I was born in 1970.
While I hit my teens over a decade later, I’ve always identified as a 70s kid, mostly because there’s less embarrassment found there; I wasn’t old enough to make my own decisions, and therefore avoid all guilt related to music and fashion, far and away the biggest strikes against the 1980s.
The 70s were filled with an innocent joy. I went out to face my day in my brown jumpsuit and orange turtleneck, and jumped (sans helmet) on my Canadian Tire Supercycle. Sometimes my mother would have me wear a dickey. (A dickey! They couldn’t have come up with a better name, really?) On the weekends, I could wear my red, white and blue satin shorts (and matching jacket!) with gym socks. If we were headed to my grandma’s for Sunday dinner, culottes, gauchos or full-length quilted dresses were de rigueur.
At school, we worked in our cahiers. No, I didn’t attend a French school. We’re Canadian, is all, and that’s what we called ’em. Teachers thought nothing of screaming at us (nor would they ever be reprimanded for doing so), and the halls were scented with green Dustbane at least once a week, because of some kid who couldn’t control their nervous stomach. You say you’re not familiar with Dustbane? Well, if you’d ever smelled it, you’d have never forgotten it. Be grateful. At recess we played on all sorts of playground equipment that placed our young lives in peril. No one ever stopped us from doing underdogs on the swings, or from jumping off them. We had high, metal climbers we clambered on, rain or shine. Sometimes one of us would get bloody or break something, but not usually. Worse thing that ever happened to me was the upper tie of my halter top came undone while I was hanging there, but at eight years old, there wasn’t anything terrifically newsworthy about it.
I was in the so-called ‘enriched’ classes in grade school (smarter than the average bear, apparently, but who could tell, at the time?) In any case, I attribute my annual browner classification primarily to Saturday morning cartoons. If it weren’t for the Electric Company, Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock (bless you, David McCall, Tom Yohe and Chuck Jones), I might not have remembered that a noun was a person, place or thing, or that what a predicate says, we do, or still be able to count to ten in Spanish.
After school, I’d take my Crown Royal bag of loose change over to the variety store and buy candy; Gold Rush gum, Popeye Cigarettes, Lik-M-Aid, Gobstoppers, candy necklaces, Pop Rocks, Lollies, Pep, Bottle Caps, Sour Fizz. Stuff that’d run you fifty bucks at Sugar Mountain, nowadays.
Before the wonder that is Swiss Chalet ever made an appearance in Oakville (around 1978-9), there was the Steak ‘N’ Burger at the Burlington mall. It boasted a convenient prix fixe menu, which allowed you your drink, appetizer, main course and dessert. You took your tray and walked along the perimeter picking out your pre-made, heat racked stuff. I’m pretty sure I always ordered a chocolate milk, but when it came to dessert I was always torn between the pudding or the Jell-O with the whipped cream. I have no clue what I actually ate for dinner, but I tellya, I could recognize the aroma of that place from 500 feet to this day.
Christmas in the 70s brought the greatly anticipated Sears Christmas Wish Book. How I poured over it! The rings! The shoes! The toys! I begged for a Big Wheel, but it was always denied as it was a ‘boy’ item. I did manage to score a Simon, Merlin, and a Digital Derby (which as far as I could see was only ‘digital’ insofar as you used your fingers to work it). The lesser Yuletide mag title belonged to Consumers Distributing, but us kids only browsed through it to titter over the ‘personal massager,’ held delicately by a slim, female hand. Did women actually go in to the showroom with a straight face, fill out the order form and buy these? Do you think there was a picture of the item on the box?
In 1970s Burlington, my music was my mom’s music, not having the opportunity to build my own likes as yet. Good news is, I got to hear The Guess Who, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, The Carpenters, Carole King, Carly Simon, Motown, Jim Croce, Elton John, The Eagles, America and a slew of others that shaped my future tastes. “Put on some dinner music!” mom would holler from the kitchen, just before the evening repast, and the floor-model stereo button would be pressed to go to CKDS Burlington and the sweet sound of easy listening would flood the room.
Sigh. Awash in memory. How lucky am I?
Erin's Clishmaclaver 