Here’s the list so far.  I started with the year 1965, because that’s the first year I can remember 3 things about.

1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974

I started the 10th grade.  It was my only year at the old Cheraw High School.  We moved into the new Cheraw High School, across town, at the beginning of my junior year.

1) During the summer, I attended the Boy Scout World Jamboree in Lillehammer, Norway.  Here’s the newspaper article from my hometown paper.

Before that, I lived with a family in Copenhagen, Denmark.  At some point during that visit, I ended up at a topless beach.  It was a great trip all around, but that was probably the highlight, for a 14 year old kid from rural South Carolina.

2) I remember seeing the Saigon airlift on TV, with the helicopter taking off from the U.S. Embassy.  Little did I know that I would one day have a close friend who left Vietnam and came to America at around that time.  She and her family were refugees from North Vietnam, having left for the south with little but the clothes on their backs.  Those of us born in America often forget just how lucky we were.

3) I also remember the Patty Hearst coverage on TV.  I didn’t really understand the point of it all (this was before the internet, etc.), but I had some vague understanding that some rich kid got kidnapped and then went all urban guerilla.  I think I had it just about right.

Assuming you were alive then, what do you remember about 1975?

Image via Wikipedia

It’s time for another installment in my 3 Things series.

Here’s the list so far.  I started with the year 1965, because that’s the first year I can remember 3 things about.

1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973

Other than starting the 9th grade, here are 3 things I remember about 1974.

1)  My sister was in her last year of graduate school at Vanderbilt, in Nashville, TN.  I remember visiting with my mom.  A few years later, I would follow her to graduate school at Vanderbilt.  

2)  I remember buying David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs LP and listening to it over and over and over.  I’m not a huge Bowie fan, but that record was great then, and it’s great now.

3)  I remember seeing all the Watergate coverage on the news.  It was a different time then, with no internet and only a few television channels.  We weren’t bombarded by information all day long, so we actually looked forward to the evening news.  I haven’t watched the evening news in close to a decade.

Is there anyone else around old enough to remember 1974?  If so, what do you remember the most?      

Here’s the list so far.  I started with the year 1965, because that’s the first year I can remember 3 things about.

1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972

Other than finally becoming a teenager, here are 3 things I remember about 1973.

1) I remember watching Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a televised tennis match held at the Astrodome, where I had been a few years earlier.  Little did I know that I would one day call Houston home.  

2) I made Eagle Scout on November 26 of that year.  I got a little press coverage since I was only 13 years and one month old.  Say what you will about the Boy Scouts, but I learned a lot of stuff from scouting that I still apply on a regular basis.

3) I remember watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown, and wondering what a secretariat was.  His Belmont win is simply the most dominating performance I have ever seen, in any sport.  By far.

Thanks to Mike and and Jeff for commenting on my last post.  And thanks to Richard for pointing me to David, from whom I borrowed this great idea.

(1) I remember the Nixon/McGovern presidential election, primarily because my sister and the older kids I knew all had McGovern stickers and campaign buttons.

(2) The 1972 Summer Olympics were the first olympics that I really paid attention to, as a result of both the bad (the murder of some of the Israeli team members) and the good (Mark Spitz’s 7 gold medals).

(3) I went to see The Godfather with my sister and some boyfriend of hers at the beach. I thought the horse head in bed was cool, but the naked girl (my first time to see one in a movie) was cooler.

(1) Our neighbors across the street had this huge antique steam engine festival where people from all over came to display steam engines and other old machinery. The festival lasted all weekend and was about the biggest thing that had ever happened in my hometown. We snuck in by wading through the creek and spent all weekend running around, watching the steam engines and whatnot. It sounds mildly boring now, but at the time it was really fun. A year or so ago I saw this newsletter for sale on eBay.

(2) I moved from Robert Smalls Elementary to Cheraw Elementary (I believe that was its name) for the 6th grade. It must have been an uneventful year, because about all I remember from that year is playing marbles at recess. I can’t even remember who my teachers were.

