Events that crossed my radar and memories, these many years later. This effort is aided and abetted by reviewing Wikipedia’s listings of each year’s events, in this case, 1975 and 1976.
1975
As 1975 started, I was in 11th grade in Hong Kong and had just met Barb but we were not yet dating. I was largely absorbed in my own world of school, tennis and generally being a snotty 16-year-old turning 17.
As I look over the list of worldwide events in early 1975, honestly very few made a significant dent in my little world. Watergate was in its denouement with various Nixon cronies going to jail, but it seemed to have been going on for a long time in a land far away at that point. The Vietnam War was reaching its sad end with the fall of Saigon coming in late April. My friend Nick’s dad and Asian bureau chief for TIME magazine, Roy Rowan, was one of the last journalists to leave Saigon and I remember there was concern whether he would get out at all.
Just before the fall of Saigon, Barb’s mom, Louise, played an active and noble role as a nurse in the Baby Airlift of children out of Saigon but I didn’t know the family well at that point and it made little impact on me. I need to get a more complete story from Barb and Betsy.
At nearly the same time as the fall of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge overran what was left of the government in Cambodia and started what became an awful genocide. In May, the Khmer Rouge seized an American ship, the Mayaguez, and the Marines staged a rescue of its crew, resulting in the last official US deaths in the Vietnam War. Roy Rowan wrote a book about the incident, The Four Days of Mayaguez. The Mayaguez seemed like a bigger deal than whatever else was going on in Cambodia until we learned much later of the scale of the country’s genocidal horror.
In a random coincidence on successive days in April, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was released and Bill Gates founded Microsoft but neither would affect me until considerably later.
In the spring and summer, I was trying to figure out where to go to college. The college search process was very different in those olden times, compounded by being far away in Hong Kong. I had a handful of magazines like US News & World Report with lists that rated colleges by various criteria. I also had one or two books that offered slightly more in-depth descriptions of the schools. I remember developing criteria for myself largely based on finding a school that would take my SAT scores and GPA (which were pretty good but not Ivy League level) balanced by looking for schools that didn’t get too much snow in the winter. Those were my top factors. I also wanted a school that had a focus on international relations and business but that was not as important as being warm.
Georgetown University stood out early in the process for its School of Foreign Service (with bonus points for not requiring math or science courses in its curriculum) and for being in an interesting city about as far north as I was willing to go. Other schools that made it into my top tier included Rice, Vanderbilt and Occidental. I looked at several small Florida schools including Stetson, Rollins and Eckerd as my backups. I contacted each of these schools in the spring to get their literature and application packets and pored over them in detail once they finally arrived.
I honestly can’t remember if we visited any schools over summer breaks in either 1974 or 1975. It seems like we may have swung through DC to look at Georgetown but I can’t say for sure. Other than that, it seems like maybe we drove through a few campuses in towns where we happened to be visiting just to get a feel of what a college campus looked like (I remember driving around Georgia Tech with Mom and Dad, but there was not a chance I was going there), but I don’t remember doing any proper tours. By the end of the summer I had more or less settled on the strategy of applying for early acceptance at Georgetown and hoping for the best.
I can’t recall our entire summer itinerary in 1975 other than I’m sure we were in Miami (Coral Gables) to see Laurie and David who were expecting their new baby, and the Keys to see the Sue and Tom in Marathon and Len and Mike in Key West. We also had big plans for a trip through western Canada, with an intermediate stop in Milwaukee to see the Barnetts.
In June, the movie Jaws was released. In July or so, we were in Milwaukee again visiting the Barnetts and I dragged some number of them to see it at the local mall. I remember coming out very shaken. I honestly have never enjoyed being in the ocean ever since. Thanks, Steven Spielberg.
From Milwaukee, we headed for western Canada. We flew to Calgary and drove up to Banff to tour the national park and Lake Louise, my first time there. Banff was beautiful and I’m happy I was able to get back a number of times for work and vacations in later years. We then drove north to the adjacent Jasper National Park where we were to spend a few days before catching the Rocky Mountaineer train to Vancouver. Dad badly wrenched his back lifting luggage out of the car and spent three days in bed in terrible pain in Jasper. He was especially disappointed not to be able to fish there which had been pretty much the whole point of the trip for him. Mom was able to get her hands on enough painkillers that we were able to catch the train but it was not an enjoyable ride and ended up being mostly at night anyway, so what was the point?
Dad started to feel a little better in Vancouver and we were able to catch a ferry to Victoria and actually had a good time touring that lovely town. I remember Mom especially loved Butchart Gardens. Somewhere there are photos from this trip, but I know not where, yet.
Other films that opened in 1975 and made an impact on me, other than Jaws and the Holy Grail include Rollerball (sci-fi sports), Love and Death (Woody Allen and Tolstoy), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (though I didn’t see it until I was in college and caught a midnight show in Georgetown), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (even I could tell it was well written and had great performances, though it was disturbing), The Man Who Would be King (one of my favorites for many years), and The Return of the Pink Panther (Peter Sellers was better than the rest of the movie).
