Signs of the Times

Here are some reminders of simpler times of the seventies. 

Style

It's funny how there are soooo many shampoos on the market today. Entire aisles in drugstores are nothing but shampoos and conditioners. We had plenty of them as well, back in the seventies.

Probably the most fragrant ... and the commercial that went with it was outrageous... made you want to go wash your hair right then, and have gardens and horses and good looking men around you!

The commercial for the Prell was 'let's drop a pearl in this liquid and see how slow it falls to the bottom.'

  This thickness was good for the hair?

The bottle just screams:  Pick me up!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accessories

Here are a few things that added umph to my attire:

Kissing gloss - and it tasted just like it said. My favorite was Cherry.

Mood Rings - mine was always blue, which meant happy. If you put this on your finger, it would change colors.

Oh, how I loved my little leather purse.

 

 

TOYS

I love seeing old toys from the 60's. These were some of my favorites. Above is the card game, "Busy Bee." My mother still has these and has played them with her grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Timeless classic!

Chatty Kathy had a string that you pulled ... and she talked. I wore mine out so badly that she had to be sent to Norfolk, Virginia to get fixed!

These were known as FLATSY dolls and they came in a picture frame with certain flat toys. They kind of resembled GUMBY.

Part of the Kiddle craze was this Greenie Meanie.

Calamity Jane and her family.

This is a Little Kiddle. I had probably 10 of these. Adorbs!

Vinyl pieces that fit on a shiny board. You could arrange them anyway you wanted. They were called Colorforms.

Creepy Crawlers machine that made bugs. I can't believe I had one of these but I did. I had a lot more respect for bugs then than I do now.

My favorite game: Mouse Trap. It was as much fun to set up as it was to play. 

Fashion

Tie die shirts ... we all had them and we loved to make them.

The top pattern is for SMOCK TOPS. You wore these, most often made by your mother, and you looked pregnant. I liked them because they hid the weight (which I always thought I was fat but really wasn't). I do not understand why this was so popular!
The other shirt is known as a POPCORN blouse. It was tiny without a body in it, stretchy and clingy. It was basically very uncomfortable!

The fashions we wore were in style, so we didn't know any better! If you pulled them out and looked at them now, they are ridiculous. Let me provide a sample!

These are elephant leg, hip hugging blue jeans. Bell bottoms were the rage, and I guarantee my hip huggers were a lot lower than these.

We all had our Sunday go to church go go boots!

These were known as SIZZLER dresses. They had little panties that matched the dress, so you could flounce around without showing your underwear!

Other interests:

 

 

I was born in 1959. I spent my most impressionable childhood years in the seventies - from ages 11 - 21. I love the music of the seventies, the fads, the foods, the fashion, the cars, the lifestyle ... just about everything. There were many milestones I covered in this decade: first love (and second, third, fourth to infinity), alcohol and drugs, marriage, heartache, Myrtle Beach, SC, high school and college. Throughout this blog I hope to bring some memories back, as well as share my musings with you.



I like to collect things (cookbooks, hearts, lava lights, etc), visit antique and thrift stores, scour yard sales, bake and cook, write, read, and even get creative sometimes.

I loved lava lamps. I was given a greenish blue one for Christmas when I was in the seventh grade and it almost never got unplugged. The glow it cast in the room was perfect as a night light and whenever I was stressed, I would just sit, mesmerized by its floating globs.

I also got one of these that same year.  It was yellow, just like this, and vinyl and stuck to you in hot weather. I spent many hours sitting in this, listening to my eight track tapes, or phonograph.

 

Here are some pictures of old records (45s) and eight track tapes. 

My parent's console record player/AM FM radio looked like this. I would play show tune albums on this and dance in the living room.

 My record player actually looked a lot like this. 

I remember that the American Top 100 would come on at the end of every year, and I would record it on a reel to reel tape recorder, and then move it to cassette tapes. Wow, talk about time consuming. The program itself lasted 5 hours. Then, I would have to move the songs onto the cassettes.