(3) I won some sort of DAR essay contest. We had to write an essay about the revolutionary war. I wrote about the Green Mountain Boys (I have no idea why). I got this little medal that hung in a frame on the wall at my mom’s house along with my Eagle Scout medal and some other approbations until my mom died.

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(2) I started the fifth grade. That was the first year my school was integrated. It seems surreal to me now that before that white kids and black kids went to different schools. We had no problems at all at my school. In fact, my teacher that year, Mrs. McIver, who previously taught at the black elementary school, became and remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

(3) I remember seeing reports about the Kent State shootings on TV. I was too young to be as outraged as I should have been. Neil Young wrote a phenomenal protest song about that horrible event.

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(1) I moved from Primary School to the 4th grade at Elementary School. I was in Mrs. Laney’s class. Later in life, she let me hunt quail on her land north of my hometown. We used to play kickball at recess, and all the guys used to try to kick the ball on the roof of the school. That was sort of like hitting a baseball out of the park.

(2) I distinctly remember watching on TV as Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969. I was amazed that something like that was possible. There were a few people, including more than one in my class, who thought the whole thing was staged by the government. Many years later after I moved to Houston, I became friends with Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, and was able to hear a lot of amazing stories first hand.

(3) I remember the nightly news with Walter Cronkite. He would always give a report about Vietnam- the name of some village where a battle happened, how many Americans killed and how many Americans got killed. I didn’t think all that much about it at the time, but in hindsight it seems almost surreal. I guess there’s so much instant information today that we get somehow desensitized to all of these wars we’re fighting. Back then there was one report a day- a death scorecard every night that told us who allegedly won the war that day.

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(1) I was in Mrs. Rivers’ third grade class at Cheraw Primary School. When we misbehaved, we had to stay in the classroom during recess (by far our favorite part of the day) and write “I will not do [bad act] again” 100 times on a sheet of paper. One day just after I finished writing what I would no longer do 100 times and was headed for the door, the bell rang, signaling the end of recess. Without thinking, I said a word I had heard an older kid use. I had no idea what the word meant, but as soon as I said it, all hell broke lose. I was sent to the principal’s office to wait as both of my parents were called to an impromptu conference. It was the infamous “f word.” I can’t recall if I was told what it meant at the time, but I knew for sure that I shouldn’t say it again within earshot of a teacher.

(2) I distinctly remember when Robert Kennedy was assassinated on TV. I am not certain if I was watching it as it happened or watching as it was replayed later in the day. I do know that I was the one who told my grandfather about it.

(3) And of course the defining event that year was my dad’s death on November 14. I wrote a little about that day in this installment of Five Days in April.

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(1) My sister graduated from High School. She was the goody two-shoes of the family and I would later be asked by many of our mutual teachers why I couldn’t behave as well as she did. I got in more trouble, but bet I had a lot more fun!

(2) I went with my dad to see my sister at college. She was a freshman at Randolph Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. When dad and I were walking down a dormitory hall, we had to keep yelling “Man in the hall!” so naked co-eds wouldn’t accidently appear. Fortunately I was too young to think about what might happen if I forgot to yell that.

(3) I used to spend some afternoons at my dad’s Ford Dealership. The salesmen liked to advise me how to negotiate for a bigger allowance (in hindsight almost certainly to annoy my dad). I recall successfully negotiating for 55 cents a week (up from 50 cents) and thinking I had hit it big.

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(1) I was a robot in my kindergarten play. My dad made a costume out of a cardboard box, a hat box and some wrapping paper tubes. That costume remained in my mom’s attic until she died in 1998.

(2) I started first grade at Cheraw Primary School, in Mrs. Lawrimore’s class. I remember nervous about starting “real” school. Whit Fowler must have been nervous too. He threw up on my arm before I even made it into the classroom.

(3) Someone drug me to see The Sound of Music, and the scars still haven’t healed. I really, really don’t like that movie. I honestly believe that my continuing distaste for musicals originates from that one movie.

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