Nineteen Seventy Six

What a year that was, huh? The United States celebrated two hundred years as a “free” country. Red white and blue were everywhere.

Ford was in office, but was going to lose to Jimmy Carter in the fall.

By 1976, the greats were gone or going. The Beatles had split forever and were on successful solo careers that made their loss a bit less painful, but nevertheless an open wound that remains to this day a great loss in the music world, but somehow this song was re-released that summer. On a fishing boat down in Tangier Sound, kids in speedboats played it and it echoed across the swells of the mighty Chesapeake.

Vietnam was over. 1975 had seen the final battles as Saigon fell to the NVA.

Books detailing Nixon’s hubris and stunningly stupid crimes were being published. We thought that the worst was over, that we could all heal, that our divided country could heal.

It really was a hopeful time.

What happened?

***

I was just a teenager in a school that was way out of my pay grade. I had no hope of passing a single subject and Biology I, Algebra I and Spanish I were all incomprehensible, a fact made worse by overpaid professors who were, in reality, burnouts who couldn’t reach me. The only subject I made decent marks in was English, and my previous education had nothing to do with it. I had read everything I could get my hands on, learning grammar and spelling as I went. Books were my escape from the nightmare of everyday life. I smuggled in copies of Playboy and Hustler, and sometimes Penthouse, not just because of the models, but because I learned a lot from articles on politics, celebrities, fashion, style, and how to behave in a way that others would be more receptive of.

Of course it never changed my rage, or my being an asshole. Untangling that would take decades, a fight I’m still waging. Yet reading held perhaps a big input to later becoming a liberal, socially and politically.

From 1972 on, I had been working for my father at his warehouse in Glen Burnie, right next to the mall. Back then there was an Amoco station up the street, a giant sliding board with panels missing to dissuade trespassers from using it because those damn things were dangerous, despite the Banana Splits making it look like stupid-fun, and beside that was a GO propane filling station and a store where they sold gas grills.

The warehouse was filthy. No matter how much I swept the floors with an oil-based sweeping compound and a push broom, the next day black dust would coat everything.

I had to clean the trucker’s bathroom, which was as humiliating as it was disgusting.

By December of ’75, a new guy and I were tasked over my winter break to roll sealer on the floors in an effort to keep the dust out of the “pores” of the cement floor.

It would prove futile.

I did discover in the cold of that winter the joy of Taster’s Choice coffee and Coffee Mate, which I couldn’t get enough of. It’s a miracle I ever slept at all.

Working and going to school in January, with my sadistic older sister driving the three of us to school, I was truly miserable. I hated her by then. She laughed at my every misspoken word, stumble, fall, bad grade, and she constantly complained about the way I smelled after work. To this day I can’t even stand the memory of her.

If I had any refuge at all, it was at my desk, where I wrote erotic stories, drew pornographic caricatures of people I knew and hated, or when I took to my bed to read whole novels in two nights.

Then there was music. That universal medication that heals, or reminds you that you have a lot of healing left to do. Songs and instrumentals that made me cry and parodies that made me laugh. Upbeat music, love ballads and last but not least, the most god awful stuff you ever heard.

***

Spring, 1976: I remember bright days with lots of sunshine, but it was cold at the old prep school by the Severn River.

What sustained me is hard to say. It was the second semester of my first year in a private school I never belonged in. Triggers, which I knew nothing about, were everywhere, and PTSD wasn’t even a widely known condition at the time. As I’ve often noted, I knew that I was different, that something was wrong with me, but not what was wrong with me. Which means I couldn’t do anything about it. Speaking to a former classmate in 2014, I tried to explain. I think he already knew. “You were always into something,” he laughed. “Later, we found out other things were going on.” He spoke no more about it, and I never pursued the subject. He had read about it in the papers. I felt vindicated by his sober conclusion.

Sometimes a trigger was the news. In reality, nothing was really healing. We were all happy to be out of Vietnam, but I casually knew veterans who were obviously troubled. Watching how one guy who Agent Orange was about to kill treat his devoted girlfriend and then wife so horribly really hurt me.

It hurt me that I was too young and had missed the war. That the guy was dying and was angry and scared. That I had played “Army” with friends when we never knew what real war was like. I was sensitive to the pain and sickness of others and I was bitter later on that I could not have taken their place. I was quite a coward, but had I been of age, I would have gone.

I was being raised a racist, a sadist and, in short, a Republican (by today’s standards).

