Song of the '70s - 1. Song of the '70s

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Song of the ‘70s

 

i.

A too-insistent song stirred me awake

In morning’s yet sleeping half-light,

And this tome of a bygone age I’ll yield

To invoke some of its delight.

For daily such times drift farther away

And fade from living memory

To be consigned to the history books:

Truth and lies’ repository.

 

Yes, I’ll sing of the 1970s –

What a kid then in those hours

Felt and saw, and lived in experience –

So, come now my Muse; my Powers.

Let me raise my voice to turn back the clock,

And all of my memories bring

To bear on an era sadly long dead,

For now I start my chant and sing:

 

 

Of patent leather platforms

Shoeing the feet of the boys,

And beaded moccasin flats

Riding those of the girls.

Of mood rings cabochon

Steeling a pirate-booty

On the digits of teens –

From a happy purple

To a sallow yellow

And misery and disappointment,

A million glances tell

How a teen body feels.

Of googly-eyed rocks

Caged within the plastic ribs

Of dishwasher soap dispensers

Or with painted eyes or mouths

Or with monkey-fur toupees –

Pets, housed loose on

Dresser tops or in boxes tagged:

"Danger – Pet Rock!"

Or Wacky Packy stickers

Still smelling red and gummy

Straight from the wax paper packs –

Stuck everywhere – the gum

In great wads left under

Iridescent Formica tabletops.

Of Solid Gold '79 dancers

Reigned over by a divine

Dionne Warwick – of TV for kids,

Woody Woodpecker everyday at 3;

Tarzan on Sunday at 9 –

Wrestling at the Chase at 11,

And late night riskiness

We kids not supposed to watch

10:30's Benny Hill.

Of the inner dark and brooding

Space: 1999, to the carefree

Junkmen in space

Their celestial garbage truck

Taking them from world to world.

At night, the Specials our folks

Wanted to watch, they lined up

One after another –

Tony Orlando and Dawn

Singing Kung Fu Fighters;

Sonny and Cher, divorced,

But pledging "I Got You, Babe"

And The Carpenters with

"Rainy Days and Mondays" –

But on Saturday mornings, we kids ruled

With Scooby-Doo,

The Land of the Lost,

Bugs Bunny too

H.R. Pufnstuf tossed.

The younger had an everyday

Dose of Sesame Street

And Roger's slip on and off

Of tennis shoes. Yes, we

Would be his.

And of prime-time

Game shows, Joker's Wild

And the Newlywed Game.

Reruns too – Love, American Style;

Flipper and Emergency!

Roots changed the world in '77,

Taught much of what we needed to know.

And jokers Gay reigned

From panel and square:

Reilly from The Match Game;

Lynde from way out Hollywood –

And everywhere,

Wayland Flowers and Madam

She with chattery choppers,

He with a fey dip of the shoulder.

On our bodies were clad

The good, the bad, the uncomfortable –

What was wrong with cotton?

No, we wore tight scratchy

Bellbottoms of triple-knit polyester –

A chafe for a chafe –

On our feet, plastic sandals

Made in West Germany,

While the 'rich' kids got

Suede Hush Puppies, or

Glorious Thom McAn's.

New were flannel-lined and zipped

Windbreakers with poly shells –

Colors were choice – mainly a maroon,

Or other shades of red.

Zippers broke quickly –

The wind broke through.

The mall and the Happy Meal –

Star Wars figures, cut out collector's cards,

All with a tinge of

French fry grease

And the tangy bite of salty fingers –

How happy were we!

Yes, and on TV, commercials

For older folks to collect

Franklin Mint model cars,

Or plates, plates, plates –

Collect them all!

From Raggedy Andy to

The Rocky Mountains,

And of lead-paint

Glasses to get one by one –

A soda-filled glass

With Hamburglar or Grimace –

Or mom and pop burger joints

Selling a set with Popeye,

And Wimpy and Swee'Pea too.

And my song sings of inspiration –

How we boys all would grow

To be paramedics and firefighters,

Or doctors or nurses too,

Because of one show – Emergency!

