Why were the 70s such a tacky decade?

[SGTROCK]

Great threat and Liz from Maine hit the nail. I was born in 1963 and even as a child growing up in the 70s and early adulthood was different. I guess I really respected my Grandfather who represented the way it should be. I can attribute the bad taste in 70s clothing, furniture to a degeneration and total rebellion of the children of the WWII generation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Her---even worse.

Actually, Lassie was always played by a male dog. The Julian Eltinge of the canine world.

 

[HadleyH]

stop it trashing the 70s

I loved Discoteques

 

[HadleyH]

we should trash today 2015

shall we open a thread then?

hmmm

 

[Stearmen]

Actually, underemployment was a very big issue in the '70s and on into the '80s. There were a lot of people working part time who wanted full time work and the jobs just weren't there. I spent a good three years after getting out of school trying to find *any kind of* full time work, but with a 25 percent local unemployment rate I was screwed. My first job after graduation was sorting empty soda bottles in a leaky shed behind a grocery store, up to my ankles in stagnant water, stale beer, and flies. If I was lucky I got 20 hours a week at $3.35 an hour. I considered that pretty damn "underemployed."

My mother started the seventies working fifteen hours a week as a cook in a nursing home, and we had to go on welfare because she couldn't get anything better than that. Underemployment.

I never heard that until recently. It was not on the nightly news or in the papers out here, just unemployment numbers.

 

[HadleyH]

Were there so many parasites as today in the 1970s?

I don't think so


so lets trash today ok?


Gezzzz talk about tacky

 

[Stearmen]

Sounds like the boss at the first job that I ever held, 1970-72. Setting trap targets at a gun club (trap & skeet) for the princely sum of $1.70/ hour. I'm guessing that OSHA would never let a sixteen year old near those trap machines today (they could rip off one's arm) and there was always the remote risk of getting shot, but it sure beat flipping burgers.

My first job was running wires in houses and buildings for my Dad. Asbestos, mold, rock wool, God knows what else. Then More Asbestos and other chemicals working on motorcycles. then I graduated to old WWII airplanes, throw in Zinc Chromate, and cutting out the aerial applicator tanks, with DDT and Malathion, and no protective gear. Can you say Dead Man Walking!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

stop it trashing the 70s

I loved Discoteques

When I was growing up the local discoteque was called the Le Cabaret Disco. It was in a bowling alley.
Then of course, here's the most famous disco of all.

 

[HadleyH]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I remember 2 in my case

One was called "Eve" and it was a few blocks from where I lived ..in a very nice far away suburb

The other was called "Le Moustache" ....it was a private Disco...very nice

nobody was on welfare like today.... not a soul

the 70s were not tacky like today

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

While I never was a fan of bell bottoms at least they weren't worn halfway down the backside.

 

[HadleyH]

not a soul was on welfare

ok?


thats what we are talking about...tacky

 

[2jakes]

actually, lassie was always played by a male dog. The julian eltinge of the canine world.

what ????? No...it can't be...her bark was so beautiful... :eeek:

What about Rin Tin Tin, old Yeller & Petey, the rascals dog.
and Toto too ? :faint:

No...don't tell me...I don't want to know anymore ! :cry:

 

[LizzieMaine]

nobody was on welfare like today.... not a soul

My family was, largely because my father was, and remains to this day, a man of absolutely no personal integrity or morality who refused to support his children. And alongside that, our economy was in the tank for pretty much the entire decade of the seventies. There were an awful lot of people around the US besides us who were living on AFDC, surplus Spam, and government cheese. I suspect there's more than a few of them around the Lounge who haven't yet stepped forward.

As far as ugly, tacky fashions go, I couldn't stand the seventies, I can't stand the 2000s, but I honestly think the postwar New Look was even worse. Dior should have been shot as a collaborator.

 

[LizzieMaine]

what ????? No...it can't be...her bark was so beautiful... :eeek:

What about Rin Tin Tin, old Yeller & Petey, the rascals dog.
and Toto too ? :faint:

No...don't tell me...I don't want to know anymore ! :cry:

Rin Tin Tin was the real deal, but the original Petey was accidentally (or possibly on purpose) poisoned in 1930. He was succeeded first by his son, and by a succession of dogs after that, and they could never seem to remember which eye was supposed to have the ring around it.

