If you’re a longtime follower, you know I love to stir the memory pot and share some tidbits from my past from time to time.
Since beginning my blog in 2013, several times I have stepped back five decades to focus on highlights from 1969, 1973 and 1974. Even writing the words “50 years ago” or “a half-century ago” gives me cause to pause – yikes! I’m lucky to have photos memorializing many memorable events from years ago, so just a few clicks in my digitized photo albums and closing my eyes transports me back … in this case to 1976 and, I’ll have a few more photos from 1976 in my July 4th post where I’ll be remembering the Bicentennial, the nation’s 200th anniversary.
A little backstory first ….
A few years ago I posted about the year 1973. I graduated from high school that year and, when I walked across the stage to accept my diploma, I had turned 17 just two months earlier. I was the youngest of 613 students in our June 1973 class.
This pivotal year, 1973, brought many changes, some which began right after graduation. Five close friends and I hung out together those last years of high school. We were inseparable at that time, but soon after flipping our mortarboard tassels to the left side, three of us got Summer jobs as college was on the horizon and three of us became permanent worker bees. Slowly our shared interests were gone and friendships began to unravel.
I started working the day shift at Carter’s Hamburgers, a small 24-hour diner-type restaurant. It was, by far, the best job ever for me as it brought me out of my shell. I had been terribly shy until then. At Carter’s I worked every Summer, school holiday/semester breaks and weekends until I graduated from Wayne State University in 1978.
In 1973 I got my first car, a ’73 Biscay Blue VW Super Beetle. Amazingly, it cost only $3.00 to fill ‘er up!
Now, rewinding to 1976 – 50 years ago!
I started Henry Ford Community College in September 1973 and initially found it challenging since our city’s high school curriculum sure didn’t strain my brain. It was an adjustment since I’d never had a job while in high school and now I was carrying 16 credit hours, factoring in a part-time job and, once I signed up to work on the college newspaper, The Ford Estate, I had even less hours of free time. Well, who needs a lot of sleep anyway – when you’re young that is. Initially, my life plan was to become a veterinarian, but my math and science grades were not stellar; as I became more involved with the student newspaper, I decided that journalism would be my calling.
My earliest stint as a roving reporter, long before my blog.
Our newsroom became the home base for our staff of thirteen, along with advisor Louise Schlaff. In between classes, we’d return there to eat, or study, but mostly it was where we spent countless hours working on our collective labor of love, the weekly college newspaper.
I was one of several staff reporters, roving around campus and reporting on items of interest to fellow students. One of my “beats” was The Gate Room where the culinary students put on a different ethnic meal every Friday to showcase their talents. I sampled (but did not critique) fellow HFCC students’ weekly menu items, then wrote about and photographed the spread. Another “beat” was attending student government meetings and interacting with our student reps.
The Ford Estate was produced long before computers were the norm. We reporters banged out our news stories on non-correcting, manual typewriters, then, after cutting up those typewritten pages, we pasted them (“keylined”) onto large sheets of paper (“galleys”), along with photos taken by the staff photographer or the reporters themselves. One staff member secured ads from local businesses and she also transported our “baby” to the printer every week. Hot off the press, we distributed copies around campus, hoping no one lined their birdcages at home with our efforts.
At the onset of the school year we were just students comprising the newspaper staff, but soon became good friends and we always got together on weekends throughout the school year – Bimbos for pizza, beer and old-fashioned singalongs with the Red Garter Band every Friday night was a favorite hangout …
… and we enjoyed many Summertime concerts at Pine Knob. We always had lawn seats.
I always toted along my Kodak pocket camera to take photos of The Ford Estate gang. Here are the gals (minus me) …
… or, I’d hand my camera to someone else if I could.
The newspaper staff once had a charity event, a basketball game versus the student government staff. The gals were cheerleaders and the Coach. We posed with our advisor, “Owner” Louise Schlaff. I believe the gentleman in the yellow sweater behind Joyce was Dave Whitman, a local TV sportscaster that was covering the event.
