'Talking to a friend on Monday about meeting on Friday, and then just showing up at the right time and place with no other communication.'
The '70s get a lot of credit for bell-bottoms and disco, but there's a whole other side to the decade that doesn't make it onto the nostalgia posters. Wewhat life was actually like back then — the stuff that felt completely ordinary at the time but sounds almost unbelievable now.
From latchkey kids wearing their house keys around their necks to women who needed their husband's permission to get a credit card, here's what they told us:"Riding in the back of pickup trucks. Talking on the house phone with a long cord. Using an adding machine with a paper tape. Listening to 8-track tapes in a player that your dad installed under your seat. Learning to drive a stick shift. Jumpstarting your car by rolling it down a hill and popping the clutch. Being a free-range kid all day in the summer." "Carrying your schoolbooks in your arms. No one used backpacks in K-12. You could buy an elastic band with metal hooks on the ends to wrap around your notebook and schoolbooks so they wouldn't slip." "Encyclopedias were a thing. They were the Google of the '70s — where you went to get answers. Having a full set of the"Talking to a friend on Monday about meeting on Friday, and then just showing up at the right time and place with no other communication.""Leaving the house and being completely unreachable. When you clocked out of work, you were allowed to not be working or available until your next scheduled shift. The idea that you need to be available 24/7 when you are not being paid to be on call is ridiculous. If it's a 9-to-5 job, I should only expect to work those hours — not answer emails and phone calls on my own time.""Getting gas at a gas station where you pulled up to the pump and someone — usually a man — came out and pumped your gas. He checked your tires, oil, and cleaned your windshield too. Often, there were two attendants. It felt strange when gas stations started going self-service.""I was 12 and had a job cleaning dog kennels that were 11 miles from my house. I hitchhiked after school to get there and then hitchhiked back home. Never had any problems.""I worked in a downtown office building that was the headquarters of a major bank. At the time, women did not wear pants to work. A friend of mine got promoted to a position mostly held by men. She wanted to look more like their level, since the men wore suits, so she had a tailored pantsuit made with fabric similar to a men's suit. The first time she wore it, her boss told her, 'Slacks are not appropriate for women.' Keep in mind, she was wearing a suit that looked just like what the men wore.""My grandfather, who was a trucker, installed a CB radio in my car. I was 17, and my handle was 'Little Pony.' I would sneak out after everyone was asleep and talk to anonymous men over the radio. It felt exciting at the time, and I had no idea how dangerous it could have been. Luckily, the few times I arranged to meet one of them, I chickened out.""Having a 'smoking lounge' in high school. You had to be 16 to smoke or bring a note from home.""Visiting a local newsstand or deli on Saturday night to wait for the truck that dropped off the first edition of the Sunday newspaper, just so you could be first to apply for a job or apartment in the classified ads." "If you saw a movie you loved, good luck watching it again anytime in the next several years once it left theaters.""Hitchhiking. Once we got picked up by two French guys. They could have been talking about killing us and we wouldn't have known because we didn't understand French." "I remember being a teen in the '70s when my mom got her first credit card. My dad didn't believe in credit, so she could never get one before — it was illegal for a woman to obtain one without her husband's consent. She got an upscale department store card and bought a beautiful outfit for my sister's wedding. She paid it off in two months, so she barely paid any interest. I remember how proud she was to have something in her name alone.""It was completely normal for my mom to send me outside on a nice day and say, 'Go play. Come home for lunch.' I would ride my bike into town, go to the lake to swim, or find friends. Then I would go home for lunch and head back out again until dark. The 'Momnet' always knew where I was. It only took a call or two for my mom to track me down. One parent would say, 'Dave and Jimmie were just here — they went over to Scott's house.' Then my mom would call Scott's mom and have her tell me to come home.""As a child in the late '70s, flying on a jumbo jet like a 747 or DC-10 felt like a big adventure. There were no seatback screens, but there was a big movie screen at the front of the cabin playing the same movie for everyone. They gave you a strange pneumatic headset made of hollow rubber tubes that plugged into your armrest and blew air carrying the audio into your ears. There was a dial with 10 channels so you could tune into music listed in the in-flight magazine or listen to the movie. It felt incredibly cool at the time."ended. It aired Friday at 7 p.m. Central time, and that was your one chance to watch it all week. My friends and I were not missing it.""Riding in the car, lying on the shelf