A Week In The Life Of A 1970's Kid

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[00:00:00]Close your eyes for a second. It's a Monday morning in the spring of 1975.

[00:00:05]The alarm clock is ringing on the nightstand. One of those little boxes with the metal bells on top, and it's loud enough to wake the dead. Outside, it's just starting to get light. The air coming through the cracked window smells like wet grass and lilacs. A robin is singing somewhere in the maple tree out front. We pull the covers up over our head one more time. And then mom's voice comes up the stairs. Time to get up.

[00:00:32]Come back with us. One ordinary week, 7 days in the spring of 1975, a 9-year-old kid in a middle class American neighborhood that doesn't exist anymore.

[00:00:44]You might think kids today have it harder with their schedules and their screens. But we had our own version of it. Quieter and slower, but real. Seven days and by the end of this video, you're going to remember things you haven't thought about in 50 years.

[00:01:00]That's a promise. Let's start with Monday. We roll out of bed. The floor is cold because the furnace hasn't kicked on yet. We're wearing footed pajamas, the kind with the plastic grip soles on the bottom. We shuffle down the hall past our sister's room. She's already up, which is unfair. In the kitchen, mom is at the stove. She's wearing her house coat and slippers. There's a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to the sink.

[00:01:25]The radio is on low. The morning news from the local AM station humming in the background. Bacon is frying in the cast iron pan. The coffee is percolating on the back burner. That soft bubbling sound we'll remember for the rest of our lives. Breakfast is eggs and bacon and toast. Sometimes it's cereal, and when it's cereal, it's Captain Crunch or Frosted Flakes, or on a really good day, Lucky Charms. We pour the milk from a glass bottle that the milkman dropped off on the porch the day before. Dad is at the kitchen table. He's reading the newspaper folded in quarters so it fits next to his coffee cup. He's wearing his white shortsleeve dress shirt and a narrow tie. His jacket is on the back of the chair. He doesn't say much in the morning. He reads the sports page. He drinks his coffee black. He leaves for work at 7:15 sharp. The screen door slams behind him. that slam. We'll hear it a thousand times this week and we won't think twice about it until we're 50 years old and somebody's screen door slams somewhere and we're right back in this kitchen. We pack our lunch. A bologna sandwich on Wonderbread with a swipe of Miracle Whip, a bag of Fritos, an apple, a Hostess cupcake if mom was feeling generous at the store. All of it goes into a metal lunchbox with the matching thermos full of milk that will be warm by noon. We grab our books. We grab our jacket. We run out the door.

[00:02:52]The school bus is yellow and loud, and we can hear it coming up the street before we can see it. We stand on the corner with the other kids, chewing on the plastic toggle of our jacket zipper.

[00:03:03]The bus pulls up with that hiss of the brakes, the hydraulic sound that means the day has officially started, whether we're ready or not. School is a brick building with terrarazzo floors and long hallways that smell like floor wax and cafeteria food. The lockers are metal indented. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. The pledge of allegiance comes over the intercom every morning. We stand up. We put our hand over our heart. We look at the flag in the corner of the classroom. The same flag that's been there since the classroom was built. The teacher is Mrs. Henderson, and she has been teaching fourth grade at this school for longer than we've been alive. We learn cursive. We practice the loops of the capital L and the capital Q. And we get in trouble if our B looks like a 13. We do math on mimographed worksheets that still smell like the purple ink from the ditto machine. We sniff the paper. Every kid sniffs the paper. Nobody ever told us not to. At recess, we go outside. The playground has a metal jungle gym that gets hot enough in the sun to burn your hand. The slide is a long silver sheet of metal polished smooth by thousands of little bottoms. The swings go higher than they should, and everybody has jumped off one at the top of the ark at least once just to see what would happen. The girls play hopscotch with chalk lines they drew themselves. The boys play kickball. Nobody is watching us. There are two teachers on duty for 300 kids and they are standing by the door smoking. We are running free. Lunch is in the cafeteria. If we brought our lunch, we sit with our friends and trade. A Hostess cupcake is worth two Oreos. A bag of Fritos is worth a pudding cup. A bologna sandwich is worth nothing because everybody has one. But in the middle of lunch, something happens. A kid we don't know very well, a kid two grades above us, walks past our table and knocks our milk carton over on purpose. He looks right at us when he does it. He doesn't say anything. He just keeps walking and we sit there with the milk spreading across the tray, not knowing what to do. The other kids at our table look away.

[00:05:14]That's when we learn that Monday has teeth. The bell rings at 3:00. We run.

