A few interesting things I can remember:

Cars and gas were cheap in the 70’s. When my folks were bored but didn’t have money we would just go for a drive. We’d wind up at a park or take a tour of back roads or go looking for deer. I mean, yeah, there was the oil crisis, but outside of that, travel was free, but things felt further apart because the speed limit was 55.

Kids hung out outside everywhere. We played football, rode bikes, talked about Star Wars and He-Man and GI Joe, we’d go to movie theaters by ourselves — sometimes sneaking into rated R movies. You could catch a movie for $5 at a matinee. There was a huge theater in town that had second-run movies you could see for $2 even into the early 90’s. The place was scuzzy as fuck, but you could waste an afternoon for cheap. I think I remember the Rocky Horror Picture Show ran every single weekend for years. Though I had no idea what it was.

Safety was non-existent. The number of times I took a road trip in the back of a covered pickup or station wagon was crazy. And cars were held together by bondo and sometimes you had wood on the floor because the floorboards had rusted through and you could see the pavement underneath as you drove down the road. Motherfucking windows didn’t work and no one had A/C. It was suffocating.

Sex was everywhere. From big strip clubs to the Pussycat Theater arcades. Porn magazines were sold on the upper rack of convenience stores and bookstores. PG movies could have a bit of nudity in them, and we had no PG-13. I guess what I’m saying is kids were less sheltered and more exposed to adult things. Sex is the part that stood out to me, but even kids movies had a lot of adult things going on whether it was sex or not.

I can remember some kids at least claimed to be more sexually experienced than they really were, but even so I think most people got laid by the time they graduated high school or at least the moment they got to college. I was 14 and my girlfriend at the time was 13, and that was maybe ahead of the curve a bit, but not wildly so. Now I hear a lot of kids are virgins into their 20’s. And that’s fine, you all make the best choices for you. Having sex young isn’t necessarily great. But damn, I thought with all of this body-positivity and acceptance of casual sex and the reduced prominence of religion would result in a less puritanical view of sex. I don’t necessarily want my kids to go out and have sex just to have it, but by the time they get married I want them to be experienced enough to know whether they are compatible with someone.

Living under the shadow of nuclear war was a big thing. It wasn’t something that you thought about every day, but you went to the polling booth with the idea in your head that the bombs could start dropping and you wanted someone who was going to be a good leader at the end of civilization. Similarly, Nazis were universally despised. You see it in comedies like Blues Brothers. The Empire was just space Nazis. It was a time of clear morality (at least common folk were able to exist under that illusion while politicians wrecked foreign countries in the name of peace and prosperity).

There was an optimism about the 80’s and 90’s. Someone else mentioned the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11 as being wild and cheerful, and that is basically about right. It was a moment where everything in the world seemed to be getting better. I think in 2008 when Obama was elected there was a resurgence of that feeling for a bit. Maybe the first two years. And it has been downhill ever since.

Music was fucking amazing from the 70’s to the 90’s. Songs were poetry and political. They still are, but they have become blunt and cynical. The music back then was hopeful and visionary and experimental. It told stories. You had concept albums like Tommy and The Wall where even if you didn’t love every track, they told a bigger story you could get into.

I don’t know. That’s probably enough. This is long as fuck.