And how in '76 Dorothy Hamil

Spun her tutu medley over the ice –

Bruce Jenner shyly smiled from the podium,

And both encouraged kids to dream

From the front of a Wheaties box.

1976, that magic year!

Everywhere Betsy Ross' flag, even

In Montreal to wave Jenner on,

The Schnuck's toy soldier logo

Donned red white and blue,

White stars on his double sashes –

Tall ships paraded before Lady Liberty,

All in best of honor as

Sailor upon sailor stood

on yard upon yard

To greet her like the free men they were.

That Thanksgiving, Charles Kuralt

Hosted the Macy's Parade,

And I first learned that

Benjamin Franklin wanted

The turkey to be our national bird,

While that summer, The Screamin' Eagle,

The world's fastest roller coaster

Ran us local kids up and over

And dropped and made us duck

At 65 miles per hour. She was the last

Of the great wooden coasters built.

 

And my song too is of the seasons –

Spring then, when the air was

Many times less polluted than ours –

A breath of which reminded,

With joy, what to have life meant.

To the field we'd go,

Our hands overladen with things to

Pay tribute to the freshness

Above and in our heads –

Kites; little pairs of sticks and paper,

The older kids laid them out –

A dab of glue, a smidge of time,

And skeins of line – kites, kites –

How to run into the wind,

How to hold the other's kite, to run,

To release – To Soar! with

The bit of stick and paper and glue.

And my song too is of

Model planes big enough to seat

Us boys' G.I. Joes. Such love

Was needed – Q-tips to clean

The many moving parts –

Grease dabbed to make those engines roar;

Model engineering all bent

To serve the awe and riot

Of boyhood laughter –

Of rising cheer and wonder,

To know a model plane

Flies all on its own,

Just as the mighty ones

Did during the war

To win us our chance

To fly a perfect Spring day.

 

And my song is

Of Summer –

The days growing hotter then

Slip 'n Slides in most back yards,

Cutoff jeans the best attire

To glide down its

Watery runway.

Days at the public pool –

Splash, not too close to

The deep end –

Proper trunks required,

One pieces for the girls,

Later, men naked beneath

The pool room's shower,

And afterwards to

The ice cream shack –

The swank go for

The Drumstick,

The girls for the chocolate dips,

And me – my heart

Was only cooled

By Fred and Wilma

On the cardboard tube

With plastic plunger and straw

That elevates Orange Sherbet

To my parched soul.

A smile in flavor.

 

And my song too

Is of Autumn –

Or as we kids only knew it – Fall.

Of plastic masks

So hard to breathe from,

So shallow to see out of –

And moms' over concern

With broken-zip windbreakers

Over, and spoiling, our box costumes –

Cowboys and paramedics,

Dracula and Cinderella,

All readily printed

On polyester slip-on frocks –

Imagination brought it to be

The crudely obvious thing

We wanted to become –

So the candy comes,

Our plastic jack o' lanterns groan –

Mary Janes, and snippets of

Kit Kats, $100,000 Bars, Baby Ruths,

Reggie! Bars, and Zero Bars

With their white chocolate coating,

And ever and anon

Black and orange wax-papered

Peanut butter chews.

All spilled out – the six of us

Rooting and categorizing –

All of us trading:

My candy bracelets

Swapped to the girls for

Packs of Pop Rocks,

Almond Joys for some

Lovely strips of SweeTarts.

The question, the goal became,

Would we, could we, make

The candy last until Thanksgiving?

The girls by then still had a few;

The boys, never.

And in school, the turkeys

Drawn by silhouette of hand,

The printed cutouts on the walls

Of Myles Standish and Squanto –

Of spilling cornucopia,

Or Rockwell families and smiling faces.

Of Fall's quickening air,

Of the tinge in the nostrils

Of the wafting burning leaves –

Cloudy skies looming cold overhead.

 

And my song is

Of Winter too.

Winter that came out

From deep recesses

With mothball scented mittens,

Cedar-impinged mufflers,

And coats new every season –

Because we grew and grew.

For the boys; the older boys,

Insideout sheepskin panels

Were stitched together

With outward facing seams,

And big woolly lapels and collars –

For the girls; the older girls,

Down-filled satin was

Quilted like comforters

All about the shoulders,

But pinched in at the waistband.

