I spent the morning at the Enoch Pratt, reading issues of Time from 1979 and 1980, looking for things that would be very much on my characters’ minds (inflation was 18 percent, the hostage crisis, the 1980 presidential race) and things that might be more subtextual (Mount St. Helens, “Who Shot J.R.?” and an attempt to “normalize” the public view of incest.) Along the way, I jotted down a few things that sounded awfully familiar.
“The art of editing is in decline.”
“Is capitalism working?”
“First-hand look at Afghan rebels.”
“The credit vise tightens.”
“Public libraries are in trouble as they head cashless into the computer age.”
Oh, and from an ad: “We designed Apple to work the way you work.”
I won’t be so simple-minded as to argue that the cyclical nature of things means that we shouldn’t worry about the issues flagged here.” But it’s interesting, no?
It’s also interesting to note that issues of Time magazine used to run at least 100 pages, had local advertising inserts and covered books pretty extensively. I also had no memory of the fact that Reagan told a joke that managed to insult Polish people and Italians. And, maybe, ducks.
Memories of 1979-1980, if you care to share. To paraphrase the old saying about the ’60s: If you remember those years, you probably where there. And mildly depressed.
In October of 1979 I sat in section 34 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore during the World Series that dem O’s choked away to the Pierats. Wild Bill Hagy was the best part about that series and year. Well, Mike Flannigan at 23-9 was also a pretty good part of that year.
I was a Chef at the Hotel Tabard Inn in DC that year and we were wrestling with the introduction of Nouvelle Cuisine from Roger Verge and others in France, as well as the beginning of Asian Fusion and natural and organic products influenced by Alice Waters and others on the US west coast.
It was also the year of the Hanafi Muslims taking hostages at an Islamic Temple in DC, I think. Marion Berry took bullet in that one.
That year I was 25 years old and continuing a spiral downward due to cocaine, living in group houses and working restaurant hours. I was entering a hand to mouth living time that did not really end until almost 5 years later. If they gave awards for what people did at times of their lives, mine would have been BIGGEST DISSAPOINTMENT / BEST HIGH.
Things are better now, 30 years later. And now we have the Nationals, which we did not have then.
1979 � I graduated from high school with a full head of hair, went on my first date (late start � but I made up for that later), and went full time (after high school ended) at the supermarket (a term which, itself, dates me) where I worked. The next year, I bought a brand new car (still the only time I�ve ever done that) � a K-car from Chrysler, because I thought the world of Lee Iacoca (despite probably mis-spelling his name). And I remember that I was always terrible at those Atari games (and I�ve never improved)
my roomate and her boyfriend broke up because he spent too much time and money playing Space Invaders. We gave a big Saturday Night Live theme party, I went as Lisa Lubner. I dated a set of roommates, they didn’t that I was dating both of them.
I graduated from college and started my Colorado adventure.
I was working in the theatre in Boston. During 79/80, there was a production of “Measure for Measure” (Shakespeare, but I don’t need to tell you that), where one of the lead actors had to do a quick change backstage. I had a huge crush on him, a crush that you can only generate when you are are 21 or 22, where you can’t breathe and you sigh all the time) and he would run off stage at the critical moment disguised as a monk with a mustache and then run back on stage returned to his royal status and without the mustache. During the quick change, he would rip off the mustache and, in his hurry, stick it to my breast. At the time, that was thrilling and a bit naughty. Otherwise, he never paid me a bit of attention. I have matured somewhat since then and I am now over the crush.
Other significant factoid: The cast and crew would go out to TJ’s Lounge after most shows and we could get a pitcher of beer for $2.50. Some nights it was hard for all of us to throw in enough money to buy the pitcher.
I graduated from high school in ’79 and started college in ’80. Around that time, President Carter instituted mandatory registration for a possible draft of young men my age. The aim was to send a signal to the Russians that the US was serious about stopping them from invading Afghanistan. I became a war protester by publicly refusing to register. I thought I would go to jail, but instead all that happened was that I could not get college loans. I soon relented and registered.
Kevin C. — my father-in-law was one of those hostages.
Laura, my brother-in-law was too.
Wow. I would like to hear his side of that. I never realized that your SO had a DC connection. Actually, I probably have never considered it.
