Sometimes it is hard to look back at a particular time frame and remember just what was going on in our lives and the world around us. In 1979 I think I thought of myself as just a healthy, normal, All-American girl or woman if being thirty-three qualified me for that. I was thinking that I had died and gone to heaven living in Kansas City and actually it was a pretty interesting year.
The average cost of a new house was $58,100.00 and the cost of gas was 86 cents. A new mercury Cougar cost $6,430.00 and a new Mustang was $4,494.00. ESPN started broadcasting for the first time competing with ABC Wide World of Sports.
Best album of the year was "Saturday Night Fever" although Pink Floyd's "The Wall" sold 150 copies in the UK in 2 hours. Other hit makers were Donna Summer, Billy Joel, The Village People, Michael Jackson The Bee Gees, Prince and Rod Stewart. Movies that came out were "Superman, The Movie", "Kramer vs. Kramer", "the Muppet Movie", "Alien" and "Star Trek".
It actually snowed in the Sahara Desert, Ted Combs roller skated 5,193 miles from LA to NYC, the Walkman debuted with a price of $200.00, the first snowboard was invented and the game Trivial Pursuit appeared. The popular toys were Hot Wheels, Nerf Balls. Barbie dolls and Atari. Television gave us 60 minutes, MASH, Mork & Mindy, SNL, Happy Days and 43 million people watched Elvis on ABC.
In the thirteen years that Dennis and I had been married by 1979 we had moved eight different times through three different states and five different towns. Three of the moves were due to job changes while the rest came from someone being unhappy with what ever house we were living in. The amazing fact in all the moves was that we actually lived in one house for eight of those years. It wasn't all bad as I think it gave me good skills to become a home mover expert and helped me develop decorating abilities to some make of those places even habitable.
My attitude about cars has always been if it started when you turned the key, could make it's way down the road and back then it was fine. It did not have to be shiny or new. In the thirteen years married to Dennis we had actually had nineteen vehicles and three dragsters. In the early years before Ford Motor Company there were some really cool ones I wished I still had like the '61 and '41 Chevys or the '37 Ford and the '52 Ford pickup. We did still have the '50 Mercury that we bought for me to drive in 1967. But then there were the endless array of Ford lease vehicles that changed every September. I can't complain about the lease cars from Ford as most of them cost under a hundred dollars a month with all insurance and maintenance paid. They were all top of the line vehicles fully loaded with all the bling so they could be sold as "executive company cars". The only thing we had to do was to put gas in them. The only hard part was to remember what I was driving when I went to find the car in a parking lot. Dennis of course had a company car but I did not count those in the nineteen and I could add eight more onto the total count.
The revolving garage door was confusing but then again growing up with two hot rod brothers, living and helping through engine swaps, weekly clutch repairs on one vehicle and Dennis travelling five days a week for many years gave me more auto mechanic knowledge than a lot of guys had. Then there was an occasion when I tore the race car engine down one night when Dennis was gone to see what damage the big kabooie caused one Saturday at the races. I am even proud of my first place trophy for being the fastest at changing spark plugs. It was all really fun and I am glad I got so much car knowledge in my little brain.
As far as the brain goes it took me four colleges, four different majors and twelve years to finally graduate. There was always a problem in what other people wanted me to grow up to be and what I wanted. I also discovered that I enjoyed being a stay-at-home Mom although at times the thought of a little extra money popped into my brain and I would go get a "real" job, one where you had to stay in one place for "X" number of hours. That never worked out well as it was more fun to stay home, play with the kids and put on a stack of record albums while I danced my way through house-cleaning.
There were a lot of world events going on in 1979 but I did not pay much attention to them. It was the era of the Women's Liberation Movement that I never really understood. Even though I was in a less than happy marriage and medical school was difficult for women to be accepted I felt like I could not have been more liberated. I had a great volunteer job, wrote a bi-weekly column for the local paper, did a monthly twelve page newsletter for the New Neighbors, had a beautiful house, nice cars even if I didn't care about them, great friends and neighbors.
Just another one of those years when it felt great to have been born as a Baby Boomer. There was great music, pretty cool cars, respect for others and a general attitude that there was an element of fun in everything that needed to be done.
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