[00:05:20]The bus drops us off at the corner. We walk the last block home alone. We're 9 years old and nobody thinks anything of it. Mom is not waiting at the door. Mom might be at the grocery store or at her sister's house or at the beauty parlor getting her hair set. We have a key on a piece of yarn around our neck, tucked into our shirt. We let ourselves in. The house is quiet. Quiet in a way that houses aren't quiet anymore. We put our books on the kitchen table. We pour a glass of Kool-Aid from the pitcher in the fridge. We grab a handful of Oreos and we plop down in front of the television. There are three channels worth watching after school. Reruns of The Brady Bunch or Gilligans Island or the Flintstones. Scooby-Doo if it's a good day. We watch until we hear mom's car in the driveway. Then we jump up, turn off the TV, and pretend we've been doing our homework the whole time. Mom is not fooled, but she lets us get away with it. Dad gets home at 5:45. The garage door rumbles up. The impala pulls in his shoes on the concrete. He comes through the kitchen, kisses mom on the cheek, puts his briefcase on the chair, loosens his tie. Walter Kankite is on the TV from 6:00 to 6:30. We're not allowed to talk during the news. We sit on the floor and play with our matchbox cars and listen to the serious voices talking about things we don't understand. Dinner is on the table at 6:30. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes and canned green beans. We sit at the table, all of us, dad at the head, mom at the other end, us kids in between. We say, "Grace, we eat. We are not allowed to leave the table until we have cleaned our plate. The green beans are the worst. They are always the worst. But we eat them because leaving food on your plate in 1975 is an insult to your mother." After dinner, we dry the dishes while mom washes. Dad reads the newspaper in the living room. Our sister sets the table for tomorrow morning. By 8:00, we're in our pajamas. Mom tucks us in. She kisses us on the forehead. She leaves the door open a crack because we still like the hallway light on. We lie in bed. We can hear the TV downstairs.

[00:07:34]We can hear mom and dad talking in the kitchen. The dishwasher is running, but we're not thinking about any of that.

[00:07:40]We're thinking about the kid at lunch.

[00:07:43]The way he looked at us. The way he didn't say anything. We don't know it yet, but we're going to see him again tomorrow and the day after, and we're going to have to figure out what to do about it before the week is over.

[00:07:54]Tuesday comes whether we're ready or not. The alarm rings again. Same bells, same cold floor, same screen door slam at 7:15. But Tuesday has a different feeling than Monday. Tuesday is the day we start paying attention. The cereal tastes the same. The bus hisses the same, but our stomach is doing something new. A little tight knot that wasn't there yesterday because we know the cafeteria is coming. At school, we spend the morning watching the clock. The second hand moves slower on Tuesdays.

[00:08:26]Mrs. Henderson is teaching us about the solar system, and we're supposed to be drawing the planets on construction paper, but we're drawing a picture of that kid instead. We don't know his name. We draw him with bigger shoulders than he probably has. At recess, we find our friend, our best friend, the one who lives two streets over and whose mom makes the good cookies. We tell him about the milk. He says his older brother had the same kid on the bus last year. The kid is in fifth grade. His name is Kevin. Kevin has a reputation.

[00:08:58]We feel a little better that it's not just us. But at lunch, Kevin isn't there. We look around the whole cafeteria. He's absent. And that somehow makes it worse because now we have to carry the knot in our stomach for another whole day. Tuesday night is bowling night. Dad has been on the same league team since before we were born.

[00:09:17]The team is called the Alleycats and the shirts are matching polyester with their names embroidered on the front pocket.

[00:09:24]Dad leaves after dinner with his bowling bag. The ball is black and heavy wrapped in a red towel inside the bag. The shoes are in a separate zippered compartment.

[00:09:34]He smells like old spice and hair tonic.

[00:09:37]He won't be home until 11:00. Mom puts us to bed. Mom doesn't bowl. Mom has her own night out, which is Thursday, when she plays cards with her friends. But Tuesday belongs to Dad. We lie in bed and listen to the wind in the maple tree outside our window. We say our prayers.

[00:09:55]We think about Kevin. We think about Wednesday. We fall asleep wondering if he'll be at lunch tomorrow. Wednesday is the middle of the week. Nothing special is supposed to happen on Wednesday. But that's the thing about being a kid. The days nobody expects anything from are the days things actually happen. The cereal is Lucky Charms this morning because mom bought it on sale. The screen door slams at 7:15. The bus hisses up to the corner. And at lunch, Kevin is back. We see him when we come through the cafeteria doors. He's sitting at the far end with the other fifth graders. He's laughing about something. Our knot comes back. We think about sitting somewhere different, but our friend is already at our usual table waving us over. So, we sit. We eat our bologna sandwich. We drink our milk carefully with both hands like we're carrying something breakable. Nothing happens. Kevin never looks at us. He finishes his lunch and leaves. That's it. And here's the strange thing.