Kevin, Mr. Simon (father of SO) passed away in April, but you can read about the incident here (cut and paste):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/21/AR2010042104738.html
–Marjorie
Harborplace opened at the end of June, and I had to fight through the traffic, back and forth between Riverside Avenue in South Baltimore and Johns Hopkins Maternity where Billy Logan was being born June 30.
Marjorie – thanks for the link; that was a tremendous article. I thought this part was particularly striking:
>>”In an e-mail, David Simon called his father “warm, optimistic and inclusive.” He recalled his father editing the galley proofs of the younger Simon’s book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets,” about Baltimore homicide detectives: “He tried to systematically delete every single profanity, even those in quotes. He could never be as blunt as the world often is.”
1979-early 1980 was my senior year in high school. I was just discovering the Clash and some of my buddies were looking at me strangely for it. I was dating a pretty girl who happened to live 80 miles away, so I drove a lot, listening to Give ‘Em Enough Rope, Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town on the cheap cassette deck I spent an afternoon installing in my ’75 Toyota Corona. The car had a big burnt hole in the rug where Katie Brown (not her real name) dropped a joint while we were getting high before the French club meeting and neither one of us noticed until we came back after the meeting and the car was full of thick smoke. (Oh, wow…)Fortunately those old polyester rugs were flame retardant, or maybe the fire ran out of air because the windows were closed. In any event, the car reeked for months afterward.
Saw Star Trek the Motion Picture with my girlfriend and her brother and really dug it. Saw it again a few weeks later without the benefit of illegal substances and realized it was actually incredibly boring.
I think there’s a theme developing here.
Oh, and I drank a lot of beer. A. Lot. of. Beer. Bud was my brew of choice, because I didn’t know there was anything better. I had a fake ID I ordered out of the back of Rolling Stone magazine. I got arrested for underage consumption a couple months shy of my 18th birthday when my friend Dave and I were staggering drunkenly home after a night of revelry and Dave waved to a passing patrol car with the beer still in his hand. He’s a scientist now. Go figure.
Wow. A dear family friend was taken hostage that day, too. William Korey. I’ve always wondered if six degrees of separation is an underestimate of the threads that connect us all…
As for my memories of that time, a few days into 1981 I was home from college for a bilateral wisdom tooth extraction, lying of the couch, pretty zoned on codeine, and watching the inauguration. As Reagan began to speak during the post-swearing in-luncheon, the hostages landed in Germany. It was the first time I had ever seen a split screen during a newscast. The networks couldnt figure out where to aim, so they just split the screen and stopped talking.
Fall 1980: Freshman semester in college. Unceremoniously dumped the pretty girlfriend (and no, I’m not proud of the way I did it). Musical horizons expanded exponentially when new friends introduced me to the likes of Talking Heads, Lene Lovich, B-52s, Pylon, Velvet Underground, X, Elvis Costello, Television, etc. Discovered that in college, unlike high school, being funny could actually get you laid if you did it the right way. Joined a fraternity. Drank lots more beer, smoked more weed, and added various other felonious substances to the repertoire. Read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and decided that Gonzo Journalism looked like a pretty neat career path. Discovered that I couldn’t write worth a damn if I was high, so there went that idea. Still, I got into the creative writing program at UNC. After I was done, I didn’t write a another word of fiction for thirteen years.
There was a big push on to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Jimmy Carter was doing squat to help. So, worked on drumming up support for Ted Kennedy to put put pressure on Carter. It didn’t work. Then had to work like crazy to reelect Carter, so Reagan wouldn’t win. That didn’t work either. I worked hard, even though I didn’t think Reagan could win, even being from California. I thought he was a joke and thought others would too. He ended up almost being a god. I think about that, now, when I’m tempted to prognisticate, how elections will turn out and remember how out of touch i could be. I remember there being gas wars and buying gas for 13.9/gal. That was cents, not dollars. That was the early part of ’79. There were also flights from LA to San Francisco for $13.
1979: New to Baltimore (from Atlanta), I was surprised to learn that even in a blizzard, I was expected at work. I also learned what an ice scraper was. Discovered Mr. G’s on Rt 40. Chocolate milkshake to die for.
