Memory tags

A friend sent me a neat video of movie stars all on stage in 1974. They all look so young and glamorous. June Allyson, Jimmy Stewart, Liz Taylor. Watch this and see if you can remember that year. All I can remember is that I must have been young and glamorous, too. Memory is kind, you know.

movie stars

I looked back for pictures, and I must have been behind the camera, because I can't find many. This one was taken for publicity for a summer humanities course I taught at the Museum of Fine Arts. Where was the glamour? No plunging neckline with a stunning diamond lavalier like Liz? I wore bow blouses? No makeup, even then?

No, the mid-seventies were the hippie years, in our half-hearted, middle class way. No summer of love in San Francisco, no naked dancing at Woodstock. We had carpools. I did drive a VW bus with peace signs in the windows and flowered curtains and a bed in the back, and you could catch a whiff of dope on a warm summer evening. We were over-achievers, not slackers. Our daily carpool had 5 mothers, nine children, and stopped at three schools.

You had to take your carpool, and if you were sick you got a substitute. One of the mothers was "sick" a lot and her daughter would go to kindergarten in pajamas, slippers, and a mink stole. Her in-laws' liveried chauffeur would drive for her. Our youngest asked if he was a garbage man, because he had never seen another black man up close.

My friends and I painted, wove, made pottery, jewelry, sculpture and even macrame, and hung them at our arts center. It has morphed into the respectable Morean Arts Center, Chihuly Collection and Clay Works, and I'm sure they don't smoke anything in there now. We went to weekend art fairs and festivals and sold stuff to one another.

We spent a lot of time at our lake in Citrus County. We camped in tents, slept in hammocks, swam in the lake, peed in the woods, and the kids were all over the place. We dragged a ratty travel trailer up there and friends, Fred and Jerry,  added a room and a porch. Friends and their friends stayed there from time to time, and nobody had a key. We locked the door with a piece of duct tape.

So the seventies weren't glamorous, and neither were we.  Maybe we could have worked harder at it, but we did just fine. Once or twice we got dressed up in fancy clothes and went to the Yacht Club or a dance but it wasn't right for us.