I know we watched a lot of television in the evenings in Hong Kong, but I’m hard pressed to know which seasons of what. Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, McCloud, McMillan and Wife, The Bob Newhart Show, The Rockford Files and The Six Million Dollar Man were popular in our house to one degree or another but I’m not sure what seasons we saw or if they were on at all that year. Shows like Saturday Night Live and Fawlty Towers debuted in 1975 but I didn’t see them until years later.
Musically, again with the caveat that it was sometime in 1975 or shortly thereafter, I bought and regularly played albums including Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan, the first Dylan album I bought and liked), Rock ‘n’ Roll (John Lennon’s album of covers), Physical Graffiti (the only Led Zeppelin album I bought), Blow by Blow (Jeff Beck), The Original Soundtrack (10cc), Gorilla (James Taylor), Steppin’ (The Pointer Sisters), E.C. Was Here (Eric Clapton), Live! (Bob Marley), Prisoner in Disguise (Linda Ronstadt), The Who by Numbers (The Who), A Night at the Opera (Queen), Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon) and The Koln Concert (Keith Jarrett).
In August of 1975, Bruce Springsteen released Born To Run and in October landed simultaneously on the covers of TIME and Newsweek, the first rock star to do so. At that point, I hadn’t heard a single Springsteen song other than the title track, and that only on the weekly American Top 40 radio show — they were never played on Hong Kong radio and his albums were nowhere to be found. I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. It wasn’t until the following spring that Nick Rowan invited me over to his house to listen to the whole album. Once I heard “Thunder Road” and “Jungleland”, I started to understand. I wouldn’t really be hooked, though, until I saw Bruce live at Georgetown in October 1976.
By the fall of 1975, I was head over heels involved with Barb and the rest of the world became fuzzy. TV and music time in the evenings gave way to marathon phone calls with Barb recapping days we had already spent together at school. We had a little coatroom closet by the front door which had the main phone extension for the house. I spent hours and hours in there. Looking at the Wikipedia timeline, there were not a lot of huge world events in late 1975, but I doubt I would have noticed if there were.
Late in the year I learned I gained early acceptance to Georgetown University and the next four years of my life fell into place. I didn’t have to worry anymore about college or much of anything other than Barb for awhile.
1976
My situation didn’t change much in early 1976. If anything, my focus on Barb became even more intense and involving. But there were a few world events that pierced my bubble.
Starting with New Year’s Day, there was big anticipation for a year’s celebration of America’s Bicentennial. It was a big deal in all corners of the country and even in our American community in Hong Kong.
In January, the US presidential primary season got underway as someone named Jimmy Carter won the Iowa Caucus. This was potentially the first presidential election where I would get to vote so I figured I should start paying attention. I didn’t know much about any of the candidates but the evangelical former governor of Georgia was definitely not my top choice. Gerald Ford was running against Ronald Reagan. I wasn’t a fan of Ford’s either but felt he was less dangerous than the deeply conservative Reagan.
The same week, the age of supersonic air travel got underway with the first regular transatlantic flights of the Concorde after seven years of trials. This very cool-looking jet and its successors were going to change the world…except they didn’t. A backlash over sonic booms limited its range and high operating costs never came down enough to make flying the plane affordable. I’m still waiting for my chance to fly past Mach 1.
In February, the Winter Olympics were held in Innsbruck, Austria. Franz Klammer dominated skiing and Dorothy Hamill became America’s sweetheart figure skating gold medalist. Hong Kong didn’t figure in any of the action, but the coverage was decent and I watched what I could.
On April 5, there was a significant incident in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Premier Zhou Enlai, the most seemingly moderate and Western-leaning leader in China, died in January and the April event coincided with the Chinese Qingming festival to honor the dead. More than one million people spontaneously gathered in the square and started to both eulogize Zhou and denounce the Maoist Gang of Four that was looking to gain power. The next day troops dispersed the crowds to prevent further dissent. It was one of the first spontaneous demonstrations in China and a warning sign as the torch of leadership was being passed from Chairman Mao’s generation. Hong Kong-based China watchers tried hard to read the tea leaves to figure out what was going on.
The same day, Howard Hughes, one of the weirdest, most fascinating and reclusive millionaires in the world, died. He was a successful engineer, aviator, filmmaker, real estate developer and business tycoon before going progressively more wacko hiding in his Las Vegas hotel; he was the model for a James Bond villain (in Diamonds Are Forever) which was how I mainly knew of him. When he died, I started to learn more about him, but mainly got hung up on how eccentric he became. One of the oddest characters of the 20th century.
After all the buildup, I have no recollection of where we were on July 4, 1976. I don’t think we were in the States (I don’t remember seeing special fireworks anywhere), but if we were in Hong Kong I don’t remember taking part in any festivities. I wanted to be in Washington to see the fireworks on the Mall, but I know we weren’t. I remember Barb talking about a hot dog and BBQ picnic on the lawn at the US Consulate, but I wasn’t there. One of the many holes in my swiss cheese memory.