Front row: Linda, Beth, Mrs. Schlaff and Claudia
It was all good fun – the losing team had to “eat” a copy of The Ford Estate.
In my last year I broadened my horizons further while at HFCC.
After two years on the newspaper staff, I decided to pursue other campus activities and next got involved in Associated Student Government as a representative of the student body. I learned a lot about communication and interaction with local leaders as we were involved in various fund-raising endeavors for charity on behalf of HFCC.
I was the Editor of the HFCC Student Handbook, a project which I also hoped would eventually be an asset in my “string book” which at that time was a scrapbook compilation of a person’s writings to date that was used when seeking a print journalism job.
While being the Handbook Editor might sound like a fun and wonderful opportunity, even something that would look good on my résumé down the road, it was actually a very painstaking project. Think about how easy it is to type a paragraph with a justified right margin by simply selecting your text and holding down the “Control” and “J” keys – well, that little nicety was not available to me in the Summer of 1974. Because I had a planned three-week vacation to Spain in August with friends of the family, I began the project as soon as school was out for Summer. I figured I had plenty of time to write the Editor’s note, prepare captions and small paragraphs for all the on-campus photos, then lay out the Handbook for the printer.
However, the snag in this project was I had to use a proportional spacing typewriter and this fancy typewriter was non-correcting and Wite-Out/Liquid Paper masking fluid could not be used as it would leave shadows. So, my typing had to be perfect, plus line up with no ragged right margins. I worked six days a week that Summer at Carter’s and went to the HFCC campus to use the typewriter on my day off and many evenings after I finished my 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. waitressing job.
When I wasn’t slaving over the typewriter, I was at home writing copy and figuring out exactly how many spaces each character took … i.e. a “w” was wider than a “l” (three spaces versus one space respectively) for each sentence to align perfectly on the right side – grrr! The keyboard was different than any typewriter I’d ever used and, if I was lucky and typed with one finger, one space at a time, I made fewer mistakes. It was a nightmare to complete the Handbook.
Taking a big bite out of the Big Apple.
One of the highlights of my three years at HFCC was participating in the National Model United Nations and representing Egypt in April 1976. There were six of us in our delegation – three guys and three gals, plus our student advisor, Arthur Jefferson. The event coincided with HFCC’s Spring break.
In advance of the conference, our group of six got together as much as we could given class and work schedules, meeting mostly on campus, to learn everything about Egypt in advance of the conference.
This newspaper clipping shows what we were tasked with learning to participate in the conference and what activities we would be involved in.
There was lots of cramming of facts and figures on our own, as well as quizzing each other relentlessly as the conference grew near. Mr. Jefferson was HFCC’s foreign student advisor and had attended several NMUN conferences in the past, so he gave us insight and encouraged us every step of the way.
We were in three groups of two; my partner Issam Faraj and I were representing the International Monetary Fund.
The conference was from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. from April 13th through 17th; on the 18th the awards were handed out. There were 130 colleges in attendance, some community colleges, some universities. We had debate sessions with other delegations and were judged on our skills. After each session, we had a catered lunch, then we had the rest of the day free to rest our brains and be tourists in “The City That Never Sleeps”.
One NMUN session day was held at the real United Nations Building …
… where we met the real U.N. members at a cocktail party and we had dinner with the U.N. representative for Egypt.
We were excited to win the “Outstanding Delegation Award” (pictured in the newspaper clipping and a xeroxed close-up of the award is below):
When the conference was over, we got to keep our placards and flags that were at each of our seats. We had a party in our room to celebrate our award and all our hard work.
With the exception of Mr. Jefferson, none of us had been to New York City, so we made a list beforehand of all the attractions we wanted to visit and happily we checked off every item, including all the “touristy stuff” like taking the Staten Island Ferry to Ellis Island to visit the Statue of Liberty.
I know you’ll recognize the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in this photo of the Manhattan skyline taken from the ferry.
We all went on the ferry boat ride – this was Bill Postelnik, Jim Ghannam and me.