But that was never who I really was. I understand brain washing and mind conditioning. I know how it works because I went through it. Today’s MAGA washees still stun me. The phenomenon of brain washing is studied, documented, and somewhat understood by scholars and physicians, but there’s no cure. This was the era of Krishna and the “Reverend” Moon, and the news had a buzzword: deprogramming. But I didn’t believe in it. I still don’t.

But in the Spring of 1976, nobody could see what was coming. We thought that even if we were fooling ourselves about healing, that the coming summer celebration would mend some of the rifts that Nixon, Johnson and the war had opened.

*The Universal Language*

Regardless of when the singles were released, these songs were on the radio and the charts.

Lord have mercy: The Four Seasons ?

The all time, forever “1976” anthem: Queen, Freddie Mercury the one and only …

And Elvin Bishop’s single from a 1975 album released in ’76…

It’s still a popular song and was part of the “Awesome Mix” in the MCU classic Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Peter Frampton had a hit that played all through the summer;

I don’t know what we were thinking here, but heck, we liked it: Welcome Back.

Remember the episode when Epstein painted a mural of Mrs. Kotter nude on the school wall? I can’t find the clip of the nutty guy shouting “repent! The world is coming to an end,” but it’s the funniest few seconds in the entire series.

For some, 1976 has become a dead zone. We remember some things with a hint of accuracy, while we really don’t remember others.

Memories are capricious things, sometimes staying close to accurate, sometimes right on target, but other times way off the mark. This I accept as true even when writing here. I stick to the best job I can do and leave out what I’m unsure of, except when I admit something I’m including isn’t clear.

What about 1976, then, do you remember most accurately?

The pop singles powered the summer of that year with great songs, but damn, there were some really weird things out there. For example, Wikipedia lists the singles but notes that a SNAFU occured in the compiled hits. It caused songs released anywhere from November and December of 1975 to be included because by January, they were still charting and selling 45s.

Some of the late ’75 songs I’m glad to see included.

See, 1976 was weird. The Captain and Tennille released by one of the most indecent, horrible, wretched songs of all time, “Muskrat Love.” It’s an abomination that sort of rode on their unimaginable popularity; the song is actually about two muskrats and features Captain playing muskrats making love sound effects with his cursed keyboard.

Kiss released “Rock and Roll All Night,” just another of their stupid songs with the same lyric repeated about a thousand times.

And Henry Gross released “Shannon,” a song about his dog, which was missing. For whatever reason, he hoped she had drifted out to sea, a horrible thought to me. Of course, it charted.

And I liked this one, because it mentions the Chesapeake Bay.

In August, a cover of Springsteen’s 1973 song “Blinded by the Light” changed history by being the first ever song in America that nobody could understand the lyrics of. Listeners swore that “revved up like a Deuce another runner in the night” was really “it looks like a douching in the middle of the night.”

Perhaps for that reason, it hit the charts with staying power, remaining on the radio playlists into the winter of 1976-1977.

Rod Stewart was daring. And, I believe, the only man who could release “The Killing of Georgie, Part One and Two” and get away with it. But it fueled an old urban legend that he was gay, which he certainly wasn’t. I don’t know how it did in sales, but it’s not a true story, but a tragic one that tells of a young man coming out as gay and being thrown out by his parents. Georgie goes to the Big Apple and becomes a must-have guest at parties before he’s murdered. The second part is a lamentation of the narrator heartbreakingly begging Georgie not to go away. The song works, and it may be because it was ahead of its time. Only Rod Stewart could have pulled that off; it got play time even on AM radio.

Summer songs worthy of mention included Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show with their plaintive, heartbroken narrative of a young man who lost his love because youthful love never lasts, and usually isn’t real in the first place.

WAR’s hit with the now required summer listening, appropriately titled “Summer”:

I refuse to talk about Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, or Barbara Streisand. Sue me.

Apple Computer, Price Club and Conrail were formed.

Hank Aaron hit his final home run, number 755.

The Winter and Summer Olympics were held at Innsbruck and Montreal, respectively. One athlete, Nadia Comaneci, earned several perfect “10” scores in gymnastics, a landmark event. Her floor exercise was accompanied by the beautiful “Nadia’s Theme,” became a hit single in the US that fall. Now known as the theme from “The Young and Restless” soap, it still evokes a vision of the intense 14-year-old Romanian making everything she did look easy. She later married American gymnast Bart Conner and they live in the US. Even in her sixties by now, she’s beautiful and the little shit is younger than me. Life ain’t fair. They own several businesses together.

