A Humorous Look Back at 1975: The year I graduated from high school

Years ago, I wrote an essay on 1957, the year I was born. I now have an essay on 1975, the year I graduated from high school. Enjoy.

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The year wasn’t even half over when we lined up under the bleachers at Legion Stadium for graduation. The evening was warm and humid. Each graduate had been given five tickets. If it rained and we had to move inside the gym at Hoggard, we could only use two tickets. Thankfully, the night stayed dry. In the crowd were my parents, one of my grandmothers and my surviving grandfather along with my brother. The whole evening was a blur. A brown paper bag with a bottle passed down the aisle. Jokes were shared. Despite this, somehow, we all made it across the stage to receive our diploma. 

That weekend I went with my church’s youth group on a camping trip to Topsail Island. For those of us who just graduated, it was our last hurrah. Saturday night under the pavilion, a band played for several hours, mostly Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” I was sick of the song halfway through the evening. To this day, I can never hear it without recalling that night on Topsail. Thankfully, we can blame the Class of 1973 for that song.  Cell phone cameras were still a quarter century away, which kept us from taking embarrassing photos of each other.

People acted like graduation was a big deal, and it certainly felt like a bigger deal than my other graduations although it didn’t involve researching and writing a dissertation. Academically, I barely skated across the podium. But I did received all kinds of gifts. I was barely shaving and given enough aftershave lotion that I never had to buy another bottle. Before I ran out, I grew a beard and threw out what remained. I’ve had a beard for nearly 40 years. As for the gifts, I had to rush to write thank you notes before stamps jumped by 30% (from 10 to 13 cents) at the end of the year. Today, to buy a roll of stamps, I might have to mortgage my house. 

So much had already happened in 1975 by that night on the sixth of June. In January, I turned 18 and was supposed to register for the draft. I got around to it in March and was read the riot-act for being late. Nobody cared. As a country, we hadn’t drafted anyone in several years. But I still received a draft card which in North Carolina could be lent out to someone my size for the purpose of buying beer. The card had no photo, only height, weight, color of hair and eyes. 

Of course, for much of the winter and early spring of 1975, as the news reported on the collapse of Cambodia and Vietnam, the war remained real. The question as to if we would go back in to save South Vietnam stayed on our minds. With an unelected President in the White House and people wanting to put Watergate behind us, that wasn’t to be. Those of us with draft cards were saved from having to decide whether we should go to war or buy flannel shirts and head north. 

Speaking of Watergate, the year began with four of Nixon’s crony’s, including his Attorney General, being found guilty and sentenced to prison. Take note, Ms. Bondi. Of course, the former President, whom I had defended in Coach Fisher’s class, avoided prosecution. But he lived out his life in shame for what he’d done. When the truth came out, I felt ashamed for having defended him.

Men’s clothing in 1975 could be best described as horondous. We strutted around in bright bell bottoms and double-knit leisure suits. The later didn’t breath and became terribly uncomfortable, but at least they allowed men to ditch ties, which were supersized (just look at the photo of me). Women, at least the girls at school and many of the teachers, were still wearing mini-skirts, although maxi skirts were beginning to make an appearance. Converse tennis shoes were popular. Growing up near the coast meant that after school, we wore baggies and flip-flops and Bert Surf Shop t-shirts. Some things for me have not changed.

In the sporting news, it was a good year for Pittsburgh. The Steelers won back to back Superbowls (in January for the 1974 season and again in January 1976 for the 1975 Season). The legacy of this is we still get to hear the Steeler’s quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, obnoxious voice reporting on the NFL long after his prime. While the Pirates didn’t win the National League pennant, they were still hot. Of course, I wouldn’t care about Pittsburgh teams for another decade, as I went back to school and spent three years in the city.

Shortly after graduation, I made my first overnight canoe trip down the Black River. I’d do a lot more paddle trips over the next fifty years in the United States and Canada, including a four-night paddle trip this year around Michigan’s Drummond Island.  At the time of my ’75 trip, the movie Jaws had just been released. I was amazed to get back and learn there were those genuinely concerned on my behalf. Of course, there are no sharks that far inland and the few alligators slipped into the water and hid. Later in the summer, I would make my first backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia. The trail would become my second home for a while 12 years later. I climbed Mt. Katahdin in Maine after covering 2142 miles, the length of the trail, on August 30, 1987. 