And there’s Lady Liberty on her pedestal at Ellis Island.
We wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building to see the view from two different vantage points. (Hmm – smoggy much?)
On ground level we ticked off more items, like taking a horse and carriage ride through Central Park – this was Denise Walker, Bill Postelnick and Yours Truly.
I wish I’d taken a photo of Times Square at night, so I guess this will have to do.
A stop at FAO Schwartz toy store was a must, even though none of us bought any toys, but did a lot of oohing and aahing over their amazing toys anyway.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral was a bustling place … out front anyway.
As to “night life” … we saw one Broadway play, “Same Time Next Year” with Ted Bessell and Loretta Swit.
One night we went dancing at a discotheque (yes, disco music was the rage at the time and no, we didn’t get to Studio 54). We were celebrating my 20th birthday which occurred that week.
We wanted to watch the Easter Parade travel down Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday so the gals treated ourselves to a shopping trip at Macy’s where we each bought a “bonnet” … er, hat.
This was my “bonnet” and I posed in the lobby of the Empire State Building shortly after buying it.
The six of us got up extra early to stake a good spot to watch the parade, then we feasted on the Easter treats we had bought for each other; it appears I needed a nap (or crashed after too many marshmallow Peeps). We were then off to get our award, before catching our flight back to Detroit.
All expenses were paid and we got two meals a day, a continental breakfast and as mentioned previously, a catered luncheon while we were “in session” but we were on our own for dinner. We all wanted to go to an authentic NYC deli for pastrami on rye sandwiches with a huge dill pickle on the side, but admittedly, the rest of the week, the Statler Hilton Hotel was across the street from a McDonald’s, so after a busy afternoon/evening of sightseeing, a quick burger and fries was often our meal of choice.
It was a whirlwind trip and an experience of a lifetime. When the trip was over it was time to settle back into college life and hunker down for finals as we all would graduate just a few weeks later.
My grandmother came to spend the Summer of ’76 with us and attend my HFCC graduation with my Associate of Arts degree in June. She liked posing in my cap and gown. 🙂
Nanny stayed through mid-August and then a co-worker and I went to visit her in Toronto for a week not long after she arrived home. I’ll be writing about that visit and my grandmother in my annual Grandparents Day post in September.
It was bittersweet to leave HFCC, (the main campus is pictured below) …
… where I not only embraced learning, but immersed myself in extracurricular activities, something I never would have done while in high school as I was not one of the “cool kids” … so I was grateful my parents, (who paid my entire college education), encouraged me to extend my HFCC stay one extra year, but they were adamant I had to keep my grades no lower than a “B”/3.0 grade point average. I kept my end of the bargain.
Perhaps Mom and Dad remembered the first few years after we moved to the U.S. when I was routinely verbally and physically bullied by fellow students because of my Canadian accent or because I was not “one of them” or maybe they were just indulgent telling their only child to enjoy her college days before the drudgery of a daily job and/or the rigors of raising a family set in.
Yes, I am a pack rat. I am sentimental in that I save everything and all the images here, with the exception of the featured photo which was obtained through WordPress AI, were from my photo albums and scrapbooks.
Thank you for reading if you’re still here … it is appreciated.
Linda Schaub
WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 
Great memories of college and your time in NYC! You really made the most of that trip and I enjoyed all the photos. The hat suited you perfectly! 🙂 Reading how you laboured painstakingly with that handbook makes me more grateful for the technology we have now!
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Thanks Debbie! It was a great time in my life and I embraced every moment of it. Once I left HFCC and went on to Wayne State University, school was nothing like that. I didn’t get involved in any extracurricular activities and just worked, went to school and graduated two years later with my B.A. New York City was so fun and we had a lot of time to spend exploring it. I loved that hat – I don’t remember what type of hats Carrie and Denise bought, but I wish someone had taken a pic of us wearing them like they did at our celebration party. That proportional typewriter was horrible. I asked if I could take it home with me since no one else was using it, but they were not keen on that idea. What a laborious project it was, something that could probably be done in an afternoon today.