Later in July, the summer Olympics started in Montreal. We were in the States by then and I saw a fair amount of coverage though I think we were on the move a lot. I remember seeing Nadia Comenici score the first perfect 10 in gymnastics and Bruce Jenner winning the decathalon (though I mostly remember John Belushi’s parody for little chocolate donuts).
On July 28, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck near Tangshan in heavily populated northeast China. The closed nature of Chinese society made it impossible for outsiders to know the true extent of damage. The communist leadership did not want the outside world to know both for reasons of national security and maybe over old imperial fears of disasters indicating a loss of the “mandate of heaven”. Estimates of the dead later settled around 250,000 making it one of the most deadly earthquakes in all recorded human history, but even those estimates may be low. I only recall it as a headline for a few days, then silence.
In the fall, I was a freshman at Georgetown, ensconced in my dorm room in the International Student House, coming to terms with college studies, having a roommate, Ricky, making some weekend forays to Virginia to see Barb and her parents, and having little access to news or a TV.
There was one TV in the dorm, in the common room downstairs. The only thing I can remember watching on it was Saturday Night Live, then in its second season. A bunch of us freshmen would gather for this dose of American youth culture. I had heard about SNL in Hong Kong and even got acquainted with some of the first year sketches through a cast album, but this fall was the first I’d seen the show. I became a loyal fan. I was especially impressed with the music. I remember seeing the Halloween show with Buck Henry where The Band performed four numbers in anticipation of their farewell Last Waltz concert on Thanksgiving. Sadly, all the videos seem to have been scrubbed from the web (aha! not everywhere!). There really ought to be an archive site of SNL’s musical performances; there have been some excellent ones. Seems we have to wait for the imminent debut of The Peacock which will include lots of NBC’s back catalog (oops…but not so much the music, so far)
Staying on the entertainment front, films I remember from 1976 include All The President’s Men (which finally sort of explained Watergate for me), Murder by Death (an all-star murder mystery), Carrie (which gave me a good scare or two), Rocky (I didn’t understand the appeal), Network (one of my favorites), Silver Streak, and The Pink Panther Strikes Again. There were a number of other famous or infamous films that year that I missed or didn’t see until much later, including Taxi Driver, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Missouri Breaks, Logan’s Run, The Omen, Bugsy Malone, The Outlaw Josey Wales, In the Realm of the Senses, Marathon Man, The Song Remains the Same, The Last Tycoon, Bound for Glory, and A Star is Born. It was a big year in film but I didn’t really know until later.
Music was still a big deal for me, though I was spending less time playing along with albums in my room. I was dismayed to learn that Barb’s favorite tunes were the likes of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by a band actually called Middle of the Road (you should watch the video if you don’t know it), Crocodile Rock by Elton John and Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers (“S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y…NIGHT!”). I lately came across her little portfolio of the actual singles in my music closet. Still got’em!
I embarrassed her and myself by trying to sing and play the Beatles’ Eight Days A Week to her on my guitar. James Taylor’s version of How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) became “our song” though I’m sorry to say I hardly knew the Marvin Gaye original. I was smart enough not to try to sing that one.
Albums that found their way to my turntable included The Eagles’ Greatest Hits (1971-1975), Joe Walsh’s live album You Can’t Argue with a Sick Mind, Silk Degrees (Boz Scaggs), Howlin’ Wind (Graham Parker), Boston, Hasten Down the Wind (Linda Ronstadt), Jaco Pastorius, Songs in the Key of Life (Stevie Wonder), Heat Treatment (Graham Parker), A Day at the Races (Queen) and Hotel California (The Eagles) which would become the soundtrack of my following summer in Key West where it was played relentlessly at Logan’s Lobster House where I worked.
As mentioned, in October I saw Bruce Springsteen perform at Georgetown’s McDonough Arena. I became hooked from then on and finally grabbed his albums, Born to Run, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
The last big news event was the election of Jimmy Carter as president in November. I still wasn’t a fan of Gerald Ford but also had a low opinion of the sanctimonious peanut farmer from Georgia. It was hard to get excited about America’s prospects despite all the red-white-and-blue hangover from the Bicentennial celebrations. Inflation was a big problem as was unemployment, though those were supposed to go in opposite directions according to the macroeconomics I was learning. America still seemed in a hangover from Watergate, Vietnam and what was left of the 1960s. After living five years in the frothy upper reaches of Hong Kong’s atmosphere, America was a very different place. It took a long time for me to consider it home once again.
One of the biggest things that helped begin to make it seem like home was spending time at the Fishers’ house in Oakton. On many weekends I would gather my laundry in a bag, drag it onto a couple of buses to get to Tyson’s Corner, then wait by the Hecht’s store for one or another Fisher to pick me up for the ride to their townhouse in Oakton. I’m sure I must have had Thanksgiving with them. I also became introduced to the Washington Redskins and Louise’s fascination with them. They had a good season in 1976, going 10-4 and making the playoffs. Louise would make their dog, Bourbie, bark and do circles with every touchdown. There were a lot of celebrations that season.
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