The '70s: What the Hell Were We Thinking?

Every time my kids look at old family photographs taken back in the '70s, they snicker, and then with inquisitive smiles ask, "Dad, what the hell were you people thinking? You look like a bunch of clowns!" I always give my usual, thoughtful response-an answer that will surely enlighten my offspring: "Oh why don't you just shut the hell up!" But of course I know exactly what my kids mean because it is highly unlikely that any decade in American history ever produced more objectionable clothes, hairstyles, music, or home decorating than the 1970s.

The true answer to the "what were you thinking" question probably has something to do with the fact that we Baby-boomers inhaled, injected, and ingested so many illegal pharmaceuticals in the '60s that the style choices we made in the '70s all seemed like good ideas at the time. The clown clothes and Mike Brady hairstyles actually looked good to us!

Even older folks were getting caught up in the look of the 70s. Seniors were now wearing leisure suits, those ridiculous polyester abominations that dominate family pictures of the era. Even I drew the line at leisure suits. "You'll never get me into one of those! They are the silliest looking things I've ever seen," I protested to my wife as I adjusted my bib-sized pink, polka dot tie that looked so bitchin' with my red, blue, yellow and green flowered silk shirt, bell bottom jeans, and platform shoes.

And the craziness carried over into our music. Only excessive drug use could explain the popularity of disco music. One of the most popular films of the decade was Saturday Night Fever, an atrocious pile of crap filled with the irritating high-pitched howls of the Bee Gees ("Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive!") and John Travolta prancing about in a white suit that today would be considered too gay to wear to the GLAAD Awards.

The disco craze was inexplicable. Here was an entire generation raised on The Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Led Zeppelin dancing to Disco Duck and other brainless ditties in a manner that would otherwise embarrass reasonable, thinking human beings. Obviously our brain cells had become impaired to the point where our abilities to reason and think had gone bye-bye.

Unfortunate fashion and style decisions weren't limited to clothes. Wildly designed and colored wallpaper was liable to appear on any wall (or ceiling!) in your house. Kitchen countertops came in bright colors like that atrocious orange poor Alice had to look at every day while preparing meals for the obnoxious Brady kids. Dealing with those numbskulls should have been punishment enough for whatever crime it was that got her sentenced to Brady servitude.

And speaking of kitchens, at some point, legislation had apparently passed during the '70s that limited appliances to just two colors. Every kitchen in America was required to have a refrigerator and a range in the wretched colors of either avocado green or harvest gold.

Despite the fact thirty-plus years have passed, some relics from the '70s have somehow survived and continue to haunt our sensibilities. Hanging on the walls in the laundry room of our house are some of the most hideous cabinets ever produced by man. Our assumption is that these offensive wooden boxes had once hung in our kitchen and were mercifully replaced by the merely ugly cabinets that were there when we moved in. We replaced the kitchen cabinets, but have not yet removed the repulsive souvenirs of the decade from hell that hang above the washer and dryer in the laundry room. Who the hell would ever buy these vomit-inducing pieces of crap? It is hard to imagine anyone thinking, "Gee honey, these will look great in our kitchen!" The only place they might possibly look good is in a bonfire.

Not that everything from the '70s was bad. There was one contribution from the fashion world that, for males like me, nearly made up for all the other crap produced that decade. Hot Pants! I still recall my first look at this wonderful invention. I was a typical horny high school boy when, on that particular day, the eyes of every boy in school melted at the sight of one of our finest looking classmates-Heather was her name-tantalizingly strolling down the halls wearing the most extraordinary pair of legs any of us had ever seen (a vision that forever will be etched in my mind) and giving me what I immediately deemed finally a good reason to attend school. I'm sure she was wearing clothes, but to my underdeveloped little mind-thanks to the hot pants-Heather was completely naked and I was unable to breathe for several minutes. I have no idea whatever became of Heather, but I will always be grateful to her, because on that day my brain officially lost its virginity.

Yes, the decade of the '70s is very much a mystery. What the hell were we thinking?

I'll try to explain it to you as soon as I'm done smoking this joint.