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great post Linda! NYC and college helped mold you!
I thought the name “Ford’s Estate” as a cheer leading team name was a bit odd.
Nice stroll down memory lane Linda!
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Thanks Wayne, I’m glad you liked this post and my trip down Memory Lane! It was a fun and busy time in my life and after I left HFCC in 1976, I had two more years of school, with zero extracurricular activities. We had our newspaper name on our t-shirts and the student government team had ASG (Associated Student Government) for their team shirts. I wish I could remember the charity the funds raised went to, but I could not. This was good for me between working at the restaurant which overcame my shyness and all these school activities.
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Thank goodness you are a pack rat! What an amazing year you had in 1976 and I’m sure all the pictures help you to remember things you might otherwise have forgotten. I really enjoyed reading about all these experiences that shaped your life in so many positive ways, especially the trip to NYC. No wonder you needed a nap – you managed to squeeze in so many sights and activities. And it’s fun thinking back on how far typewriters and other things we often use have evolved over the years.
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Thank you Barbara! I enjoyed putting this post together and also reliving all the memories from those years at HFCC, especially that week in NYC. Last Labor Day weekend, I went through my scrapbooks and scanned in the remaining pics and memorabilia I didn’t do when I scanned in all the photo albums back in 2017. I knew I wanted them for this 1976 post and also for Wayne State University for 1978, plus I worked at an ad agency in the Creative Department for 18 months after graduation, so I wanted some of those pictures too. I am truly a pack rat and that is why I am always whining about clutter and the need for clutter control! I have a movie reel taken at the ad agency and I am hoping to find it before I do a “50 Years Ago” for the year 1978. 🙂 We really are lucky to live in an age where we can type/edit/print with just a few taps on the keyboard, not at all like how life was back in the 70s.
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That was an amazing experience. I didn’t “bloom” until after high school. Maybe just a little in my senior year. You are lucky your parents encouraged you fully.
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Thank you Kate! I am glad my parents encouraged me to get more involved in school too because I never had that experience in high school and after I left HFCC, the last two years at Wayne State University from 1976 – 1978 were just about going to school/studying and working and that was it. My parents were so strict that I thought they might balk at the idea of taking an extra year to try other things, but they were fine with it.
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I enjoy these slices of how life used to be. That world is essentially gone, but you have allowed us one more visit. Thanks!
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I am glad you liked this post JP – I always like taking a trip down Memory Lane. I was lucky my parents gave me the opportunity to enjoy school and live for the moment, knowing that life down the road was not always going to be easy and sometimes even carefree. I went on to Wayne State where I did nothing but attend school, study and work, a far cry from my time spent at HFCC.
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I never thought of the campus newspaper as an entree to more formal writing but you and I have that activity in common, Linda. Notre Dame’s daily was (and still is) “The Observer”, and every undergraduate heading through the dining hall doors would pick up a copy from giant stacks to read over lunch. I wanted to write about sports but as a newbie I was given fringe activities like lacrosse and women’s field hockey (less popular back then than they are today).
After reading what you had to go through to put words to paper (Measuring the widths of individual characters? Wow.), I can’t complain about having to type my articles directly into a clunky mainframe. The experience also taught me about generating articles on the fly (which I often do with my blog posts), and unforgiving deadlines, where articles simply wouldn’t make the final cut. Good times!
