The Wander Years

Free-ranging our childhoods in 1970's America

Credit: Flickr. This is a Chrysler Town and Country station wagon like the one my Aunt Judy had. It put the ‘wanderful’ world at our feet.

I’ve wanted to collaborate with another Substack author for awhile. Deborah Hewitt is a genuine joy to read. When I asked her if she wanted to tell a shared story about life and ‘vacation’ in the 1970’s, she said “I do”. Deborah and I laughed about our station wagons and how we survived flying around without seatbelts or a care in the world! This is our combined story of the most wonderful, ‘wander’ years of our childhoods. We sincerely hope you enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it on our trip down memory lane.

Cori’s Wander Years

I wish I'd known then what I know now - that those days were the Wander Years. The good old days. If not the prime of my life, they were certainly the prime fun of my life. If I’d understood how much I’d miss those days, I would have been more present and more satisfied with the simple things in life like licking the cake batter (scratch-made) from the beaters without ANY fear of salmonella from chicken eggs, seeing the sunset because we played out until well after dark every day, and sleeping in fresh air with the sound of crickets all summer because air conditioning just wasn’t a thing. Maybe I was present then and just don’t realize it. As the third of 6 children, as I write this I know for a fact my childhood was great.

RCA Colored TV

The 1970’s in rural America were simply heaven. My family had what’s referred to now as the Kool Aid house. We weren’t actually allowed to watch TV, except Hee-Haw and the Lawrence Welk show on Saturday night and Pittsburg Steelers football on Sundays. The rest of the time we were outside - yes year round - playing.

Credit: My dad. Us girls youngest (top) to oldest (bottom). Later in life we built a pyramid for pics.

President’s Physical Fitness Award Anyone?

My dad coached the little league team and every kid in the entire neighborhood, where we lived in the 70’s, played at our house. Of course these were all physical games. Childhood obesity wasn’t a thing. Our small rural school of ~200 students had maybe 2 kids who were even overweight. The games were football, capture the flag, baseball, softball, kick the can, jump rope, and so on. We walked or rode bikes everywhere, including 2 miles away to the gas station for a soda pop. During the winter we went sledding and ice skated on frozen ponds nearby. And there were always games inside too. Board games were big then, but most of what our family did was play cards. As kids we were fascinated when our aunts and uncles came to visit because they played all these complex games like euchre, pinochle, hearts, and spades. We hovered around the table dreaming of the day we were old enough to play at that table. Even when we were of age, we got our butts trounced for many years. My dad was especially good at hearts.

More like National Lampoon’s Vacation than Adam Sandler’s Blended

Living with our grandparents and my dad’s disabled sister, there were 11 of us some of the time. This made vacations like we think of them now, unimaginable. The most we did was drive to Pittsburgh to stay with a great aunt of my moms once to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play at 3-Rivers Stadium. That was exciting! After my mom died, my dad took us to Virginia for a few weeks every summer to visit his brother’s wife, our Aunt Judy, who having 4 kids of her own was pretty brave to make it 10 during those weeks. She packed us into her station wagon and took us camping, to amusement parks, and occasionally to see historical sites like Harper’s Ferry where I remember standing in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia at the same time. LOL. One other time all 11 of us loaded up to drive to Vermont for my cousin’s wedding but alas the car overheated so we turned around and went back home. I think that was one of the most disappointing days of my life.

What we did instead of a glorious week at the ocean, like hubby and I did with our 2 sons every summer, was make the most of our weekends. We went roller skating - which was the hottest social setting in PA in the 70’s I can tell you. We also went to the drive-in movies at a place called The Starlight. There we could swing on the metal swings until the movie started then sack on sleeping bags on the ground beside the car and see the biggest, boldest pictures we could have imagined. I had my first ‘date’ in 5th grade with a boy from my dad’s ball team. We saw Jaws. LOL.

Credit: Robinson Library. We skated on a wooden floor just like this one.

We all wanted to be ‘dancing queens’.

Credit: Centre Daily Times newspaper. The Starlite is no longer a drive-in theatre, but drive-ins are making a comeback.

Get Out! (of the house)

When spring came it was candy and running around at the little league games, where dad coached for years and 2 of my sisters were on his team. One spring that I recall, mom and dad took us all camping. We fished all day, but then the rain came. By the time the 8 (mom, dad, 5 girls and my baby brother) of us were settled into the tent it was practically floating away and dad gathered us up and took us all home.

