All hands on .... deck?

The Love Boat sailed Television Land from 1977 to 1986, at which time I found it far-fetched and cheesey.   Lately it’s been screening on ‘retro’ channels, and although it’s truly over-ripe now,  I feel a certain affection for it.  There’s a nostalgic enjoyment/horror in revisiting the fashions and hairstyles of the era, and it’s quite fun seeing almost every American TV face of the era appearing as a guest star sooner or later.

But watching it in 2012, with extra ‘real life’ tucked under my belt, I can’t help but notice the following:

"Can you stop her writing this crap?"

Did the boat steer itself?  Captain Stubing seemed to spend his entire day walking up and down the cabin corridors or stalking passengers on the deck and by the pool.  Wasn’t that Julie’s job? With all the time he spent gazing into the eyes of rich beautiful widows and unhappily married women, was the boat a Costa Concordia waiting to happen?  I could just picture him getting into the first available lifeboat with his Louis Vitton luggage,  Florence Henderson and a souvenir pinjada.








Julie’s excitement levels were pretty smacky - maybe her room was too near fumes from the engine.  Speaking of which, her cabin was so NOT the cramped, only-fits-one space that ship staff are allotted.

Julie (Lauren Tewes) THEN

Julie (Lauren Tewes) NOW

The ocean was never rough and nobody ever got seasick.  Probably that was a was a good thing if you were a woman, ‘cause the ship Doctor (imaginatively known as Doc) would try to cure that by saying something inappropriately personal and maybe even trying for a pash.  Doc was a CREEP.

Tedster.

One thing hasn’t changed since I first watched the show, and in my more recent viewings:  Ted McGinley is a FINE looking man J

Mia Culpa

Mia Culpa-Farrow

If I’d been old enough to understand how curses work, I would have cursed Mia Farrow and the super-short hairstyle that women the world over would copy, well into the 1970s.

At six years old, I lacked the words (and physical strength) to challenge my mother as she allowed the hairdresser to chop off my long curls.  I remember staring into the salon mirror, too proud to cry, but my face like thunder, as the stylist thinned what hair was left, into that voguish waif cut.

 At home, I sat at my dressing table, telling Barbie, Sindy and Chrissy (the doll whose hair could grow just by pressing a button in her back) how upset I was, all the while combing, combing, combing what was left of my hair in the belief this would somehow hasten the regrowth. 

Cindy Brady rockin' the rope ribbons

By the following year, I had enough hair to wear The Pageboy – another ugly, but super-popular style of the 70s.   Better still, I reached that milestone that female victims of Very Short Hair know all too well:  my hair was now jusssssst long enough to pull into a ponytail, without ‘bits’ falling short of the elastic.   With great joy, I added the touch d’jour:  a rope ribbon.   I think elsewhere they were known as soft wool ribbons?   Although ropelike in shape, they were very soft to the touch.  

I didn’t know any girl who’d wear pigtails, plaits or a ponytail, without dressing it up.  Baubles and ribbons were the finishing touch.  If you wore your hair down, matching barrettes were the way to go.  Teachers made an enormous fuss if your hair fell anywhere near your face.  Long fringes, we were told, could lead to blindness. At this point, we began falling into two camps: girls with conformist hair, and those with The Shag.  I thought The Shag (and "The Lioness") looked pretty exciting, but flashbacks to my last Major Haircut left me shy of scissors coming anywhere remotely close to my shoulders.

So the majority of us clung to our lengthy locks.  Our mothers longed for us to forever wear pigtails that sat high and springy above our ears, but as you got closer to – say – ten years of age, the pigtails became big bunches of hair that sat lower on your head, and much closer to your face.   Thus you had graduated from being Cindy to being Marcia.   

And if that doesn’t make sense ... you weren’t a child of the seventies 

             

Putting The Past Out To Pasture

Swamped in a smorgasbord of media choice, will today’s children ever know what it’s like to be sentimentally attached to a book?

