Pick a Year

[saavedra77]

I purloined this meme idea from cakeface:

Cite a year between 1967 and 2007 in your comment, and I'll tell you how I remember it. If it's too far back for me to clearly recall, I'll fill in the gaps with family lore and/or plausible surmises.

Hint: election years are good. I've been paying attention to those since I was in single digits.

Comments

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

In 1974, in fact throughout the 1970s, I lived on my grandparents' seven-acre farm in Mt. Laurel, NJ. We had an apple orchard, a peach orchard, two grape arbors, as well as a pear, a mulberry, and a few cherry trees. We raised chickens. And had about a dozen cats.

I went to school about a mile away at Fleetwood Elementary, in Rancocas Woods. I finished first, started second grade, that year. I was a mite on the shy side. I had friends, but they were all of the geek variety.

Perhaps it's telling that some of my most vivid memories from 1974 came from television:

This was the year of Watergate, and that was pretty much my introduction to politics. I remember sitting at my grandmother's feet throughout that winter, spring, and summer watching it all unfold on the TV news. My grandma really, really, really despised Richard Nixon--well before it was popular to do so. Events seemed to bear out her instincts.

On the other hand, my second grade teacher waved aside questions about the imploding presidency, saying "I think they'll find out someday that all presidents have done things like that."

I mulled this vaguely disturbing thought over for awhile and ultimately came down on grandma's side. All that talk of break-ins, cover-ups, impeachment, smoking guns, and Saturday Night Massacres made an impression, after all.

And you've got to admit, he was a shifty-looking bastard.

I remember the day that Nixon resigned, his retreat to the helicopter, that pathetic two-handed "victory" wave, as a kind of vindication. Quien engaña no gana.

The year's other indelible TV spectacle was the kidnapping and brainwashing of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The security-camera footage of the heiress in her militant beret, marching into that bank with a machine gun is second only to Nixon's fake victory wave as an image of the year.

On a cheerier note, my favorite TV show at the time, by far, was Kung Fu. Although I only really cared about the parts set in China. I liked it even better than Star Trek reruns. I coveted a Kung Fu lunchbox like the ones I saw other kids carrying at school, but, alas, never got one.

And everyone at school was so excited about Evel Knievel, even if he didn't manage to jump the Snake River. It was just immensely cool that he tried.