I drove a Ford Pinto to school on the first day of my senior year. To understand the significance of that, the Class of 2025 can learn the dangers of owning a Pinto. The design of their fuel tank and the position of the rear axle made them susceptible to exploding in a fire during a rear-end collision by using Google on their cellphones.
In 1975, my classmates didn’t have Google or cellphones. If we needed to look up something that happened recently, we had to go to the library and peer through newspaper clips. If it was more than 10 years old, we looked it up in encyclopedias. Most of us got our encyclopedias from the grocery stores, where they were sold one letter a week. If our moms forgot one week, we had holes in our collection. We were missing the “K” and “T” volumes.
We didn’t have satellite radios or MP3s. We had 8-tracks. After you played them several times, two tracks played over each other, so you had to wedge a piece of cardboard to play only one track. Ask your parents. Or your grandparents.
We had sideburns, plaid bellbottom pants, cheesy mustaches and mood rings. Boys didn’t have tattoos or earrings. And if we misbehaved in school, we got paddled. In my school, they were called “licks.” The physical education coaches knew how to swing up to catch the lower part of your bottom cheeks to lift you onto your toes. I have firsthand knowledge of that.
Our prom theme was Chicago’s “Just You and Me.” During slow dances, chaperones made sure the boy’s hands didn’t slip below the small of the girl’s back. There were no metal detectors at the door, no off-duty police officers and no threats.
We had dances, plays and concerts. We didn’t send texts to each other. We talked face-to-face. We created friendships and relationships, not acquaintances and contact lists.
This may be difficult to believe, but for $10 and a note from a parent, a student could buy a smoking card. There was a small section outside between buildings that was roped off—literally; it was an area 12-foot by 12-foot with four poles and a single rope—where students could step inside the ropes for a quick smoke between classes or during lunch.
I trust the Class of 2025 is more intelligent than that.
My generation turned off the news. We watched the U.S. military, including my father, fight in Vietnam on the nightly news for years. It was watching how sausage is made. The war officially ended on April 30, 1975 – one month before we graduated. President Nixon also resigned in disgrace during my senior year. The real world was too exhausting, so we turned it off. I imagine it still feels that way.
Two months before I got my diploma, two of my friends and I drove to Lakeland to see our first big concert. First, everyone around us smoked something that smelled like somebody’s dirty sock was on fire. Then the lights dimmed, the stage exploded, confetti shot from cannons, and the speakers were so loud they knocked us out of our seats.
Four rockers with tall platformed shoes walked on stage dressed like the leather interior of my father’s Ford Thunderbird. They, indeed, were the hottest band in the land: KISS.
Looking back, my senior seemed like simpler times. Back then, the biggest worry was getting $5 to buy enough gas to drive to Disney World for the week to work (where I made $82 a week to empty garbage cans.)
We had the same challenges 50 years ago as this year’s graduating class. What does history hold for us? Is college the right move? Do I want to take a year off to play?
My favorite bands now were the biggest bands of the 1970s, like Yes, Chicago, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Earth, Wind and Fire, KISS, Pink Floyd, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, ZZ Top, Steely Dan, Foghat, The Outlaws, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Aerosmith.
I was only 17 during my freshman year at UCF (for the first two years, it was Florida Technological University). And back then, college was $300 a quarter, plus books. Now, counting a parking sticker, you can go to college for less than $1,800 a year.
I miss the more superficial, happier life of high school. My biggest worry was making a $63 car payment for my Ford Pinto, which, thankfully, never exploded.