While summer was in full swing, we hit at least one carnival every year. That was magnificent! All the lights and food, and knowing just everyone. It was special then, not like it is now with areas grown up so much we don’t know hardly anyone. Every summer there were 2 family reunions, both on my mom’s side. Those were amazing because SO MANY people came, mostly Eastern European - a lot of alcohol and poker at those reunions for the adults and for the kids - you guessed it - yard games like sack races, wheelbarrow races, three-legged races, peanut scramble and such. And the food, it was heaven. Summer was also for long Sunday trail hikes through the woods where dad could tire us out. When the weather was iffy, it was an hours-long car ride through the winding country roads where most of us fell asleep, except my sister Nina who always got so car sick. While spring and summer weather lasted, we got up to no good with our uncle Tommy, the same age as my oldest sister Beth. He would rope us into working on his mini bike or building a dune-buggy out of spare parts. He only had one rule - if you started a project with him you had to finish. The first time staying to the end we learned a valuable lesson - let him build his own dune-buggy. LOL.

Credit: My dad. Family picnics were an every day occurrence in the summer.

Over the fall and winter, the square dancing at the tiny community center started and every Saturday night for a period of weeks a caller showed up. This is where we really learned to dance and socialize with girl friends and boy friends. It was another fascinating slice of Americana that just doesn’t exist anymore, at least not where I grew up. Living rural, we also learned to properly handle guns used to hunt so we always had meat over the winter. And we all trudged through the snow in the rural woods to find the best live Christmas tree each year, which we helped drag back and decorate.

Year-round, a Stroehmann Sunbeam bread truck came to deliver (you heard that right) bread and milk to our house. If we were crafty enough to squirrel away nickels, we could have the most magical thing imaginable - a factory-made brownie - for $0.20. This seemed a steep price considering the candy at the ball games ranged from a penny to a whopping 5 cents a piece. And let’s face it, the candy and the running around were the only reasons us non-players went to the ball games.

These Rose Colored Glasses Fit Me Perfectly

We all know the look-back lens can be rosy. But despite common difficulties with money, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence, the 70’s kids I knew grew up in a safe, social, fun, healthy, and happy childhood. It was wondrous and boy howdy, did we ever wander, feral by today’s standards. Even though all the adults smoked back then, none of my family had health issues. With 6 kids, we made it to adulthood with ONLY 1 broken bone. It’s amazing how product safety features and coddling have supplanted common sense in the generations since the 1970’s. But, we know better and the great news is we’re approaching our grandparenting years where we can help the younger generations get right back to some Wander years of their own.

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When Cori asked me if I'd be interested in a collab about life in the 70's, I was game! Having immigrated, from England, in the 60's with my mum and dad, life was definitely different here. Bargaining my mash banana sandwiches with kids, for American school cafeteria sheet cake was a firm "NO" - but I'm sure glad this was a yes! 

Deborah’s Wander Years

The three foot mustard colored cord, which extended to nine, from the wall phone in the kitchen, got me a foot into the hallway, so I could stare at the beaded curtain divider and have a private an awkward conversation with my friend Susie Karnes about why my Mom did not want me to swim in Robin Collis’ doughboy pool.

The much unwanted first time beauty salon haircut, teased into a flip, needed to go. I’d ride my bike over to Susie’s house, two blocks north, wherein we would ride over to Robin’s house, two blocks south of my block, where I would dive head first into the blue plastic lined water tub, and come up victorious.

It was worth skipping The Brady Bunch for.

Yep, that was life as a nine year old fourth grade girl in 1970 California. I was addicted to Beverly Clearly books, singer Carole King, Soul Music, my purple leather fringed vest, bargained by the British in Tijuana, a Bobby Sherman poster hanging life-size in my bedroom, and the 93 bottles of various Avon collectibles parked on a vanity courtesy of MUM the Avon lady.

Mrs. Bridwell, my fifth grade teacher, was straight out of the 1950’s. It was 1971 and she wore dresses like Lucille Ball with wide cinched belts and drove an old car. One day she asked me if I would be interested in running for “Class Historian.” I did my best to avoid the sting of dodgeballs on the playground, and wandered wondered why me?

No explanation

Turned out, no one else wanted the job of organizing punch and cookies for parties keeping the class record. So after writing clever lyrics to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” I put together a rather adorable stick figure poster of myself, professional flip hairdo, raindrops everywhere, holding a “vote for me” sign in my tiny stick hand. Dad lent me his tape recorder, I sang loudly over the original song at recess, the crowd was sparse, no one stuffed the ballot boxes and I won!