I had so many ‘favourite’ books. Some I loved for their stories, some for the illustrations, others for what they’d meant as a gift, and one simply because I’d saved so long to buy it.  (Another concept that might be lost on Generation Y: delayed gratification)

A book could become tatty with use, but you loved it no less.  Perhaps even more, because the tat said “much used, much loved.” My Enid Blyton books were still with me in my 20s.  Even non-bookish types have been known to secrete a dog-eared Little Golden Book in the back of a wardrobe.   Of course, we romantically imagine that any children we might have, will love them as much as we did.  

Certainly Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree trilogy has stood the test of time (although I can never forgive the PC crew for changing the names of the children – as if modern kids couldn’t handle having a Dick and Fanny on the same page, puhleeeeze). 

Eventually I shed most of mine, disappointed that my firstborn didn’t get the same buzz from The Naughtiest Girl as I did.   I’ve blogged before about my general dismay that Milly Molly Mandy and the girls of the Chalet School are barely known to anyone under 40, but we can’t keep looking back ... right?

That’s what I tell myself today as I sort through a stash of my oldest books.  It's finally time to discard “The All Colour Book of Horses”

First published in 1972, the illustrations have an old-fashioned tone to them.  Hell, it’s so dated, there’s even a ‘recent’ photo of Princess Anne competing on Doublet.  I’m not into horses anymore.  And yet ... gazing at the Arab mare and foal on the cover, I’m transported back to the Christmas when my heart rose to my throat with the excitement of receiving this gift. I remember how for years – yes, literally years – I would check in with this book, studying each photo, inventing a name for each horse.

This book has no relevance to my life now.  And yet ... it’s so hard to bin it.

Bitchin' about the Kitchen

One of the great changes to the traditional family home in the late seventies, was the kitchen being incorporated into the main living area.   Previously, kitchens had been entirely self-contained rooms in which to prepare and eat food.   Perhaps we can thank the growth of the Womens Movement for this revolution in home life.  Until then, women Knew Their Place, which was often the confines of the kitchen: preparing meals, cooking, or washing dishes; certainly not distracted by *gasp* the high-mindedness of male conversation.

Would you believe these 'used'  60s ramekins are currently listed on ebay for $50?  Quick, raid Mum's cupboard!

Formal dining rooms (and not everybody had them) were used only with guests.  All other meals were eaten at a table in the kitchen.  Add to that the typical (nuclear) family structure of the time, rules about ‘table manners’ and you realise how very different life is today.  When was the last time you heard a child being told to keep their elbows off the table?

If the aspirational kitchen of the 60s was a shiny laminated ‘mod’ experience, the 70s kitchen was quite the opposite.  The “farmhouse” look was much favoured, rich in yellowed pine.  A beaten copper rangehood was often the focal point.  Pans dangling from ceiling hooks supposedly added to the ‘country’ feel, as did decorative cake-tins hung in random formation on the walls

As the decade wore on, cupboards in walnut stain also became popular.  People with faux-Tudor leanings preferred mahogany.   A timber benchtop, though desirable, was a luxury for most and somewhat impractical, so laminates still had their place.   Favoured shades were lime green and egg-yolk yellow.  Formica did some more upmarket heavily textured laminates, the most popular by far being a dark brown flecked with red and orange, that looked like a volcano had spewed on the benchtop.

Did your Mum have cannisters like these?

At odds with the ‘au naturel’ vibe was the way women loved to display all their kitchen gadgets, especially electric frypans, electric can-openers, vertical grills (“what are they?” I hear the under 30s ask) and most of all, the beloved Kenwood Chef.  Sets of saucepans enamelled in red, burnt orange or olive green completed the ‘look.’

Earthenware dinner sets became groovy (attractive but could get very “hot!hot!hot!”) and a set of chocolate brown coffee cups or ramekins was de rigueur.

Thank goodness wallpaper was falling out of vogue (in Australia at least. Europeans and Americans stayed with it several decades more).  One of the more popular patterns here in the early 70s was a brick or lattice wall with ivy growing over it.  Into the 1980s, large block-mount photos of baskets of  gourds became curiously popular.

