Let’s now take a look back at the years 1974 and 1975.
A 1974 new clips stated “The earliest forms of Word Processors appear. Back then they resembled a typewriter more than a computer. Think how this Word processor has changed our lives. This reunion would not have come through without this technology.
1974 was the year of the Watergate Scandal and Richard Nixon becomes the first US president forced to resign from office”. Upon his resignation Gerald Ford became the president and remained president in 1975 through 1976.
Notable 1975 news clips that would change our lives: The Vietnam War finally ended, “Bill Gates and Paul Allen create the company Microsoft”.
In comparing prices between the two years there was a considerable rise in average prices. Inflation and the economy were a big headline. I guess some things never change?
The Average Cost of new house in 1974 was $34,900.00 and climbed to $38,900.00 in 1975
The Average Income in 1974 was $13,900.00 rising to $14,100.00 in 1975
The Average Monthly Rent was $185.00 in 74 and $200.00 in 75
55 cents was the price per gallon of gas in 1974, going down to 44 cents
The Average cost of new car was $3,750.00 in 74 rising to $4,250.00 in, most of us were very lucky to even drive our parents cars!
Median Household Income in 1974 was $11, 197.00 rising to $11,800.00 in 1975
We licked stamps back then, the cost was 8 cents and rose to 10 cents
A Dozen eggs cost 78 cents, lowering to 77 cents in 1975.
A Gallon of milk remained the same price for both years, $1.57
Average price of a coke was 5 cents, coming out of the machine as a glass bottle
We actually had penny candy, 15 cent hamburgers and I’m sure the boys collected the 5 cent pack of baseball cards.
Watermelons had seeds back then, lots of them. Will the kids of the future be able to spit the seeds at each other with seedless watermelons?
In 1974 and 1975 water came out of a faucet, remarkably it still does, but now we are also willing to pay a pretty good price for it and it’s sold everywhere!
A quarter was a decent allowance
And my favorite…… beer was $2.41 a six pack!
Remember when……..
We were allowed to stand up in school, place our hand on our heart and Pledge the Allegiance to the United States of America, we learned patriotism!!!!
Williamson Dairy delivered milk in glass bottles on our doorsteps.
It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
There were no safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison someone.
It took three minutes for our black and white TV’s to warm up. A TV Test Pattern ran across the screen every now and then, most families only had one TV!
The TV Guide was used to find out what there was to watch on TV, now the TV schedule scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
Now guys, you’re going to love this one. You were out of luck when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your chair, walk over to the TV and change the channel!!!
Saturday morning was a big morning for cartoons, kids now have the Cartoon Network all day long, we waited all week for Saturday to come! What are the kids of the day longing for?
It’s like we live in the PP world, Pins and Passwords, a Pin for this, a password for that and you’re pretty much out of luck when you can’t remember either of these!
Over the years we’ve become a quick society, we want everything in an instant, we no longer have to load a camera with film and wait to see our picture. We can take a picture, view it instantly and it can be worldwide within a minute.
Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and catalogs have been replaced by the Internet.
We can buy almost anything we want off the Internet.
We have search engines, Google/Bing to name a few. We no longer have to search an encyclopedia for the information or go to the library and look it up in the card catalog.
We now can have friends, lots of friends, electronic friends, we have Facebook!
Remember back to stereos and Hi-Fi's, Record players…..45 RPM and 78 RPM records! Then 8-track, cassettes, and now CDs, MP3's, Napsters or iTunes! Back then you had to wait around all day to tape your favorite song off the radio, more than likely a transistor radio with a scratchy reception. The DJ would usually talk over the beginning and you’d end up with half a song. The good old tape decks in our cars. We'd play our favorite tape, “eject" when finished, and the tape would come undone falling onto the floor, rendering it useless. And….we have aged when we turn on a radio station and hear our music from the 70’s, it is now known as the oldies or classic rock…..
We have cell phones so we can be accessible 24 hours a day, that phone follows us everywhere,
We can now text a message, a joke, and send a picture to our family and friends instantly through a phone!
And car seats…. We were thrown into the back seat, more than likely with a bunch of siblings and we hung on. If you were lucky, you could sit in the front seat, you would get the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if there was a sudden stop to keep your head from hitting the dashboard.
We now have the news 24 hours a day, we are in touch with the world at all times, we can even get messages sent to our phones to keep us in touch with world events.
Our world has made progress……don't you wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, the simple times, share it with the children of today.