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Dave, I’m glad we have this shared experience of life on a college newspaper! It was good times, but a lot of work and we all meshed together so well, sometimes working feverishly, just to put the paper to bed and then started the process all over again for the next edition. I sure can identify with having a story that you labor over and it doesn’t make the final cut. In the first few weeks on the newspaper, I had a feature story ready to go, front page, even a byline (maybe my first) and it got bumped because Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash. I just looked – he died September 20, 1973. He was so popular at the time and everyone on campus was talking about it. So we devoted most of that issue to his life, songs, etc., interviews with students about him, while putting our big stories on hold and relegating campus info to the back pages. I’ll bet “The Observer” was published more than weekly. We only had one sports reporter, but we didn’t have a large sports program at HFCC like you would have had at Notre Dame U. I just remembered I forgot to write about the streaker … we staged a streaker when streaking was a big thing nationwide. Gary, the sports reporter streaked across campus and Dennis the photographer was there to capture some shadowy images very early on a Sunday morning. 🙂
Writing on the fly – yes, those emergencies when you had to sit down and do a quick story, but for us, we needed to get our paper to the printer a day before, if not earlier, so we had to curtail late-breaking news or the printer would not take it. My posts are too long to do them on the fly! I did so once, when I did a paragraph-long post as I lost my internet for three days and was already 12 days behind in Reader.
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Read it from beginning to end and enjoyed it all. I am impressed with all that you accomplished. 👏
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Thank you Pepper! I know it was a long post, but I didn’t want to leave out anything. That’s why I’ve set aside a trip to Toronto with a co-worker in 1976 for a Grandparents Day post and a separate Bicentennial post as I have some memories about that Bicentennial year as well. 🙂
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My pleasure. 😊
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Miss Linda…………………………….I enjoyed very much reading all about your hard work and academic degree and awards that you received. I was never to NY………………..so be proud that you were there and had fun with your friends………………….You were always very pretty and “one” of the popular kids……………………………………………
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Thank you Ann Marie! I feel my life was enriched by the time I spent at HFCC, both academically and because of all the extracurricular activities I was involved in for those three years. It did make learning fun and I was grateful my parents were fine with letting me stay another year and taking additional courses before transferring to Wayne State. I know you studied at HFCC to learn Spanish back when you were volunteering at the soup kitchen before COVID came along. Thank you for saying that … fifty years ago, we all had our youth and we looked vibrant, healthy and were full of energy!
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I think this is a fascinating look at that period of your life, Linda. I was also shy in high school and took jobs that helped me break out a bit. (I’d actually been outgoing as a child and loved doing theater.)
I’m impressed with your tackling the school paper, student government, that horrendous handbook project and the UN thing. Wow!!
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Thank you Eilene! The years spent at HFCC were the most rewarding of my entire college experience. When I transferred to Wayne State University for two years to get my B.A. I attended classes, studied and worked with no extracurricular activities. Working at the diner before starting HFCC really helped break out of my shell and I enjoyed working there immensely.
As I compiled this post, I marveled at all the energy I must have had to tackle school and the extracurricular activities, especially the prep work done in advance of the UN conference. Being 20 years old sure helped. We have it so easy now with computers compared to that proportional typewriter and its idiosyncrasies. I was relieved when I was finished and it went to the printer!
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This is quite the trip down memory lane to your days of journalism and the UN conference in New York City (what a wow moment, doesn’t happen to everyone!). It sounded like you were doing places, even if it involved typing on manual type writers! Guess you had to be pretty accurate at typing… Like Debbie said in the comments, you made the most of the trip with some serious work alongside going out on the town with a lot of the big things like the Statue of Liberty and Central Park…the things a lot of us see in movies and often dream of – and you were living the dream in some ways. Quite a few photos to look back on 🙂
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Thank you Mabel! I decided to make the most of my community college experience, whereas the last two years of college paled in comparison as I went to a university with so many more people, so it was kind of impersonal with big lecture halls and I didn’t get involved in any activities, just went to school and studied. You are right, it was a chance of a lifetime to go to the UN and experience New York City as well. We take our ease of creating posts or books with computers for granted now, but yes, that was quite the ordeal just to have perfectly justified margins to hand off to the printer. Now, a few mouse clicks and we’re there. It was fun for me to relive the experience 50 years later.
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I think university is becoming even more impersonal these days. Going to university is common and it’s a pretty price to pay. It’s always nice to learn by turning up to class, but it’s a whole other experience going on a trip. You can only read and dream so much about a place. Being there is magical, just like your New York City days. Looking back on moments like those, you think, wow did I really do that!
