Nineteen Seventy-Five

I've been meaning to write something about 1975 for months now, but the year is nearly over.  So I'll just post a few thoughts today, and may post some personal reflections another time.

Bernie asks a question that can only be answered by those who are old enough to remember the time: Was life better fifty years ago?

Regardless of Bernie's remarks, the truth is that the question has no factual answer. Whether life was better then depends entirely on one's point of view. And indeed, no matter what year you want to talk about, in human life it is always the best of times or the worst of times - for somebody.  Your answer hinges on whether you feel loved or unloved, content or unsatisfied, hopeful or despairing.

I am annoyed by some people's comments on YouTube and in other places, people who were children or young teens then -- Oh, what a glorious time it was to be alive, a golden age! The music, the clothes, the cars - and everybody was so kind and courteous and loving. Well, no, that's not the way it was -- it was far from a golden age, as this CBS news summary makes clear, for anyone who cares to look back at the reality of 1975:

After long, dreary years of conflict and protests, defeat and deceit, Vietnam and Watergate were finally behind us.  Tricky Dick Nixon was gone, and steady Jerry Ford was in the White House; he survived two assassination attempts by wild-eyed leftist radicals (seriously) in this year.  Other wild-eyed leftist radicals blew up the State Department, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping ended horrifically.  The Middle East was still in turmoil, as it always is, and the Cold War was still on, with the spectre of nuclear war always in the background. The crime rate was rising, and there was a growing sense of decline in American power, politics, money, and manners, from the bold optimism of the Kennedy years to the stagnant malaise of the post-Nixon era.  Many felt the country was going to pot.

The change was felt most acutely in the pocketbook.  Inflation was out of control:  the Oil Crisis of '73 had made the prices of everything go up sharply.  I remember that the price of sugar zoomed from, say, a dollar a bag to five bucks.  (That equals $30 today.)  The same with coffee.  And for the first time in my life, there were empty shelves in the supermarket.  The recession of 1974 was still going strong, and jobs were hard to find.  Your Head Trucker was finding out the hard way that it was just not possible to live well on minimum wage - $1.60 an hour, so take-home pay was about $240 a month.  Rent on my first little cottage was $80 a month, plus phone and utilities.  For comparison, an apartment in a nice complex with swimming pool cost about $120 a month, or more.

My first home after high school was very similar to this one - but the front door was on the side, under a porch roof, and there were no basement stairs, so the kitchen was wide enough for a table and chairs.  It wasn't new, but it was decent, and it was MY place, where I could do as I pleased.  I felt very grown-up,

The placid "happy days" of the 1950s and early 1960s were long gone by this time, as I remember discussing with my friends.  However, I will say that compared to the state of the world today and the polarized society we now live in, it was easier to live without constant fear and dread back then. The world was already quite complex in those days, but it all seemed more understandable somehow - and it was easier to hope that tomorrow would be better.  

In the Deep South, far from the tumults and convulsions in the big cities up north and out west, everyday life was mostly calm and pleasant as long as you could pay your rent and feed yourself:  books, magazines, records, radio, television, movies, church doings, and simple outings with friends were enough to keep a young man occupied.  Nobody had a home computer; cable TV was non-existent, as were VCR's and DVD's.  Phones still had dials, and they were hard-wired into the wall.  You didn't buy one, you rented it from the phone company for a nominal fee, with a choice of four styles and half a dozen colors.

All that would soon begin to change, but as yet, no one felt a need to be "linked in" every single waking moment, and broadcast to the world pictures of their cat, or their butt, or what they were eating at the burger joint.  People would have fallen down on the floor laughing at the very thought of such nonsense.  

But now we live in a world seemingly controlled in nearly every detail by nosy machines and callous trillionaires. Since this old man's exit will be coming up sooner rather than later, I don't obsess about these things, though I deplore them heartily. But God help the younger generations.

Speaking of whom, someone has come up with a way to assimilate them even faster into the Hive Mind: watch this report on a new school with no human teachers -- and shudder.

-----

Scene from the Road: Higher Education

So I stopped by the local junior college yesterday on business, and got a look at the crowd that was there registering for classes.

Scene #1:

Daddy has brought Junior to sign up for college. Daddy, you can tell right off, is a Big Man. Physically and financially. A player in the business world, and somewhere near the top of the pile too. His khaki slacks are neatly pressed, as is the expensive orange polo shirt over a long-sleeved NASCAR tee: the message is crisply casual, just-one-of-the-boys-ha-ha. His smooth, pink, porcine face, framed by graying hair sleekly cut and a pair of streamlined eyeglasses, seems permanently creased into a smirking I-can-sell-you-something smile. His voice carries over the dull roar of the crowd as if he long ago swallowed a public-address system.