[00:10:54]Walking out of the cafeteria, we feel disappointed. Not relieved. disappointed because now the knot in our stomach has nowhere to go. We were ready for something and nothing came. We don't understand why that feels worse than getting our milk knocked over, but it does. After school, we don't go straight home. We meet our friend at the park on the corner of Maple and Elm. Our bikes are Schwins with banana seats and high handlebars. We put baseball cards in the spokes with clothes pins so they make that tick tick tick sound as we ride. We race each other to the end of the street. We lay our bikes down in the grass because nobody locks a bike.

[00:11:32]Nobody even thinks about it. We play until the street lights come on. That's the rule. When the street lights come on, you come home. Every mom in America has the same rule. Every kid in America obeys it. Not because they'll get in trouble if they don't, but because that's just the rule. We come home sweaty, dirty, with grass stains on our jeans and a scraped knee we didn't notice until we got in the door. Mom looks at us size and tells us to wash up for dinner. Dinner is pork chops and applesauce. After dinner, dad drives us to the drugstore because he needs more razor blades. And we get to come along and we get a comic book out of the spinning rack by the register. 15 cents.

[00:12:14]A Superman comic. We read it in the car on the way home under the street lights flashing by through the windshield. By 8:00, we're in bed. We're halfway through the week. The Kevin thing hasn't exploded, but it hasn't gone away either. We fall asleep with a vague sense that the week isn't done with us yet. Thursday morning is different.

[00:12:35]Thursday morning, the sun is out for real. No clouds, the kind of spring light that makes everything look sharp and new. We walk to the bus stop in a t-shirt and a light jacket. The other kids at the corner are in short sleeves.

[00:12:49]Somebody has a whiffle ball. Somebody else is talking about the game they're going to play after school. Thursday is the day the week turns. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday were about surviving. Thursday is about looking forward. At school, everybody is distracted. The teachers are distracted.

[00:13:08]The principal is walking the halls smiling. Tomorrow is Friday and everybody knows it, even the grown-ups.

[00:13:15]At lunch, Kevin walks past our table. We see him coming. We freeze. He doesn't stop. He doesn't even look at us. He walks to the trash can, throws out his tray, and leaves. Our friend whispers, "That's over." And maybe he's right.

[00:13:30]Maybe it is over. Maybe Kevin forgot.

[00:13:33]Maybe the knocked over milk was just something Kevin did and never thought about again. and we carried it for three days for nothing. That's something you learn as a kid that nobody teaches you directly. Sometimes the thing you're scared of isn't scared of you. Sometimes the thing you're scared of doesn't even remember you exist. After school, we ride our bikes to the creek behind the Lutheran church. It's a little creek, maybe 4 ft wide, but in the spring it's full of runoff and moving fast. We catch tadpoles in an empty folders can. We get wet up to our knees. We come home with our socks squishing in our shoes and mom makes us take them off on the porch.

[00:14:14]Thursday night is mom's card night. She leaves at 7:00. Dad is in charge. Dad in charge means we can watch something mom wouldn't let us watch. And we eat popcorn for a second dinner. The Walton's is on at 8. Dad sits in his recliner. We lie on the shag carpet on our stomach, chin on our hands. Johnboy is writing in his journal. Grandpa is telling a story. Grandma is baking. The Waltons are poor, but they love each other. And by the end of the episode, we feel better about everything. At nine, Hawaii 5. Dad doesn't send us to bed.

[00:14:49]He's engrossed. He's forgotten. Jack Lord says, "Book him, Dano." And we mouth the words with him from the floor.

[00:14:56]Mom comes home during the show and finds us still awake and gives dad a look and sends us upstairs. We brush our teeth.

[00:15:04]We climb into bed. Tomorrow is Friday.

[00:15:07]We almost can't sleep for how good tomorrow is going to be. If any of this is coming back to you, tell us the name of the street you grew up on in the comments. Just the street name. No town, no state. We read everyone. Friday morning is the best morning of the week.

[00:15:25]Better than Christmas morning because Christmas morning happens once a year and Friday morning happens every week.