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You’re right Mabel … writing about this experience, I really did feel that way. I think it would be interesting to study abroad as you would get more of a cultural experience, a chance to use foreign language skills you had taken in school for example. I took French for four years and the last two years of university I had French classes where we spoke no English, but how quickly that knowledge faded once I graduated. I bought French newspapers for a while, but with no one to interact with and use French, it was difficult to stay fluent. Today there would be many more options, but in 1978, not so much.
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That’s the description of it – cultural experience. You get that experience when you are immersed in the nature of the subject, be it being there in person exploring or as you experienced, speaking only French in French classes for the last two years. It seemed great memories of those studies too, and I am sure you do know your French to this day, Linda 😊
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Mabel, I regret that I didn’t put more effort into keeping my French up. I always hoped to travel one day to visit France, but I’m not keen on doing any traveling anymore to be honest. Of course, I could brush up on my French and visit Quebec by car. I am a Canadian citizen and have lived in the U.S. since 1966, here on a green card. I don’t have a passport at the present time, which complicates matters somewhat.
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This all feels so familiar to me, as I graduated high school in 74 and college in 78. The pictures could be me and my friends. My high school didn’t tax my brain either, they were sort of experimenting with letting us choose what we wanted to take and not having any supervision most of the time. I don’t think I met with a career counselor or any sort of advice person ever in high school OR college!
I didn’t keep much of anything…mom did give us each a box of ‘keepsakes’ when she and dad moved from our childhood home, but I think its full of school photos and maybe report cards. I haven’t looked in a lot of years.
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Yes, we were in school the exact same time so I can see how it brings back memories for you Dawn. For my high school years, the school millage didn’t pass for 10th and 11th grade, so we went to school for 1/2 days, four classes only. For senior year, we got everything back (music, drama, sports, languages) and went whole days again. Graduation from our high school did not take a lot of smarts, believe me. I never met with a counsellor for high school or college and when it came time for my internship in college, there was nowhere to put me, so I ended up in a P.R. internship and there was no guidance as to placement or job boards either. I do have report cards and badges from elementary school, one crayon drawing, but lots of photos. I’m grateful for my Kodak Pocket Camera which I always had with me, but since I was an only child my parents took lots of photos too.
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I never had a full day of school after 6th grade due to not having enough classrooms for our growing community.
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That’s interesting Dawn. We felt like we lost a lot by taking only four classes. There were no college prep classes available, just four English, History, Math, Science. It was especially difficult for kids who hoped to get college scholarships for music or sports since they only had one year. We did have large classes – the year I graduated we had our June class of 613 and a January class of over 200. It’s not that now because many parents send their kids to other local high schools with better curriculums.
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High school kept you busy as a bee, Linda. You led a very full life and enjoyed travel as a young woman. Love the old pics. You’re so pretty and full of life!
I have a scrapbook of my high school life with letters from the principal, a journalism award or two and ribbons from sports. Glad to have saved it. 1976 was a cool year all around. Amazing to think it was 50 years ago and now we’ll celebrate the 250th year of the US, the semiquincentennial!
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Thank you Terri! Although actually this was in college. I attended community college and then transferred to Wayne State University to complete my last two years (which was not as exciting by any means). My high school years were pretty boring as we only went half-days for 10th and 11th grade due to a millage not passing, then we went full-time with our extracurricular activities back for senior year. My mom saved a lot of items from my elementary school activities and I have a lot of memorabilia after that. I always had that Kodak Pocket Camera with me so it helped collect a lot of photo memories. It does seem amazing to me that this was 50 years ago and at that time it seemed like there were never enough hours in a day! I’m going to be doing a short post on the Bicentennial for a Saturday, July 4th post – a lot was going on for everyone in the year 1976, including me.