Window dressings?  Where I grew up, a single style raged through every kitchen in Adelaide - cafe curtains: a frill along the top, matching half-curtain below.  But the best part of the 70s house belonged to those kitchens that were still separate from the main living area but adjacent to a designated ‘meals’ area, for the two would usually be divided by a set of half-sized swinging saloon doors.  Most children (and probably quite a few dads) got in touch with their inner Clint Eastwood on a daily basis.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go check on the Apricot Chicken Casserole.

Top of the Shops

Before malls became the main way to shop, every suburb had a small strip of shops, most having no particular appeal to children, except perhaps the candy counter at the delicatessen*

I grew up in the time just before supermarkets were particularly 'super.'  Rather, they were boring places with checquered linoleum floors were you bought non-perishables that were packed into large brown bags.   Meat and vegetables still had their own shops.  

Butcher shops were always fun, because butchers were always so damned happy and whistled a lot.  Presumably, hacking through bones all day with a cleaver is a great de-stressor.  Cheery chaps in striped aprons strode a sawdusted floor to add fake green ivy to their displays of meat, and no child left the shop without a free fat slice of of fritz**

Next-door was the greengrocery, a darkish store that always smelled of stale cabbage.  Shoppers would tell the  proprietor what fruit and vegetables they wanted, but the owner would fill the bag for them -  none of this ‘choose your own’ caper, folks.  The brown bag would then closed with a three-spin twist.   Into the string bag it went, as we headed on to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. 

Pharmacies were always mysteriously quiet, and the pharmacist took forever to dispense your prescription, to be sure you had time to browse their range of over-priced goods.  To be fair though, most prescription items then weren’t ready-packed, much less blister-packed.  The pharmacist would measure out the tablets into a container, or mix and a bottle a syrup from scratch.    You’d know your order was close to ready when you heard the clatter of the typewriter as Mr Pharmacist (it was always a Mr - no female pharmacists in these parts in the 70s!) prepared the label for your “Chest Elixir” or “Indigestion Tablets” or “Ipecac and Squills” ... whatever exotique concoction it might be.

And then we headed home, passing the hairdressing salon, peering in at women having their hair coiled around rollers or perming rods (a perm or a 'set' was more common then than a cut or colour).  At the back of the salon (which would usually have a pretentious French name or a French woman’s name) would be a row of women reading magazines as they sat under hairdryers that looked like enormous hardboiled eggs.

If we’d been very, very good, we’d be given a small coin to feed the into one of the dispensing machines in front of the delicatessen: a gobstopper perhaps, or for a little more, a tiny little useless toy.    A boy would be lucky to get a teeny-tiny little paratrooper figurine with a papery/plasticky “parachute” attached to it with strings; the best a girl could hope for was a garish ring with an adjustable band (that generally broke after just one adjustment)

I just realised something as I wrote the last paragraph: the condition of getting a treat was that we’d displayed good behaviour during the outing.   These days, children seem to feel they’re entitled to these treats, and parents often give them not only freely, but even to ‘shut the kid up’ if they whine for it.    And, sad to say, I think a lot of modern kids would scoff at the fact we were so easily pleased by a dicky little toy, a Freddo Frog or little bag of mixed candy.

 

 

*  Delicatessan (subject of a future blog) = corner store/candy store

**  Fritz is a.k.a. Baloney or Devon

Please Mister Crocodile ... Stop Her Wallowing in The Seventies

Before computer games,  before video games – in other words, back when indoor games were either board games or card games -  many of us “Seventies Kids” enjoyed fabulous yard and playground games.   A few of those games have survived; many have not.

Interesting place for the kiddies to play eh?

Apart from the stock-standards Chasey and Hide-n-Seek, Brandy (or Branding) was simply about trying to dodge or out-run someone who was intent on pelting you hard with a tennis ball.  The ‘branding’ was supposed to be legs only, but of course some players aimed too high (not always by accident, especially if they were taunted enough) and the game would end in tears.