1975 was a year of death. The old order was dying. Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek, and the last fascist from the 1930s, Spain’s Francisco Franko, died. Haile Selassie of Ethiopia also died. He’d held off the fascist Mussolini with a rag-tag army in the 1940s. Who’d thought that 50 years later, the world would be facing a resurrection of fascism? Elijah Muhammad, who Americanized and racialized the Muslim religion died. Two of the remaining Three Stooges, Larry and Moe, died. Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975, along with the iron freighter, the Edmund Fitzgerald. To this day, Hoffa is presumed dead, but decades later they found the ship in 500 feet of water at the bottom of Lake Superior. The story became a wonderful ballad which made Gordon Lightfoot famous. Every November, when the gales of November blow, the song is played repeatedly on the radio and by December I’m sick of it. 

On the political side, two crazy women, three weeks apart, attempted to kill President Ford. Closer to home, my grandmother died before the month of June was over. My other grandmother would die a month before I turned 60. She never smoked.

For those who smoked, which were a lot of Americans, 1975 was the year we got to “Flick our Bic.” Cigarettes in North Carolina rose to $2.29 a cartoon (or $2.39 for 100s). I know this, because I got to change the prices at Wilson’s Supermarket on Oleander Drive. Today, a pack of cigarettes cost double what a carton cost in ’75.  But I didn’t smoke then or now. I was more likely to use the lighter to start a campfire or light a lantern. Other people sported Mood Rings and kept Pet Rocks. At least the rocks required less food than your traditional pets. Altair came out with a microcomputer, which would become common a decade later, but that fall in college, if you wanted to use the computer, you had to keypunch cards and have them in the correct order. 

Medical science introduced the Heimlich Maneuver in ‘75, which made hot dog eating contests much safer. They also introduced CAT scans, allowing physicians a peak of our insides.  On the science front, we sent spacecrafts to Mars and Venus and linked up with a Soviet spacecraft high above the earth. 

While I didn’t read any of the books published in 1975 during the year, several published then had an affect on my life. Annie Dillard published Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I read in 1987 while hiking the Appalachian Trail. This was a perfect book for such a journey. Dillard encourages her readers to wonder about the smallest things within creation. Paul Theroux published The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia. I have read almost all his travel books and when on sabbatical in 2011, I modelled my overland trip from Asia to Europe on his trips.  

Edward Abbey published The Monkey Wrench Gang. I was first introduced to Abbey as a student pastor in Nevada in 1988, just before his death. This humorous book about a group of eco-terrorists in the American West fed my interest in wilderness and helped me appreciate the desert. I’d go on to read all his books.

The year was a good one for movies and a show only cost two bucks in the theater. My favorite movies included “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “The Man Who Would Be King”, “Three Days of the Condor”, “The Return of the Pink Panther”, and “Tommy” featuring the music of The Who. In time, I’d come to appreciate “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” which came out that year. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also released but wouldn’t become well-known until later. 

Television was in its prime and by 1975, 70% of American households had a color television.  At night we watched shows like “Mash” and “The Jeffersons.” But the real treat came on Saturday. An unrecognized blessing of having to have my date home by 11 PM is that I could drive home in time to watch Saturday Night Live with the “Not Ready for Prime Time” players.  

Music was great in ’75. The decline into disco was still a few years away, even though cracks in Rock showed as groups like the Bee Gees and K. C. and the Sunshine Band broke onto the airways.  Heart released “Crazy on You” and The Marshall Tucker Band released “Searching for a Rainbow.” Both would perform in Wilmington that year. Pink Floyd released “Wish You Were Here,” and Bob Dylan released “Tangled Up in Blue.”  These melancholy songs could be the soundtrack of my life. While AM still ruled, FM was catching up and on there you could hear groups like Steely Dan, who took a 20-year hiatus from touring and released the album, “Katy Lied” in ’75.  Other great songs included Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” and “Island Girl,” Earth, Wind, and Fire’s: “Shinning Star,” and Fleetwood Mac’s, “Rhiannon.” 

And then there was Bruce Springsteen, who released “Born to Run.” The song could have been our theme as we ran out of Legion Stadium with our gowns flapping that night in June. 

Oh honey, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run
Come on with me, tramps like us
Baby, we were born to run

We’ve now been running for 50 years. Sadly, some have been forced to give up the race and we remember and honor them. And all of us are a lot slower. But let’s keep it up, as long as we can. I look forward to seeing folks at the reunion on Saturday. 

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