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Linda, this was such a wonderful memory post! Oh the photos say so much and loved the flow and what you chose to include. Also, not to sound cheesy – but you are gorgeous – so purdy my walking, quipping friend
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Thank you very much Yvette! I actually added five more photos to this post the day after I posted it because I was looking for some old photos for a post I’m going to do on the Bicentennial. I realized I forgot to include the graduation line to get the diploma, my grandmother wearing my cap and gown and a few more poses with flowers. I always had my Kodak Pocket Camera with me, so I am lucky for that as I was able to amass a real treasure trove of photos from back in the day. Fifty years ago seems like an eternity – thank you for the compliment, I appreciate it. My 20-year old self had boundless energy and wanted to try everything as she hoped to go far in this life!
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it sounds like you remembered at a good time to add them in!
And that Kodak Pocket Camera sure did provide you with a treasure trove! And the blog is the perfect place to showcase such photo treasures…
xxxx
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Yes, it was Yvette and I know it was picture-laden, but I couldn’t help adding those last photos. When I scanned in all my album photos and a lot of my scrapbook photos back over Thanksgiving weekend 2017, it took me four days, at it all day long. I always intended to go through and finalize each image as many of them are still raw images, small because the photos were 2″ X 3″ and sometimes I had to lay the entire scrapbook face down on the platen, so I had to scan one page multiple times. That Kodak Pocket Camera was the best camera and I was sorry when the film drawer lid was letting in light and I had to get a new camera. I’ve had my compact digital camera with 12X zoom since 2015 and I take more photos with it, then dragging out the DSLR.
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yes, the compact digital camera sounds more ideal for your walking adventures. 😉
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Yes, especially in the heat and humidity.
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yes
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So many fun experiences to look back on and cherish. Looks like you’ve had a full and fun life. All the mementoes and photos I’m sure bring back a flood of memories.
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It was fun compiling this post Rebecca. That was one of the most fulfilling periods of my life, being young, enjoying college life and the experiences. After I left HFCC, I finished school and graduated, but it was just hitting the books hard and going to school and working, so I am glad that I lived life to the fullest back then.
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Wow, so many things you accomplished and all the traveling, what great memories and I always love the old photos. 🙂
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Thank you Sandra! It was a busy time in my life and putting together this post I wondered how I did all that … being a lot younger helped, that’s for sure. 🙂 I have so many old photos and nice memories from my college days, bit then my last two years of school, I just went to school, studied and worked until I graduated in 1978. My Kodak Pocket Camera helped capture so many memories back in the day and I hated to part with it when the film drawer cover got loose and light started getting in.
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Geeze, $3.00 to fill up your first car. My little Hybrid, yesterday, cost $27!
Great and interesting pics! My, you sure were a cutie!
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Thank you Tom! Fifty years ago and youth was in my favor. 🙂 Yes, I thought it was worth mentioning that it cost a mere $3.00 to fill up my Super Beetle’s gas tank. Your little Hybrid is a bargain gas-wise. I spent $42.00 on a half-tank for my Buick LaCrosse a week ago. I hope you fared well in that severe weather on Thursday. We had two tornadoes in Western Michigan, but the storms and high winds lessened by the time they got here at 1:15 a.m. Friday. I stayed up, even though I have a weather alarm, as they were expected in our area around 11:30 … good thing it took a while longer as the winds were only 50 mph by the time they arrived. I am dreading a Summer of volatile weather and heat and humidity!
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Wow! Your memories are terrific! You were, are, so pretty and smart. You had a very interesting “younger” years. I loved disco and think if should make a comeback 😀 we still listen to disco occasionally. It’s fun to look back on our lives but a little sad too. I was not good at math or science either. I much preferred history, literature or even geography. I also was shy when I was a teenager. My dad got transferred (army) when I was 16 and I had to start a new school when he and I moved. It was very stressful for me. Imagine being bullied, kids can be very cruel ☹️
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Thank you Susan! It was the best time of my life back then and as I was compiling this post, I was marveling how many things I was juggling at the same time, all that seemingly endless energy … where did it go? 🙂 Disco was really a big deal back then and going to a discotheque was something we all wanted to check off our New York City list and decided to go on my 20th birthday. Years after disco reigned supreme I remember wearing my Sony Walkman with headphones on my exercise bike and playing the “Staying Alive” album … music to pedal by too! I think I would have been too softhearted to be a veterinarian so it’s probably just as well my math and science grades were so lousy. I loved school before we moved here and did well, but then we moved here when I was 10 and the bullying began and my grades went down in all subjects. Kids can be cruel, but even the teachers bullied me, ridiculing my accent and one of them routinely paddled me for no reason. So I had it coming from both sides back then for about two or three years and hated school so much.
