Dim the lights, the home movies are starting
Kiddie pools, banana seats, a phone on the kitchen wall and a whole neighborhood that knew your name. Let’s flip through it one more time.
The phone hung on the kitchen wall, and so did you
One phone for the whole family, a cord that reached about nine feet, and no idea who was calling until you picked up. If it was for your big sister, good luck getting it back.
Phone rules at our house
Twirl the cord around your finger the whole time you talk.
Need privacy? Stretch it all the way into the closet.
Long distance is expensive. Talk fast!
Bored? Call the time lady. “At the tone, the time will be…”
Need a ride? Call collect, say “Mom-come-get-me” and hang up.
Know every friend’s number by heart.
8Bugs Bunny/Road Runner—Cartoon
Wile E. Coyote orders one more rocket from Acme. (C)
6Super Friends—Cartoon
“Wonder Twin powers, activate!” (60 min.) (C)
6Scooby-Doo—Cartoon
Those meddling kids unmask another ghost. (C)
13Pink Panther—Cartoon
Dead-dum, dead-dum… (C)
Close-Up
Land of the Lost 13 9:00
A routine expedition, the greatest earthquake ever known, and a family stuck with dinosaurs. Watch it from behind the couch.
6Schoolhouse Rock—Educational
“Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?” (C)
6813Cartoons End—Go outside
And be home for supper. (C)
Saturday mornings came in on rabbit ears
Up before your parents, two feet from the TV, with a bowl of cereal (the prize was at the bottom, so you ate fast). Fuzzy picture? Somebody had to go stand next to the antenna and hold very still.
Tinfoil never improved reception enough.
The bus dropped you off, and the toy box was calling
Homework could wait. (It usually waited until the bus ride the next morning.)
Stretch Armstrong. Everybody wanted to know what was inside. (Gooey corn syrup!)
The Slinky. Down the stairs once, perfectly. Then tangled forever.
Also somewhere in that toy box:
Lite-Brite, making things with light
Push the colored pegs through the black paper, flip on the bulb and… magic. (Then spend a week finding pegs in the shag carpet.) Go ahead: grab a peg and drag it somewhere new, tap one to pull it out, or tap an empty hole to push one in.
Then the Atari showed up
Wood grain on the console, one red button on the joystick and 160 × 192 pixels of pure magic. Two players, one TV, and a lot of arguing over whose turn it was.
Pick a cartridge, then click the TV to play. Mouse, finger or arrow keys to move; click or space bar to fire. You’re Player 1.
Every 70s kid grew up to be somebody
Our executive director, Matt Wilson, squeaked in at the very end of the 70s. So we raided his family’s photo album. (Sorry, Matt.)
Picture day. Not one hair out of place.
Stretching that phone cord as far as it would go.
Christmas with his big sister and little brother.
Senior pictures, and #20 on the court.
Somebody was always in the picture with him. That’s the whole idea behind mentoring: every kid deserves a grown-up in the frame.
Be home when the streetlights come on
We rode bikes until dark, drank from the garden hose and played kick the can until somebody’s mom hollered. And somehow, a neighbor always knew whose kid you were. Someone was always keeping an eye out for us.
A lot of Boone County kids today don’t have that someone. You could be the grown-up who shows up, about an hour a week.
Be the grown-up who shows upBehind this: downtown Lebanon, 1976.
Photo credits: Stretch Armstrong by Alex Beattie (public domain); Slinky by Roger McLassus, CC BY-SA 3.0; Atari 2600 by Evan Amos (public domain); downtown Lebanon, 1976, by Indiana Landmarks via IU Indianapolis University Library, CC BY 4.0. All via Wikimedia Commons.