Perhaps he owns a car dealership, or a local factory. He is used to being heard, attentively. He calls out to acquaintances he sees in the crowd, he addresses the college staff in a joking, familiar style, as if they are old employees of his. He is glad to be here, he is always glad to be wherever he is, and he knows that everyone else in the room is glad he is here. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s a wonderful world, always, every day, and he’s the man who makes it run that way.

The one thing he cannot make run, however, is Junior. Junior sits slumped in a chair at the registration table, staring blankly at his class schedule, unable to quite comprehend it all. Junior has black, greasy hair like an oil spill slowly dripping over the sallow skin of his pointed face and jutting ears. Junior is letting his beard grow out, but he has only about twenty hairs on his face, and about that many pimples. Junior has just barely graduated from high school but despite his lanky frame, he looks like a 14-year-old, in a black, wrinkled tee embossed with skulls, rotten sneakers, baggy jeans drooped around his thin legs. Junior cannot decide anything. Junior is not the man his father is. And never will be.

Perhaps that is why Daddy is being extra-jovial today, the sunshine man himself, not letting anyone see the deep, deep disappointment that gnaws at his liver. No, Junior will succeed, he must succeed, even if Daddy has to walk him to class every day and carry his books, by God he will make something of this boy. He must get an education no matter what it takes. Junior never looks at his father, no matter how loud the booming voice echoes over his shoulder. He just stares and stares at the bewildering forms and lists and schedules in front of him, mouth agape, his eyes black pools of not-knowing.

Finally, a kind counselor makes a few suggestions. Junior grunts. Uhhh. A few more suggestions. Uhn-uh. “Well, Intro to Philosophy is still open, you want to sign up for that?” A pause. Junior is trying to think, but the gears won’t turn. “I don’t know what that is.” Daddy the Protector leaps to cover the embarrassing admission. “Oh that’s an easy course, son. That’s where you read all those books of mythology and stuff.”

Daddy lays a fatherly grip on his son’s shoulder. Junior does not look up. He is not encouraged. He stares silently at the papers on the table, boring holes through them with his black, sunken eyes. He cannot see anything. His feet twitch up and down, up and down, up and down. But he cannot run.


Scene #2

Another table. Two elderly women are sitting side by side, talking to an advisor. One is short and squat, wearing a red sweat suit. The other is tall and thin, in a blue sweat suit. They have driven a long ways into town for this, and at last they have gotten to the head of the line. Both have white hair and many wrinkles, but the tall one seems much older, and much quieter. Her four-legged, two-wheeled walker stands behind her chair. It is she who is registering for a class.

They do not look like sisters. They do not explain their relationship. They have been listening to the advisor as she explains fees and semester hours, and all of that. The red-suited one is asking the advisor, “Does she have to take freshman English first? She has a bachelor’s degree in home economics.” Out of a folder, she pulls a yellowing piece of paper. The advisor smiles and answers, all right, I think we can exempt her from the freshman English requirement. “Well, she wants to take an advanced writing course, what other English courses do you offer?” The advisor reads off the list of what is available.

“Oh yes, Creative Writing, you would like to take that one, wouldn’t you?”

The blue-suited one smiles a little, starts to speak, hesitates. A thought tumbles forward, slips through her grasp. They are all so slippery now. She looks down at her lap, perhaps it fell there. No. She tries again. Her eyes peer out from under the overhanging folds of her lids, like a couple of timid sparrows hidden in a tree. She is ancient. She knows much, she has seen many things, but the light is so dim now, she cannot find them in the corners of her mind, cannot lay hands on them all, they skitter away in the darkness like cats. But she wants to try. She is still here. Somewhere in the dusk, a little spring still bubbles.

Once upon a time there was a young, hopeful girl in there. She loved books, and going to school. Perhaps she is still there, a dryad soul in the gnarled body. She tries again. It seems to take all her strength, but finally she catches hold of some words and pushes them out. They seem to come from far, far away, from another time, another world.

“I write Poems and Letters to the Editor.” The words come out wobbly and askew, but there, she said it. She is a Writer.

A shy, proud smile illuminates her face for an instant, and then melts back into a wrinkle. A moment of sunlight on a dark, cloudy day. A dream that will not die, even now as the shadows of night are gathering around her.

The red-suited one has been waiting silently for this triumph, secretly willing her to speak all this time. She pats her companion’s hand, nods proudly, and turns to smile broadly at the advisor. “Yes, she writes things, she loves to write. But would it be all right if I came and sat with her in class? On account of her health, you know. Or would we have to pay extra for that?”

A pause. The advisor clears her throat, smiles at them. “Oh yes, I think we can accommodate you that way. No extra charge.”


This is my 300th post, and the Blue Truck is up to more than 8,000 hits. Appreciate your interest and support, guys.