1980:my uncle-in-law invested his money in long term 18% certificates of deposit. How wise.
Mr. G’s! It shows up again in this book.
One thing that really surprised me was the lavish coverage Time afforded to Kramer vs. Kramer. Long piece on the movie, then three sidebars on the stars.
In 1980 I moved back to Baltimore, just for a year or two, and here I still am. In the fall I did my student teaching at Western, and in January 81 I started at Greenspring Junior High–or were they calling it Middle School by then? don’t recall–teaching students donated by other teachers. What fun! I wasn’t paying much attention to the news or movies, though I did vote.
Re: “Kramer Vs. Kramer”. As I recall (This is TMP), it was still very unusual at the time that a man would be considered for child custody while there was a mother anywhere around, so the movie’s subject was provocative. And Meryl Streep was the new big thing in actresses (back when her name still felt funny to say. There was a time that was true.) with “KvK” and “Deer Hunter” and “Seduction of Joe Tynan” at around the same time.
Who did shoot JR? It was the last night of a very serious drinking career for me. I poured what was supposed to be “one” drink at the beginning of the show. Went into total black out. Came to the next day next to an empty fifth (thats what we called them then.) Climbed up to sobriety, was an uphill battle, but did it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved those days, just did my whole quota by age 30! Reading these comments, I wonder what my very serious child – now a freshman in college, a “scholar-athlete” – is missing in terms of freedom, a sense of the absurd. I suppose it is there, but not mine to see. I do know what I can see does not leave much time for invention…it is a tough existence.
Thanks for the link Marjorie. Mr. Simon led a wonderful life. And, he lived in Olney, where I lived for 13 years until moving to the great midwest in 06. I wonder if I ever passed him in the Safeway or CVS?
Graduated from college in ’79; my senior year was the best. Wrote plays, hung out with actors, smoked a lot of pot, did a lot of drugs, had wild unprotected sex. Ah. Those were the days. Course, once I graduated, all of that stopped, and I became an upstanding citizen. Unfortunately, the country went to hell in a hand basket (now where does that phrase come from?).
Pacman! I owe you one for that, Sean.
I graduated from high school in the spring of �79 and remember experiencing that year as a mixture of fear and exhilaration at the prospect of starting college and meeting so many changes in my life. I was in love with one of my best friends and remember how I burned with jealously when he showed me the white suit and blue shirt, ala John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, that he planned to wear to the prom with another girl. Lots of the kids in my class were wearing the �disco� styles, but I was always a t-shirt and jeans person. Maybe that�s why I spent more time in Urban Cowboy type dance clubs than in discos. My own taste in music ran more to rock and roll. I didn�t have a tape deck, like my friends with newer cars, but I had my 8 track player which worked just fine thank you, and the opening notes of �Jet Airliner� by Steve Miller Band still instantly put me back in that �72 Chevy Malibu like it was yesterday.
Kaye – In 1979 I had a ’73 Chevy Malibu, nicknamed the “Brown Bomber.” Had only had it a few weeks when I wound up having to transport a very muddy group of Naval Academy rugby players to a local school for showers following the messiest rugby game I ever participated in. We never did get all the mud off the seats and floor.
Sean, mine was sort of a brown/copper color with a white roof and best of all a V8 engine! No muddy Rugby guys in mine. Just the occasional spilled teenage beer.
In 1979, I had a 1965 Dodge Polara 4-door, which had a 383 cubic inch V-8, and which always, always, always started. (AM radio only, but back then there were still AM rock and roll stations)
In 1978, we had an epic blizzard, followed by very high-winds and very, very cold air (it was below zero every night, and single digits during the day); and that car never failed to start (although there wasn’t anywhere to go, for awhile there). The day it was towed away to the scrap yard, it still started, but the transmission had given up the ghost.
Kaye – my Malibu was exactly the same color . . . Could they have been siblings???
In the fall of 1979 I started my junior year at Towson State. Attended school full-time and worked 3 part-time jobs. One of my jobs was as an usher at the Towson Center and Stadium. While I don’t remember all the acts and speakers we had that year (I eventually worked there 6 years), I’m pretty sure that was the year Truman Capote had to be escorted off the Towson Center stage a few minutes into a drunken rambling speech. After the shows we would head to the Bratwurst House on Dulaney Valley Road for $3.00 pitchers. Some of us would try a new gizmo called Pacman, that was replacing the old pinball machines.