[00:15:32]We are awake before the alarm. We are dressed before mom calls up the stairs.

[00:15:37]We eat our cereal standing at the counter because we can't sit still. The screen door slams at 7:15. Dad is gone.

[00:15:46]But today, dad isn't just going to work.

[00:15:48]Today, dad is coming home early because Friday is the day dad comes home at 5 instead of 5:45. And we get a whole extra 45 minutes of daylight with him.

[00:15:59]He'll probably play catch with us in the yard. He'll definitely have a beer on the back porch while mom cooks. At school, nobody is paying attention in the afternoon. The teachers aren't even trying. We're doing word searches. We're watching a film strip about the Great Lakes. The projector clicks and the voice says, "Advance the film strip now." And somebody has the important job of turning the knob to the next slide.

[00:16:23]We all want that job. At lunch, Kevin isn't there. We don't even look for him.

[00:16:28]The knot is gone. We trade our apple for our friend's fruit rollup and eat the rollup in one bite. After school, there is no homework. It's Friday. Homework is for Sunday night, and Sunday night is a million years away. We go outside and we don't come in until dinner. And after dinner, the whole neighborhood is out.

[00:16:48]The grown-ups are on the porches with a beer or a glass of iced tea. The kids are in the street playing kickball or kick the can or ghost in the graveyard.

[00:16:58]The street lights haven't come on yet.

[00:17:00]We run until we can't breathe. We come home with skinned elbows and grass in our hair and a big smile on our face.

[00:17:09]Friday night is television night. ABC has its block of shows that we've been waiting for all week. Mom makes popcorn on the stove in a big pot with oil. Not in the microwave because we don't have a microwave yet. The popcorn comes in a metal mixing bowl. We pass it around.

[00:17:26]The butter is in a little pitcher that mom melts on the stove. We pour too much on our portion. Dad shakes his head. We fall asleep on the floor with our head on a pillow, watching Steve Austin jump over a wall in slow motion. Dad carries us up to bed. He still carries us on Friday nights. Even though we're getting a little too big for it, we pretend to be asleep so he'll keep carrying us. Mom knows we're pretending. She smiles and doesn't say anything. Saturday morning is sacred. Saturday morning is ours. We wake up at 6:00 a.m. Not because we have to, but because we want to. And we pad downstairs in our pajamas and turn on the TV. The cartoons start at 7 and run until noon. And we watch all of them.

[00:18:10]Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, Scooby-Doo, Super Friends, Schoolhouse Rock in between. Conjunction Junction. What's your function? I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill. We sing along. We know every word. We pour ourselves cereal.

[00:18:26]The bowl is huge. We use too much milk.

[00:18:29]We eat three bowls in a row. Mom and dad are still asleep upstairs. They sleep in on Saturdays. The house is ours. By 10:00, Dad is up. He's in his weekend clothes now, a t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. He's drinking coffee at the kitchen table. He's reading the paper.

[00:18:47]He's making a list of the things he's going to do today. The list always includes mowing the lawn. Mom is up, too. She's making eggs. She's humming along to the radio. She's already dressed because mom is always dressed.

[00:19:02]We don't remember ever seeing mom in pajamas outside of her bedroom. Saturday is for chores. We have to clean our room. We have to take out the trash. We have to help dad rake the last of the winter leaves out of the flower beds. We complain. We drag our feet. But we do it because there are no cartoons in the afternoon and there's nothing else to do anyway. By 2:00, the chores are done.

[00:19:26]The lawn is mowed, the sun is out. Dad is drinking a beer on the back porch.

[00:19:31]Mom is hanging laundry on the clothes line in the backyard, even though we own a dryer because clothes dried on the line smell better. Everybody knows this.

[00:19:40]We get on our bikes. We ride to our friend's house. We play all afternoon.

[00:19:45]There's a baseball game at the park.

[00:19:48]Somebody's dad is umpiring. We come home when the street lights come on. Saturday night is date night. Mom and dad are going out. Mom is getting ready in the bathroom. She has hot rollers in her hair. She's wearing her good dress.

[00:20:02]She's putting on lipstick in the mirror.