The Southern Rock band Eagles released their awesome LP, “Hotel California,” which is still one of the best selling albums of all time. Rolling Stone has it on their 500 best albums of all time, and if it has dropped on that list a bit, it’s still there. It was also the band’s first album with Joe Walsh, today a legend in his own right. Three singles from it were released, but with a December debut, the album’s singles charted in 1977.

For the category best album of the year, only Rumours by Fleetwood Mac could beat it.

However, Rod Stewart was the one with the most popular song of the year with this ballad:

1976 was a remarkable year for movies. It featured the last film appearance by John Wayne, who lobbied passionately to get the part of J.B. Books, an aged “shootist” or gunfighter who travels to Carson City in 1901 seeking help from the only doctor he trusts, Doc Hostetler (Jimmy Stewart). He had seen a doctor in Creed, Colorado but hadn’t believed his diagnosis.

The book takes place in El Paso, but the sets didn’t exist that could do that city justice. Still, Carson City was just as good.

Hostetler tells Books that he has cancer, and it’s advanced. His patient doesn’t have long to live.

It’s sad, because Wayne was also fighting cancer, and he wanted this to be his swan song.

The movie is touching, a bittersweet send off to one of the world’s most enduring screen icons of all time.

Featuring Ron Howard, Richard Boone, Lauren Bacall, Bill McKinney, Hugh O’Brien, and Harry Morgan, the end title music and Howard’s character walking away from the camera is tear-jerking.

And in a year with mixed cinematic quality, it was a standout.

Other films released included “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “Midway” with “Surround Sound” and a bloated all-star cast, and a King Kong remake that nobody remembers. Which is only fitting. I forget who it starred, except for Jessica Lange, who has a breast reveal by the giant simian who can’t possibly mate with her (Cringe movie).

The remake with Jack Black was the only one I’ll allow as okay. But it is the original that still captures the story in all its glory.

Then there’s “The Missouri Breaks,” “The Enforcer,” a Dirty Harry outing, and too many more to mention.

Not a bad year, entertainment-wise.

I remember watching a fireworks show in D.C. but nothing of what it looked like.

At a hotel, a group of American Legion “delegates” became sick with what we now know as Legionnaires Disease.

Former president George Washington was given the rank of six-star General, something I find vaguely insulting. It was 200 years late.

As a country, we had been through a lot. Two world wars, the Civil War, the Depression, the dust bowl years, a recession was building up, and outbreaks of the measles, chicken pox, several influenza epidemics, and we had virtually eliminated a proud native population. The unforgivable crime of slavery still haunts us today, as it should.

The Vietnam War was a stain on our honor too, a purely political blot we can never move on from.

Now, today, things are more grim than ever. We have sustained irreparable damage to our government and people act as though it’s no big deal.

Prices are so high that I believe people are dying of malnutrition and disease that should not be happening.

It’s a bad time, a frightening time.

When things get really bad, sometimes the best thing to do is to look back and remember who we were and that we were better back then.

We had landed two men on the moon with Apollo 11, a miraculous feat, and in 1976 Viking I landed on Mars, equipped for durability, and it sent back the most amazing photos. America had done great things. We were proud of that.

But …

America at 250 is not in good shape.

I cannot survive much longer. It’s not possible. Half a century of smoking, a poor man’s diet, poor health care, trauma, and tragedy have taken a heavy toll. I’m proud of the fight I have waged against the odds, with God’s help and the mercy and kindness of others, but all things must end. It’s said that only the good die young. Well….I am not young.

If I leave here, though, I will live on, in a place you can’t go yet. I’ll wait to meet people I’ve never known yet love deeply, and we will remember both the good and the bad, and probably wonder how we survived at all.

The human spirit is still strong in this country, and if we make it through these days of fear, it will be because kind souls have won. I believe that. I’ve met so many great souls, that yes, I have faith that America will endure. If I go before you, remember that I have faith in you and the best of people around the world.

Happy 250th birthday, America. Do better.

Simone Biles, American Hero

One time I was taking the airport shuttle and to my amazement saw some yo-yo bring a caged rooster on board. It was the first time I had ever seen a shuttlecock.

Seriously though.

All jokes aside, I was thinking last week that I didn’t remember badminton being an Olympic sport. I asked the air around me when I saw it on the TV schedule, “What the fuck? I remember nothing about this!