Polyester earmuffs

Sprung on a painful plastic

Band that put a constant pinch

Just above the ears.

But Christmas – the time to love, for –

Andy Williams

And Bing Crosby,

Their holiday TV specials

In '77 competed, and

Once or twice,

Caren Carpenter sang:

Lovelier than an angel,

About the joys of Christmas

From a TV with the slow sadness

Of one to soon die too young.

Of Kmart Blue Lights –

Loudspeaker announcements –

Flashing from the toy department,

A mom must be dragged there

To see; to suggest; to point out

"It's on sale!"

Oh Kmart, and Venture too –

Floors awash in fragrant wax

And airs pumped with

Popcorn and brain-freeze;

Kiddy brains on Icees blue,

Or on cherry reds.

Looking out the store window,

Who cared if it snowed?

20-inches one year,

A town of Snowmen,

Snowwomen and Snowkids too;

An ice fort with second level

One that stayed for weeks –

A snowy playground,

Enough to last a lifetime –

The fort assaulted in equal turns

By teams of small boy throwers.

Knitted mittens – and only mittens –

Soon soaked through and through

But our hot active fingers felt

Not a tinge of cold.

While in the houses

Surrounding our laughing heads,

Our flying snow-hearts,

The folks unpacked the things

To make the season bright.

Aluminum trees: rotating stands,

Projector lights with colored pie pieces,

Gave way to plastic trees –

First to those cast

In separate branch and needle –

Each one snapping into place,

And each one still rough with seams –

Extra plastic clinging to the edges,

And the whole ensemble smelling

Like forest-green petroleum.

These too were replaced

By bottlebrush shagginess –

Bristle brush branches gliding

Into a numbered sequence

On the pole of a tree trunk.

Colored lights. A riot of which

Blinked and strobed and pulsed and waved –

Red and yellow and green and blue –

Blink; Blink; Blink,

While these colored dots flashed,

Heirloom ornaments glinted.

Shiny Brites from just after the war

Shaped like UFO's,

Or spinning Deco tops;

Clear plastic prisms

With scenes of choir figures

Under glass –

And then the mania –

Every free hand working

To bead, to pin prick,

Styrofoam balls with

Plastic facets, with sequins, with pearls –

Belted round with ribbons pinned

At their north poles into hanging loops.

But also on the tree

Tucked here and there,

A flock-coated Santa,

One arm out,

One arm up,

Pirouetting freely,

Magically deep within

The cast fur needles,

Or deep among

The bottle brushes –

Freely, gaily, he danced –

My task was to find him.

Find this elusive spirit,

The figurehead of Christmas itself.

 

And of New Year’s Eve,

We were allowed to stay

Awake to midnight,

When folks on the TV,

And our folks in our living rooms,

Would wish a Happy Blessing on

One another for the year yet to be.

And on the screen, the people rising to

A standing position, and on our rug,

Our parents would kiss and hug, and

Then all would quiet and cease their

Noisome blowing on tin trumpets,

And with stilled hearts, they’d remember those

Long taken from the scene by death.

We’d sing in national unity the tradition

No one then would dare suggest

Was “out of date.” Auld Lang Syne

Meant something then – to us –

A chance to thank and venerate

All the war dead in Europe and Asia,

All the old acquaintances who

Were still gladly brought to mind,

Never to be forgotten or shirked.

We kids sang along as well, knowing

This special moment was just that:

Special in the way it connected everyone.

 

 

ii.

Well, there you have it; my song is complete,

And in your head you will now find

A place where all my memories can live:

You watched the spool of film unwind.

You saw the flashes; you felt the scratches;

You smelled the joy of the seasons

Coming unalloyed to brighten us kids

With neither questions nor reasons.

 

And with that, it’s back to sleep I may drift,

Free to dream of Marilyn McCoo;

The Carpenters; the Captain and Tennille;

Sonny and Cher; and the others too.

For now, reader, that these treasures have been

Allowed room in you on their own part

To settle in and bring nostalgic thoughts,

I’ll rest, knowing they’re safe in your heart.

 

~

 

 

 

 

 

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