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I never cared for school either. These things really stick with you no matter how old you are. I wanted to be a veterinarian too! But only to pet them lol. If they came in all bloody from an accident, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with that.
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I couldn’t deal with any of that with sick/hurt/dying animals, or telling people their pet won’t live … nope. When I was still working I thought I’d like to work with an animal rescue as a volunteer. I found one fairly close by and followed it on Facebook. They had baby bunnies and were bottle feeding them. They were nine miles away from me. They always wanted volunteers, but then I saw them thanking volunteers for their help and showing what they did like going and picking up donated dog and cat food, stacking it in their storage area. Sorry, I’m not doing that either. I follow a wonderful rescue/rehab place on Facebook called “Wild Heart Ranch” and I started following them after the woman in charge (Annette) was bottle feeding a day-old beaver kit – such a sweet video. I love their videos and still shots there at the nursery area and I decided to support them with a monthly donation because their volunteers work hard, but I also see what the volunteers have to do and it is not always cuddling with 100+ orphaned babies and bottle feeding them, but also cleaning poop-strewn floors and cages. I’m no diva, but that would not be for me.
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Wow what a great post Linda! I enjoyed ALL of it – and can relate, although I don’t have many photos of those years, nor as many extracurricular activities. My mom and I went to New York in the early 80’s and did all the touristy things you mentioned, other than Ellis Island/SofLiberty was closed for renos, and we did two broadway plays and a show by the Rockettes, but no disco as I was with my mom! It was great fun. ….thanks for the look down memory lane! You had great hair! and the clothes bring back memories too.
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Thanks Joni! I’m glad you liked this post and yes, you and I being around the same age, would have a lot in common from 50 years ago, style-wise, especially. This was really a fun post to put together and I was lucky to have met such nice people while at HFCC, especially since I hated school so much after we moved here and high school was so clique-y and we only had any activities the last year of high school as we went to school half-days the first two years with no extracurricular stuff like clubs or studying a language. So HFCC and especially 1976 made up for it. I’m going to be doing a short post about the Bicentennial in a few weeks as we went to the top of the Statue of Liberty and we had a heat wave that week – it was so sweltering hot inside the statue. I have another picture from that day with me and Lady Liberty and a few of the tall ships as well.
What plays did you see? I enjoyed the play and when I used to watch “That Girl” with Marlo Thomas years before, I used to think Donald, her boyfriend, played by Ted Bessell, was so handsome, so it was fun to see him on stage! The discotheque was a fun way to spend my 20th birthday. I always wished I could see the Rockettes show – I’ve seen them in videos at Christmastime. I’m glad you liked my hair and shortly after I graduated, a friend of the family, who was a hairdresser wanted to give me a perm as a belated birthday present. I don’t know why I let her, but my hair is really stick straight and I always had to set it on curlers, so I said “okay” and it turned out awful – too curly/frizzy on one side and stick straight on the other. I cut my hair to the shortest layer to get all the frizzy ends gone. It grew back quickly, but I was upset as I liked having long hair. Yes, our clothes back then … pretty funny some of them. I have some pictures from back then with the big bell bottoms that were hip huggers, not the “elephant bells” as my parents would not have approved of them, but the jeans and the bubble tops that were bodysuits. My mom would knit me sweater vests, but I remember I really wanted a vest that looked like two potholders sewn together at the shoulder seams and side seams, or I wanted a raggedy-looking crocheted vest that tied in a bow in the front. That was the early 70s I think.
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