Well, I certainly wasn’t a teen in the 70s but I wasn’t too far removed from my teen years in age. I was, however, older than my years mentally, perhaps because I was married and the mother of three very young children. When the 70s rolled in I was just 23 and at the end of a bad marriage. Looking at the possibility of being a single parent scared the hell out of me but the cards had been played and by 1971 I was in divorce court pleading irreconcilable differences as to the reason I wanted a divorce. My soon-to-be-ex was there pleading for the divorce to not be granted and a legal separation be granted instead. All of this after he walked off his good-paying job and left with another women to another city 300 miles away. Lucky for me that the court was smarter than he was and granted the divorce, giving me custody of our three children and awarded me $50 a month per child for child-support.

$150 a month for three kids! Even then that was cheap but of course, he was not employed so the likely hood of me getting anything from him was slim. My daycare cost more than that every month. I look back and have no clue how I did it, how I managed to support three young children and work the hours I had to work just to put food on their plates and a roof over their heads. I was lucky in that my parents bought most of their clothes the first few years.

Anyway, what sent me down the 70s memory lane is a MTV program called 70s House. The program itself is pretty lame but I became intrigued with the clothes and the house. I do remember shag carpeting and Mediterranean furniture but I didn’t remember not having FM radio and the clothes they had the young contestants put on looked foreign to me. Actually, only the girls clothes look foreign, the boys clothes brought back memories of big-printed, big-pointed-collared polyester shirts and no tennis shoes. Tennis shoes were for running, tennis, basketball or some other sport, not for everyday ware.

The more I thought about it, the more I think the show is mixing clothing from different parts of the 70s. The girls were given clothes that looked like hippie clothes, drab and unflattering while the guys were given the polyester shirts that came later in the 70s, I think. But I could be way off and out-of-touch with the time and what the kids were actually wearing. So, I’m now searching the web for anything 70s and came across this site - Groovy Candies and it took me further back in time. I was never a big candy eater but my younger brother was and I remember going to the penny candy store (yes, there was such a thing as penny candy) with him and loading up with some of the now hard-to-find candy that Groovy Candies is offering from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

To be honest, I don’t remember the popular candy from the 70s, even though I had kids. I didn’t have a lot of money so the candy they got was from others, like grandparents and aunts and uncles. But I do remember the candy from the 50s and 60s. What a trip! I hadn’t thought of that penny candy store in many years. It was called Uncle Tom’s and looked like a little shack that smelled of old dried out wood and sweet delights. It sat on the main street all by itself, with nothing on either side except empty space dotted in sagebrush and creosote bushes. The shelves were floor to ceiling and lined with jars of single rapped candy and the singe counter went from one side to the other as if standing guard over the more expensive candy bars which were two for a nickel or 3 cents a piece. No more than 4 kids were allowed in at one time. I remember waiting on the small porch step for our turn to enter. Wow, what a memory. It wasn’t often that we got to go there since we lived on the Navy base next to the small town that housed the penny store. But that’s another story better left untold for now.

Below is an image of me and my three kids in 1972 or 1973. Its not a good photo but it does represent the home decor and clothes of the mid 70s, not to mention the hair! Note the plastic orange flowers on the end table. I still have the container that held those flowers but the flowers are long gone.

Below is a photo of me and my second husband on our wedding day in 1976. The suit he is wearing is polyester and look at that shirt! Disco fever for sure! Again, not a great photo but it does depict the style of the 70s.