I remembered back around 2008, they were talking about pole dancing. Making it an Olympic sport. I exploded in a blog in which I used far more swear words than I do here. One of the most humiliating things women do for a living. Most do it for the pay and tips, not because they want to. So an Olympic sport? Fuck no! You kidding me? It would mock everyone who did it in the semi-nude, perhaps a considerable number of them driven to go further for money, getting addicted to drugs and dying too young. Don’t mock them. Don’t judge them. They’re trapped and it’s not their fault. Movies don’t help much. Cops always go to them for snitching and it’s a mess. Real life? Real life is fucked up.

I’m sorry if my opening joke led you to believe that this was going to be a cheerful post. It won’t be and I don’t have the power to write those. That’s a superpower I don’t have. My personal Lex Luthor kneecapped me with enough kryptonite to last three lifetimes.

With that established, however, the news from the Olympics is, to say the least, mixed. After all, I’ve been watching the Games since 1968. I saw the Black Power salute during the medal ceremony and everything. It’s magnificent and unforgettable, watching that kind of history unfold.

Tommie Smith, center, gold medalist and John Carlos, right, bronze medal winner with Australian silver medalist Peter Norman on the left Mexico City **1968 Olympic Games**

Unfortunately being the first at some things isn’t the same as finishing in first place in a sports competition. Smith and Carlos had to live with the harsh consequences of their act of courage. When Smith later said that his intention was to call attention not just to the injustices to people of color in the United States, but human rights in general, few found him to be genuine. I remember years later, the footage of the ceremony being shown and the accompanying commentary being negative.

Smith and Carlos were banned from the Olympic village, and this only on the threat of the Olympic president, a wad of lunch scraps by the name of Avery Brundage. This rat bait was the same one who was at the Munich games and had no problem with the Nazi’s salute. He tried to say that it was the national symbol of a country, whereas Smith and Carlos used their raised fists for political reasons which was against the spirit and tradition of the Olympics.

This serious miscarriage of justice and human rights was applauded by prominent people, some of which would surprise you. But in 1968 that kind of verbal and written abuse was very much in play. The pair didn’t give up, though. They were banned from the 1972 Olympics but made the best of it. Look them up and see the wondrous things they did with their own country heaping hate and derision on them.

The silver medalist was Australian. He wore a patch showing that he was with Smith and Carlos in their efforts and the mission they had taken on.

He was not welcomed home. He was treated horribly and yet he still stands with Smith and Carlos as heroes, champions for equality and not a sport. When he died, it is touching that Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral.

History doesn’t usually forgive and honor those who were first. It happens but it’s rare. Usually the first fall into dishonorable obscurity. History rarely tells their stories. The following summer, Neil Armstrong was the first man, the first human, to step a foot on the surface of the moon. That’s a first that was never given a doubt. He fulfilled Kennedy’s prophecy. He put glue on the back of the picture in the scrapbook that proved we had beaten the Soviets. I would give you five of him for one each of Smith and Carlos. What the Apollo 11 astronauts did was so dangerous that landing, surviving on and leaving the lunar surface was a huge defeat of the odds. In other words, they stood a greater chance of dying than doing it and returning to Earth. Men of courage for sure. Men of honor, yes.

But Tommie Smith and John Carlos faced death threats that wouldn’t quit when they returned from Mexico City. That’s from one act of courage and honor that should be regarded as every bit as historic and important to history.

True Heroes Are Made, Not Born, and Courage Sometimes Means You Do Nothing At All

I have not often been truly shocked by anything in sports, because that usually means seeing something tragic like the death of Dale Earnhardt. I was watching that race. His collision with the wall didn’t look bad. The car didn’t do barrel rolls or fly apart in midair. He just hit the wall. It was deceptively harmless in appearance to me. I could see some minor injuries but that’s all; there was nothing in my experience to make me think the worst. Then the announcement that he’d died immediately came and that the crash was one of the worst kind in motor sports. His skull was fractured at the base.

We joke about watching races just to see the crashes. But it’s never really been funny. After Earnhardt’s death I never heard the joke again and have never really kept up with Nascar.

The accident was exactly that. An accident. And those happen. But I wonder what could have been had he sat out that race. If he’d had some intuition that he shouldn’t drive.

