Christmas Wish Lists Across the Decades - 1970s Edition

-
© John Atkinson Wrong Hands



Recently, Harry Turtledove - the author of such alternative history novels as Guns of the South and Ruled Britannia - posted his #70sChristmasList on Twitter:

#70sChristmasList Harvest gold refrigerator Avocado stove Betamax Quadraphonic sound system English Leather, or maybe Brut Cargo pants for the guys Hot pants for the women Platform shoes A leisure suit A case of Miller Lite Or of US-brewed (aka ruined) Löwenbräu

 Inspired by Mr. Turtledove's whimsical wish list for the Christmas/Hannukah holiday season, I've decided to share my own wishlists as they would have appeared over the past 40 or so years.

 Note: The lists reflect my particular tastes and circumstances at the time, and include items that I ended up receiving for Christmas and/or birthdays, was surprised with on occasion or ended up purchasing myself. (In the case of the 1970s, which reflect the Christmas season of 1978, I earned an allowance of $5-per-week by doing chores and keeping my bedroom somewhat tidy. Not neat-as-a-pin, which is the ideal my mother knew I'd never reach, but at least presentable enough for me to have friends over to visit. Although to teens living in 2019 $5-a-week is a pittance, in 1978 terms that was a decent amount of money, especially for my widowed mother, who worked on-and-off from 1978 to 1984 at various jobs, including as a member of the cafeteria staff at the then-new Miami Sunset Senior High School and a sales staff worker at Linens-N-Things. Adjusted for inflation, my $5-a-week allowance would be $19.54-a-week in 2019.)

 #70sChristmasList (Circa 1978)

Image by Cliker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay


  • VHS videocassette recorder*
  • Star Wars action figures, vehicles, playsets, and other Kenner products
  • Stephen King novels
  • Hi-Fi stereo system with turntable, eight-track deck, and AM/FM radio
  • Original soundtrack albums, particularly of music composed and conducted by John Williams (Star Wars: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman)
  • Classical music albums on LP records or eight-track tape
  • The Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft, 1914-1980
  • Paperback editions of Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, The Last Battle, and A Bridge Too Far
  • English Leather or Brut cologne
  • Star Wars posters 
  • Cheryl Ladd poster


I had a poster just like this one pinned to one of my bedroom walls from 1978 till 1981 or so, Mom didn't frame any of my posters, and with the passage of time, the posters tore at the corners and fell off the walls. (Photo Credit: eBay)

 * I ended up buying my first videocassette recorder in November of 1984; I paid $400.00 plus sales tax at an electronics store in the Miami International Mall. Adjusted for inflation, that's $992.04 in 2019 dollars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year ...
Read more

Talking About 'Band of Brothers' (HBO Miniseries): Why were there no black soldiers in the Band of Brothers TV miniseries?

-
Image
Band of Brothers,  sadly, reflects one of the sad realities of American society in the 1940s - racial segregation in the armed forces. Although there  were  a few all-Negro (as blacks were referred to in those days) units in the U.S. Army and the Army Air Forces that served with distinction in the European Theater of Operations, most black servicemen were assigned to non-combat units in Supply of Services and other support forces. Most of these soldiers were truck drivers, anti-aircraft gunners, barrage balloon handlers, engineers, stevedores, clerks, cooks, corpsmen, and so on. Only late in the war (fall of 1944 and winter/spring 1945) did large numbers of black infantrymen see combat against German forces, and even then they served in all-black units commanded by white officers. © 2001 Home Box Office, Dreamworks SKG, and Play-Tone Pictures The 101st Airborne Division was an all-American unit made up of individuals from many different groups - Easy Company’...
Read more

'The Boy in Striped Pajamas' movie review

-
Image
(C) 2008 Miramax, Heyday Films, BBC Films Writer-director Mark Herman’s 2008 film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a faithful but (necessarily) condensed adaptation of John Boyne’s 2007 novel about a German boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), an eight-year-old inmate in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.  Like Boyne’s novel, the film is not a definitive history of the Holocaust. It’s not as graphic or historically accurate as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic “Schindler’s List,” nor was it intended to be. (Indeed, Herman says in the behind-the-scenes featurette “Friendship Beyond the Fence” that he doesn’t consider “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” to be a “Holocaust film.”) Set in the early 1940s at the height of Nazi Germany’s power, the film follows Bruno on a journey that takes him and his family from Berlin to German-occupied Poland. His father Ralf (David Thewlis) is a newly-promoted SS officer with a new posting: commandant...
Read more