“Raindrops keep falling on my head

If you don’t vo o o te for me

I’ll soon be dead

Cryin’s not for me…. la la la la la.”

Oh, and the 1971 earthquake, epicenter San Fernando, where we lived. I clung to my bed wondering if all those bottles broke, as my Dad flew past the room in his underwear. I had never seen anything like that before, nor did our gregarious Jewish neighbors, the Drapkin Family, who happened to catch him running outside to shut the air raid shaker alarm off under our camper truck. For all the war stories I’d been told, I thought this was it. Surely my underwear clad dad would protect us.

Turned out we experienced the side of America that really scared my parents and reminded them of war.

I always loved summer. Summer at home was about music on the console, entertaining British friends, waiting for the ice-cream truck, picking weeds and attending an air show. It also meant camping, riding motorcycles and testing out whatever dune buggy dad was working on. Dad delighted in highlighting road maps and Mom/Mum was a good sport to take care of us in 11 feet. We Brits took our show on the road with the tea kettle on. My parents worked doubly hard for this. Trust me I sat in many homes while mom pulled out the lipstick sample tray.

Because everyone goes camping dressed like this :)

Some of the best days of childhood in the 70’s were camping with my Granddad, when he visited from England. Despite him flushing the mon….nooo…maaa….tic toilet, my dad had so proudly installed, (for granddad) all night long, I will never forget it or how overwhelmed he was with The Grand Canyon.

Luckily, Granddad wasn’t there to witness the camping trip where dad thought he’d take us fishing. After several hours of trying to place different worms on small little hooks, waiting hours for nothing, dad suddenly, yet quietly, hurled, like a shot-putter, all the fishing gear into the lake mumbling%*^#@!*&$$$#!!!badwords. I still laugh about it. Or the time I was so nauseated, while traveling in the camper, Dad let me get out and walk, while he slowly drove along side of me. In a canyon. I remember the windows rolled down and Stevie Wonder’s Golden Lady playing on the 8-track while mom kept saying “are you okay,” out the window?

Please enjoy this more down-to-earth picture of our fishing trip, with dad in his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest fishing beanie, and me (13) with a matching attitude. At least we got the camping dress code right by this point.

When we had to move “to save me from joining a gang…” seriously… but never, dad surprised me by welding together a nifty stabbing tool for my backpack at San Quentin Robert Frost Jr. High. Mom took it away.

I did, however, get to have a pet rat. I named him Ben, after the song. He was my best friend. I loved the way he broke out of his cage every morning to climb up on my bed, sit on my chest, on his little hinds, and say hello. I really loved that my parents didn’t mind.

And well, there’s those gender affirming jeans years.

My best friend Jane and I hung out every single day after school. She lived up the street from me.

Sharing an extremely dry sense of humor, a love of candy vs. homework and an affinity to boy’s Levi’s, we spent several of our afternoons wandering the neighborhood walking to Soskin’s Drug Store, for candy, in baggy brand new boys 501’s, (that we somehow convinced our parents to buy, much like the “beach bus” we hopped onto on weekends). On the way home we’d laugh about the silliest things and plan how we were going to “age our Levi’s.” Back then they came in stiff unwashed dark navy. They needed shrinking and a lot of wear to look cool, so we hopped up on Jane’s white rock roof house and proceeded to rub our butts on the rocks, laughing til we cried.

The end result was some white chalk-like stains that perplexed our moms.

Our next idea was riding skateboards up and down our block, bending, falling, in order to get the stiffness out of them. Neither of us rode skateboards, and I can’t remember how we got the wooden things with wheels, yet there we were giving it our best shot on an earthquake ridden desperately uneven sidewalk. At one point I hit a bump, took flight, and landed with the 501 copper interior buttons (from the fly) gouged into my belly. Stunned, ready to cry out in pain, I looked up from my facedown spread eagle position to see Jane rolling in tears on the grassy parkway. I remember thinking it was indeed an inadvertently successful accident. My Levi’s looked terrible.

Jane and I on my front lawn, 14 yrs old, with my puppy Charlie, and our Levi’s…shrunk and worn down. Mine more bleached out.

Would you trade your cellphones and all this social tech for these wandering love train years of yesterday?

We certainly would :)

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