When I watched the qualifying round of women’s gymnastics for the Olympic team, I saw something that honestly shocked me. As I watched, I was even vocal, a rare thing for me. Things like “Oh my God!” Came from my mouth. I was seeing the impossible being done.

1972 Munich Games

I’d seen impossible things before. In the games of the summer Olympics in 1972, American swimmer Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals. In those wins he also broke the speed records of each event. That achievement was impossible. And he did it.

In Women’s Gymnastics we fell in love with Olga Korbut. Frank Shorter was hoaxed by a fake runner who appeared to enter the stadium first, but was quickly removed.

Badminton made its first appearance as an Olympic sport.

Avery Brundage was presiding over the Games for the last time, and there was no shortage of controversy as a result. Brundage, the leftovers after another human being was born, ran a crooked show. And he had lots of help. I know of but don’t remember American athletes being lied to about event start-times and missing them. I do remember the American basketball team being straight-up and openly, in front of God and everyone, cheated out of a win by referees who made the final seconds of the game get replayed until the Soviets won. Cheating, bold as you like. The men’s pole vault was a fiasco centered on the materials used for poles, basically forcing American athletes to use poles they never wielded before.

And since the Games ended in September just before school started, I had lost my love. That’s when it happened, and that’s why they called it “Black September”.

In an act of sheer barbarism, Palestinian terrorists under the terror group named Black September took 11 Jewish athletes hostage in their living quarters. A rescue attempt failed. Every hostage was killed. Three terrorists escaped, but it’s believed that Mossad agents tracked and killed two of them and search to this day for the third. It is not hyperbole that if you incur the wrath of the Mossad, you haven’t long to live. And they never, ever give up.

Brundage, the walking afterbirth, insisted that the games be completed. That’s some cold shit right there, because I don’t know of anyone who had their heart in watching after that. My school year seemed to start out bleakly and with no memory of color; I saw things in monochrome and felt empty. My capacity for empathy and heartbreak had been well developed by then.

1976 Montreal

Two things come to my mind first: Nadia Comaňeci winning the first perfect 10 scores ever, making the world fall in love with her. Hard to watch without emotion, she was merely 14 years old and “Nadia’s Theme” for her floor exercises became a pop single hit in the U.S.

Second, a superhuman performance by Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto on the rings after breaking his knee in the floor competition. His dismount was exquisite and he nailed the landing, hiding his excruciating pain. That’s a champ right there.

Brundage was gone. It showed.

Trinidad and Tobago won their first Gold. I thought that was pretty cool.

After ’76 I never bothered much with the Olympics except for the winter games. Yes, I did see the bobsled race when the Jamaican team crashed. I thought they were all dead. Heroes. Guys who did something everyone said they couldn’t do.

Champs and heroic athletes have always come to the games to compete in the spirit of the couple of weeks they’re allowed to pit themselves against countries with the rules of honor in place and high expectations. They’re larger than life. I admire and have admired so many. Although I prefer the Winter Games with the downhill slalom, bobsledding and the suicidal luge and ski jump, I’m watching a bit of the summer goodness this year.

Simone Biles did wonders in qualifying. Then, in early competition of the vault, she did poorly. She dropped out of the event. I know only what’s in the above-linked article; what exactly bothered her, I don’t know. I expected great things from her after seeing her do miraculous things in qualifying, but that might not happen now. She may return and she may not. It had to be a difficult decision to make.

After some time in the locker room, she pulled on her tracksuit and cheered her team on. Later still she said to the press that she wasn’t there mentally and her future participation in the Games was uncertain. She spoke clearly and powerfully.

Simone Biles is by far the greatest hero of any Olympic Games. She’s a role model for young women and athletes, but for the rest of us as well. I couldn’t have more admiration and respect for her. It takes great courage before the world to announce that you need to look to your mental health. Especially because on social media she’s taking loads of abuse. Names like “loser” and “quitter”, and more are being thrown at her with great malice.

And that’s no surprise to me. While her team and the American Olympic Committee back her all the way, the world still considers mental illness as a fake, a copout or a badge of real sickness that earns the average person the subhuman treatment that’s still the standard in American healthcare. Without knowing more, I can say no more. I’m not an arrogant armchair diagnostician. The particulars are her business and no one else’s. I can only feel sympathy, solidarity and pray that she gets the help that she needs.

But I will always see her as courageous, dedicated and honest. A most honorable young woman whom history will not forget. God bless you, simone. You are the first to place mental health above a gold medal. I raise my glass in your honor.