made his head explode was the loser. I loved watching his head explode, so much in fact that I didn't mind losing. Just watching his head explode. Yeah that was awesome.