under the back window. No seat belts, no headrests, just open space to fly forward if there was an accident. I used to bring a pillow and sleep up there on long rides.""In Connecticut, we used baby oil mixed with iodine as tanning oil. We burned like lobsters at the beach. Later, I moved to Minnesota and learned girls there did the same thing. Beach life, lake life, and baby oil with iodine. Whose idea was that?""My brother and I were latchkey kids. We wore tags like military dog tags engraved with our names and addresses, with our house key attached. Parents actually bought these for latchkey kids! Imagine how dangerous that could have been if the wrong person found you — they had your name, your address, and the key to your house.""In the early '70s, there was no such thing as a blow-dry hairstyle. Women didn't wash their hair every day. If you had long hair, you set it in electric rollers or slept in big plastic curlers. If you had really curly hair and wanted a straight, sleek style, you used big, empty cans as rollers. To hold the style, you used a setting gel called Dippity Do, which basically froze your hair until you washed it. In my college dorm, there was only one girl who blow-dried her hair, and we were fascinated watching her do it.""No UPC codes. Prices were printed on little stickers attached to each item. Cashiers manually entered the price and department code for every purchase. There were no safety seals, shrink wrap, or expiration dates. You relied on sight and smell to know if food had gone bad. The Tylenol poisonings in 1982 changed all that.""Having to get up off the couch to change the TV channel — and there were only three channels to choose from. You needed a TV Guide to know what shows were on and when.""When I broke my arm in 1974, hopping over a fence at a friend's house, it was clearly broken just above my wrist. Our home phone line was busy, so my friend's dad drove me home about three miles away. Then my mom took me to our family doctor, a few blocks away. The doctor took an X-ray and set the bone right there in his exam room by pulling on it with my mom's help — and she wasn't a nurse. One big plaster cast and eight weeks later, it healed perfectly. Incidentally, this was the same doctor who delivered me 12 years earlier. In the '70s, most family doctors did everything, even in large suburban areas.""High school boys driving school buses. The boys would attend bus-driving school and then drive a bus at age 17 or 18. The bus would be packed with students, and sometimes kids had to stand in the aisle because there were no empty seats.""No photos on driver's licenses. If you were a similar height, weight, and hair color, it was very easy for someone underage to borrow an ID and buy cigarettes or alcohol. Where I lived, the legal age for beer and wine was 19, so it wasn't hard for a 16- or 17-year-old to pass as legal. My senior year of high school, I somehow got a driver's license from a neighboring state that looked close enough, and no store ever questioned it.""I was a sociology major at the University of Minnesota in the early 1970s and had to do a project for a statistics class. I decided to conduct a hitchhiking experiment around the city to see which method got a ride the fastest. I was 19 years old, 6'4", and about 190 pounds. I wore the same clothes each time: jeans, a red plaid work shirt, and work boots. First, I hitchhiked alone. Timing started when I stuck out my thumb. When drivers asked where I was going, I explained it was for a study, and I had no destination. The second part involved my girlfriend hitchhiking with me, which she happily agreed to. The third method involved hitchhiking with a tomato plant.""The tomato plant got the fastest rides. Next was hitchhiking with my girlfriend. Hitchhiking alone was the slowest. My girlfriend also typed my Spanish papers, even though her language class was Swahili. We've now been married for 50 years.""There were long stretches of time every day when we lived completely uninterrupted with our friends and surroundings. No screens, no phones, and no adults interfering with how we lived. Summertime meant wandering around inventing things to do — climbing trees, throwing water balloons at fireflies, jumping off bridges, riding bikes through mosquito fogging trucks, playing kick the can, and scanning the night sky for UFOs. It felt like an endless world, mostly empty of adults.""When I graduated high school in 1975, my Michigan school had an 'open campus,' meaning students could leave whenever they wanted. No sign-out or anything. Absences were recorded, but during lunch, we could walk to McDonald's and still make it back for class. Also, the drinking age was 18, so some students could technically have a 'liquid lunch.' Interesting times.""Just showing up at someone's house because someone told you there would be a party there. No phone call, no invitation, just a name or an address.""Smoking in movie theaters. You could see the projector beam shining through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. I remember watchingDo you have a '70s memory that belongs on this list? Drop it in the comments below, or submit anonymously using the form. Your story could be featured in a future
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