 

[sheeplady]

The 70s was also the rise of more working and middle class latch key children than ever before- driven less by the ideals of feminism and more the plain practicality that a cut in Daddy's pay, hours, or losing his job meant Mommy went to work.

The 70s was the first time most women I know with young children at the time began to seek employment off their family farms, to supplement poor milk/ crop /meat prices. Before then, this was rare; rare enough that when my grandmother kept working as a school teacher in the late 40s until the 70s (after she had twins) that it was assumed my farmer grandfather was a gambler or some sort. (Her working was also motivated by growing numbers of boomer children flooding the education system, but it was rare for a rural area.)

You can believe me, there's enough work on a farm to keep an entire family busy. It's no fun to do the 5am milking, go work an 8 hour shift, and rush home to help with the 5/6 pm milking.

 

[SGTROCK]

About 1972 my mother tried to get welfare but we were refused because we lived in a rural area, She was told we would have to move to Holyoke Mass which was and still is a dangerous city. We did get large tins of USDA peanut butter, butter, spam and some other foodstuffs. That was some of the best peanut butter I ever tasted as my brother and I would spoon it right from the tin and drink cold milk. Those were good times but not for Mom, back then there was no way to get the child support because the State did not enforce those laws.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That USDA peanut butter was delicious -- it was the same stuff they served in the school lunch program, and we always looked forward to getting it. We never looked too close at the expiration date on the can.

My father flouted the child support laws with absolute impunity thruout the seventies. He was ordered to pay $48 a week for my sister and me, until we turned eighteen, and never paid a nickel. I look forward to spitting on his grave.

The seventies, in general, brutalized small-town New England. The textile and shoe industries were gutted, the poultry industry collapsed due to the fuel crisis, and the fishing industry fell into a long decline that all but destroyed it by the '90s. It was a very bad time to be a young person entering the workforce, and it was an even worse time to be a middle-aged person losing the only line of work you'd ever known. The small-town New England of today, built on desperate and undignified shucking and jiving for tourists and wealthy retirees, had its roots in those dismal days.

 

[SGTROCK]

So true, the 70s and 80s were tough all the way, Holyoke Mass paper mills were going out of business. Ware Mass had a shoe factory that my mother would take us to get seconds but we didn't care. getting your new Pro Keds was a really big deal back then. I remember back then adults complaining that you couldn't buy a job or a good full-time one. There was damn little work for teenagers in a rural area, maybe working throwing bales of hay in the summer heat for 5 dollars a day. My first real job was working making toilet seat at the old Church seat factory in Monson Mass for 5 dollars an hour in 1981. I saw the same folk who had been there 30 years were making the same money so after a few months working a dusty hot line of wood flour press machines I rode my motorcycle down to the recruiters in Holyoke, Got there at 4pm , but everyone had gone home except for the Marines, so I got a physical in Springfield and signed on. Back then the recruiter came to the country to pick us up to go to Boot camp at 4AM and my mother made sure I got in that car. Once you got in you were not getting out. For me that was my exit from the 70s and a way out of poverty of that decade. best choice I ever made!

 

[Harp]

I rode my motorcycle down to the recruiters in Holyoke, Got there at 4pm , but everyone had gone home except for the Marines, so I got a physical in Springfield and signed on. Back then the recruiter came to the country to pick us up to go to Boot camp at 4AM and my mother made sure I got in that car. Once you got in you were not getting out. For me that was my exit from the 70s and a way out of poverty of that decade. best choice I ever made!

I left Chicago's south side in similar fashion. Classified 11Bravo, volunteered for Airborne and 'Nam, and saw the world too.
I hate to admit it but the Army was an experience I have always been grateful for. :coffee:

 

[2jakes]

Rin Tin Tin was the real deal, but the original Petey was accidentally (or possibly on purpose) poisoned in 1930. He was succeeded first by his son, and by a succession of dogs after that, and they could never seem to remember which eye was supposed to have the ring around it.

Didn't I say I didn't want to hear anymore ? [huh]
You're just a bundle of good news Ms.LizzieMaine...

Oh where is Mr. snowplow driver !....