I’m trying to recall whether this was the same as Red Rover -  perhaps someone can advise me?  Possibly it might now be banned in today’s politically-correct schoolyards

I doubt Clapping Games still have currency – certainly my youngest daughter hasn’t a clue what I’m on about when I mention it.   These games (usually one-on-one) involved some rather complex clapping patterns, as you chanted a ditty - “Under The Brown Bush” was the best-known one. .  My favourite was “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” although it could get spectacularly boring after a couple of minutes.  (A bit like this blog).

Skipping has become more of a sport than the pure fun it once was. You may remember the four basic skips (high, low, jolly, pepper) and the rope game that arose from them?  The only other one I recall is “My Mother Said.”  

Better still was Elastics (which needs no explanation for those who remember how much fun a minimum of three people could have with a long piece of elastic, knotted into a loop).  

Chalked games on the ground – variations of hopscotch – were perhaps of an earlier time, although we did some elaborate spiral variations of them.  

But it didn’t come more low-tech than standing face-out from a wall, doing clever things with a tennis ball tied into a stocking leg.  A variation on this involved tying the stocking to your ankle and artfully moving along as the ball constantly circled one ankle. 

Here’s a game that may perhaps have different versions in different states/countries: “Please Mr Crocodile.”  The rest of the chant was “may I cross the Jordan River without getting wet?”   “Mr Crocodile” would reply “only if you’re wearing the color .... “(names color).   If you were wearing it, you could safely cross the ‘river’ patrolled by Mr Crocodile, but if not, you had to run the gauntlet.  So desperate were some of us to cross safely, we weren’t above flashing our knickers if it provided the  color-match.  (I still recall my great joy when Mum one day bought me home a pair of mutli-colored knickers)

And finally Statues (a.k.a. in Australia as “Creepy Up”) – a game which has stood the test of time, though is not the daily occurrence it was in schoolyards of the 1970s.  The person who was “It” faced a wall, as the others stood in a line some distance behind, and attempted to creep up on “It,” without being caught moving (ie freezing to a ‘statue’) when “It” sporadically turned around to try and catch you out.  The goal was to reach “It” and tap him/her on the back, then rush back to the starting line as "It" gave chase and tried to catch you.  Screaming optional.

********************** PHUNKY PHOOTWEAR ***********************

courtesy http://www.vintage-heels.co.uk

The 70s was surely the most innovative decade for footwear.  Platform soles were bigger and chunkier than in any time in history and I absolutely coveted them.  I remember being 11 years old, begging my mother for a pair and not liking her arguments which featured those old chestnuts (1) “not good for developing feet” and (2) “where would you wear them?” 

 

The other newbie of the time was the thigh-high lace-up boot, especially in white.  (Yes, a reworking of something marching girls had worn years before, but not the platform heels and not with hot pants).

Nobody used the term ‘trainers’ for sports shoes; they were called sports shoes and THE one to have was the Adidas three-stripe.  Leather footwear for sport was a novelty in itself, since most of us had grown up wearing canvas ‘sandshoes’ (aka plimsolls in the UK) to play tennis or basketball.

The other fashionable sports footwear of the day was the Converse Hi-Top – then known (in Australia at least) as a ‘gym boot.’  And like many older styles, they’ve come back around in fashion decades later.   Desert boots also reigned popular for much of the 70s for casual wear.

Thanks to the hippie movement, we also saw footwear that borrowed heavily from ethnic traditions.  Strappy suede sandals and beaded moccasins, were of course lifted straight from the American Indians.  Clogs were popular for the first time outside of the Netherlands, but greatly funked-up, with only the soles being wooden.  Man I loved my clogs  - apart from the fact everyone could hear you coming *CLOG-CLOG-CLOG*

In the late 70s, espadrilles appeared (again, a resurfacing of an old fashion, formerly resort wear in Western Europe and the beaches of Miami).  And finally, we must reference Slap Thongs, those odd rectangular straw-soled flip-flops with velvet straps (which came in a few colors but we all knew it had to be black or nothing).

No fashion since has been entirely innovative; the only completely ‘new’ idea I can think of is peep-toed boots and really ... it smacks of designer desperation doesn’t it?

This post is based on memories, some knowledge and lots of opinion.  Feel free to dispute or add your own thoughts!