[00:20:04]Dad is downstairs in a jacket and tie checking his watch. The babysitter comes over. She's a teenage girl from down the street. She's 15. She charges 50 cents an hour. She brings her own homework and a stack of records. She is in charge of us for the evening. Mom and dad are going to dinner at a supper club or to a movie or to somebody's house for a cocktail party. They'll be home by midnight, maybe later. We get to stay up late. The babysitter lets us watch the Carol Bernett show with her because she loves Carol Bernett. She makes us popcorn. She lets us have one more can of root beer than we should have. When it's time for bed, she reads us one chapter of whatever book we're in the middle of. We fall asleep listening to her laughing on the phone with her boyfriend in the kitchen downstairs. The street light outside our window is making patterns on the ceiling. We're almost done with the week and we don't want it to end. Sunday is church day. We wear our Sunday best. The itchy wool pants. The white shirt with the clip-on tie. The shoes that pinch. Mom wears a dress and a hat. Dad wears his one good suit. We all pile into the impala and drive to the church we've been going to since before we were born. The pews are wooden and uncomfortable. The pastor's sermon is long. We doodle on the bulletin. We count the ceiling tiles. We sing the hymns from the himynel and we know most of them by heart. How great thou art. Amazing grace. Rock of ages.

[00:21:33]After church, there's coffee hour in the basement. The grown-ups stand around drinking coffee and eating little cookies. The kids run around outside. We know everybody. Everybody knows us. The pastor shakes our hand on the way out.

[00:21:49]Sunday dinner is the biggest meal of the week. It's not on the table at 6:30 like every other night. It's on the table at 1:00 and it takes 3 hours to get there.

[00:22:00]Mom has been cooking since we got home from church. The roast is in the oven.

[00:22:04]The potatoes are peeled. The rolls are rising. The pie is cooling on the window sill. Grandma and grandpa come over. The dining room table has the good tablecloth on it. The white one mom only uses on Sundays. The good china comes out of the cabinet. The cloth napkins are folded into triangles. Dinner is roast beef. Mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, rolls with real butter, a jello salad with canned fruit suspended in it, and pie for dessert. Always pie, apple or cherry or chocolate cream. We sit at the table for 2 hours. The grown-ups talk about things we don't understand. We drink our milk. We kick our sister under the table. Grandpa slips us a piece of juicy fruit gum when nobody is looking. After dinner, grandpa falls asleep on the couch. Grandma helps mom with the dishes. Dad watches the game on TV. The kids are turned loose to play outside and we run until our legs give out. Sunday night is quiet. Sunday night is the end of everything good. We take our bath. The whole week catches up with us. There's a sadness on Sunday nights that we can't explain. Maybe it's the homework we haven't done yet. Maybe it's the idea of school tomorrow. Maybe it's just the feeling that the week is ending and we can't do anything about it. At 7:00, the wonderful world of Disney comes on. This is the best thing about Sunday night. The whole family gathers in the living room one last time. Tinkerbell flies across the screen with her magic wand. The Disney castle appears and for an hour, everything is okay again. At 9:00, it's bedtime. Mom comes in and tucks us in. She kisses us on the forehead. She turns off the lamp.

[00:23:52]She leaves the door open a crack because we still like the hallway light on. We lie in bed. We can hear the TV downstairs. We can hear mom and dad talking quietly in the kitchen. The dishwasher is running. The dog is snoring in the hallway. The week is over. Tomorrow, the alarm will ring again. The screen door will slam at 7:15. The bus will hiss up to the corner. A new week will start. Maybe Kevin will be back. Maybe he won't.

[00:24:19]Maybe something else will happen that we can't see coming. But tonight, we're safe. We're in our own bed, in our own house, on our own street. Mom is downstairs. Dad is downstairs. The hallway light is on. And that is enough.

[00:24:32]That was our week. That was a lot of our weeks, more or less, in middlecl class America in 1975.

[00:24:39]We didn't know it was special. We didn't know anything would change. We just knew that breakfast was at 7:00 and dinner was at 6:30 and the street lights meant it was time to come home. We knew our mom was in the kitchen and our dad was in the recliner. We knew our friends lived within walking distance and we could leave the house without anybody worrying. That world is gone now. Not all at once, but piece by piece. The milkman stopped coming. The cartoons stopped coming on Saturday morning. The kids stopped playing in the street. The dinner table got smaller. The television got bigger. The house got fuller of stuff and emptier of people. We're not saying it was better. We're just saying it was ours. If you stayed with us all the way to the end. Here's what we want you to do. In the comments, tell us the name of your third grade teacher. Just the name, nothing else. That way, we'll know you actually watch the whole thing.

[00:25:30]and the people scrolling through the comments will wonder what it means. And one more thing, if your favorite day of the week as a kid was Saturday, hit the like button. If it was Friday, subscribe to the channel. That way, we'll know what kind of kid you were. And thanks for coming back with us. We'll see you in the next