One of my other jobs was umpiring high school baseball in the Baltimore area. Some of the umpires in my group who also handled Harford County games would talk about a promising player from Aberdeen named Ripken.
I remember being at the Dundalk Heritage Fair during that period and talking with a real estate agent. He joked if I was ready to buy a house, and I joked back that I was going to wait until rates came back down to 6%. His reply was “Not in your lifetime.” I wonder how long he stayed in real estate.
Sean, twins separated at birth! (or production roll out). Brian, my car always started too! We had a rare hard freeze here in Houston in ’80 or ’81 and I remember trying to go out to dinner with friends when the roads had been sanded. Two brand new cars (one of them a Mercedes) would not start so we ended up taking my good old car. Same thing finally took mine out too…the transmission died. I have never loved another car as much as that one. Well, maybe my ex-husband’s Corvette came close…
1979 – That was when I semi-shed my sinfully carefree California lifestyle to go tend to my maternal Arkansas grandmother at the behest of my mother and Baptist preacher uncle…after I thought I had ‘blown it’ ala Easy Rider, by not insisting that I come stay with her in her stubborn solitariness…having recently breezed through that small southern town, dusted with the nostalgia of childhood visits, while my frivolous heart stretched thin with some unbearable yearning as I sped up into the Ozarks with the spector of my quiet living ancestor fading in the rearview mirror.
Of the exotica that swirled around Topanga Canyon comprising my circle of friends and acquaintences, the most memorable sendoff was from Hampton Fancher, who anointed my ‘death watch’ mission with lively enthusiasm. My Grandma had miraculously revived after ‘the plug’ had been pulled on her life supports, and I was seizing my second chance with hurried goodbyes. Hampton must have been working on the first draft screenplay of ‘Blade Runner’ right about then, and was juicy with creative intensity.
Bill Clinton was the youngest governor in the country, and had just resurfaced the infrastructure of Arkansas with fresh asphalt, turning the river bottoms around Tuckerman into a vast playground for me and my bones wheels with sealed bearings. You can’t do all those fancy steps I learned down in Venice Beach on inline skates these days. Mine were black, with neon multi-colored laces, dance trucks and pink front toe-stops. I had blinking lights that attached with velcro…knee and wrist guards…long, long legs and short, short diaper-like wrap thingys worn with skimpy tube tops. Also, I had a strong strap with heavy metal swival hooks at each end, purchased from the Feed Bin at the bottom of Topanga Canyon Blvd where it meets the Pacific Coast Highway. The hooks snapped onto the skate trucks just right for carrying…but served me better when I got it whizzing and twirling on both sides, nunchuk-style, as I whirred past fang-angry country dogs who learned to cease and desist from nipping at my exposed flesh.
Eric Heiden was speed-skating to Olympic gold at Lake Placid, so I interspersed my arabesques with some thrilling low-slung arm swings once in a while, but mostly ‘got it on’ to the likes of Anita Ward’s ‘you can ring my bell..ell…ell, you can ring my bell’ or Dire Straits or whatever my huge AM/FM earphones could tune into. Seven miles to the river and back, through soybean and rice fields, usually good for a pick-up or two screeching to a halt and a good-natured, or not-so ‘whatcha doin that fer?” to answer to…
’79 I was in the army stationed in Germany. Events in Poland and Afghanistan made life a little tense.
I fervently supported Carter (and all Dems) and now I have learned, through my husband’s research on the man, that he charged his secret service detail for leftover food after White House dinners. The first and only President to do that. Also he drank when he and Roseanne were alone but not when they entertained. Thirdly, he lectured every group that dined there mercilessly on any topic he chose. Oh, to be the modest peanut farmer he pretended to be.
Sorry this info shook me to the core. And to think he forbade those Olympic athletes to compete.
Patti, I am a democrat to the core but I hate Carter. He stopped abortions from being performed in military hospitals forcing military women to obtain abortions on the local economy. No so hard in maybe Germany (although a hassle) but harder in Italy, spain, Japan. I loathe the man.
The things I learn here. This is interesting, if disappointing.