(My experiences are U.S. based. Check your time and location for relevance.)
If you recognize everything in the title, you're my people. Or rather I should say, if you have actual memories that include all of the above you're my people. Nostalgia can be weird. You can, as Mojo Nixon and Jello Biafra sang, have nostalgia for an age that never was.
Personal nostalgia is usually edited, censored, and framed in quite specific experience. Externalized nostalgia is when you weren't there but wish you were, but that wish is based off from portrayals that are even more deliberately edited. When I hear some young person say, "I love the 90's/80's/70s! I wished I'd grown up then!" what they're really saying is that, from their modern experience with the modern media/culture depictions of the time, and as compared to what they have now, the past would be SOOOO damn awesome!
I gotta say, as someone born in 1965 (Gen X v1.0) I don't think that anybody born after 1995 would find the 1970's and 80's enjoyable. Especially not if they had to be blue collar. Almost every house had just one bathroom. One telephone and it's a land line. One television with three entire networks to pick from and it goes off the air at 2 a.m. (Midnight on Sunday). AM/FM commercial radio as your primary source for music. No video games (Atari 2600? Yeah right. Are you rich?). No home computers. No VCR's. (We have a TV already! Why would we need that?). Cable television and VCR's do became more common in the mid-80's on but if you aren't the oldest kid good luck ever watching what you wanted to watch. No microwaves. You want hot food you better show up on time for supper. TV dinners were ASS.
My people, we have very specific, tactile memories invoked by repeatedly encountering certain things.
The thick clunk of an eight track tape switching between tracks.
Taping a nickel/dime/quarter to a stylus so that it wouldn't get stuck skipping on a scratched LP.
The weird jumbling static of turning the radio dial to another station because presets only exist in cars.
Turning the dial on a roof mounted television antenna and watching for "that spot" where the signal would be clear. Marking the precise direction on that 360° dial for specific channels.
Stepping outside not sure where any of your friends actually were and trying to guess where they probably were and heading off.
Watching Saturday morning cartoons and getting hyped for the "new fall season" when something new and cool might show up.
Feeling the edges of an iron-on patch on your pants starting to lift and hoping the damn thing wouldn't catch on something and get torn off.
Checking the worn smooth soles of your Keds for a hole because you don't want wet socks.
(Northern kids) Avocado green gum rubber boots. Wearing bread bags over your socks in the winter because those boots were NOT waterproof.
The flip up backseat in a station wagon. Sitting over the rear axle facing backwards no seat belt and no quick way out (somebody opens the rear [swing out, not up] or you twist around and squeeze over the top of the back seat). On the huge plus side you didn't have to see everyone else and you could pretend to be a tail gunner.
Watching someone threading the tape on a reel to reel and thinking 'Holy shit, someday I'm getting one of these!"
The rattle of a tin pull tab in your can as you finish off a pop/soda/soft drink. Getting a church key because you didn't need one...yet, but it was cool.
Cigarette smoke in the air in McDonald's. The sound of sliding one of those flat little tin ashtrays around like a hockey puck on the table.
Trying to open the foil-paper inner bag of Sugar Pops or Super Sugar Crisp without tearing it. Because if you couldn't close that bag properly everything in it will be one giant sticky and stale glob.
Heel slamming the bottom of a glass bottle of catsup/ketchup so you wouldn't have to add water and shake it and end up with runny red soup.
Tying together a broken shoelace and trying to make sure the knot was in the right place.
Digging through a box of tennis shoes at KMart. One big floor standing box. No individual boxes, they're tied together in pairs. Mostly...
The uniquely knobby/greasy feeling of a bicycle chain as you tried to get the fucking thing back on. Also (boys only) that feeling of pedaling your ass off and dropping down to crush your nuts as that chain came off and the pedals unexpectedly free spun.
Having a ten speed and suddenly that thumb shifter is just sliding easy because you snapped the cable and now you're fucked. Hopefully it snapped in gears 3-6. Otherwise you were spinning those pedals super fast everywhere or having to stand on them just to get going.
Using a pencil to take up the slack in a cassette tape (check the window) so you wouldn't lose your music and have to pull fucked up tape out of the spindles and heads of your tapedeck.
The smell of a scorched tennis ball launched from a tennis ball can cannon using lighter fluid.
Flipping a bottle cap like a tiny and dangerous frisbee at a friend (who hopefully wouldn't turn and catch it in the face instead of the back of the head).
Reading the Sunday Comics. That smell!
(Northern kids) The ubiquitous vinyl parka with (very) faux fur trim on the hood. Almost always navy blue or olive in color and orange colored quilted interior. Trying to tuck your mittens under the knit cuffs so snow didn't immediately fall inside those mittens.
My older sister (Born in 1960) saw "Dazed and Confused" and was like "Yeah! They nailed it!" And I had to to say, "Well, okay. Except for the cars. And the cool hang out. And everyone cruising around." In our blue collar bedroom community for the car factories small town in Michigan maybe one in six kids who were old enough to drive had a car (or access to the family car). And that car was more likely to be a Pinto or Vega or Galaxie 500 or even a Pacer or Gremlin.
This was our family car-
(Not specifically. I don't have a picture on me, but that's the year, model, and color. Not a Family Truckster but a 1969 Ford Country Squire.)
Not exactly a cool ride and she wasn't allowed to use it very often. Nearly every family I knew had 3-6 kids. Anybody's house was likely to have kids there that would fuck up any type of partying. The guy in "Dazed and Confused" who gets busted for having a keg delivered to his house too early? Dude had a massive bedroom! The majority of houses in my town were 920-1080 sq/ft ranches and Cape Cods. That guy's bedroom was bigger than our living room and kitchen combined.
I shared a bedroom with my older brother. If he was home I had to listen to whatever he listened to on his AM/FM-8track-Turntable 'stereo'. Thanks to him I fucking hated Kiss and The Eagles. Table top Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was the hugest 'personal entertainment' event of my teen years. And it was absolutely geek/nerd/freak status to play it. My parents weren't dense enough to believe it was "satanic" but plenty were of that attitude. We weren't allowed to bring the books to school. You want to know how exciting small town life was? Me and my friends would climb the grain elevator at night just to try to see the lights of other towns. I mean, growing up that way? It was what it was.
Boredom was absolutely inevitable. We used to go on vacation up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to my dad's hometown. A 6.5 hour drive. You know what we did for 6.5 hours? Looked out the windows, read (if it didn't make you car sick) or play the alphabet game.
We were just there. Michigan, the home of the Big Three, didn't show up much in TV or movies. As it turned into part of the Rust Belt people mocked our parents, our lives, our homes. We felt more connected to Canada than the rest of the U.S.
The thing about growing up that way was that things could feel more important. When you discovered a new band that music was YOURS. If you saw a good movie first you were The Expert until enough of your friends had seen it too. There was definitely a commonality. Everyone watched the same TV shows. Because there were only so many to choose from anyhow.
Our reality was pretty isolated. By the time we heard of, let alone heard, The Sex Pistols, they had come and gone. You weren't going to be a punk rocker because you had no way to even hear the music. It wasn't on the radio and it wasn't even in record stores. With an exception in my case. Michigan State University was twenty miles away. There was a record store in East Lansing called 'Flat, Black and Circular' and it catered to college kids. Twenty miles away was a long way if you couldn't drive though.
A lot of bands never got closer to us than Detroit (Pine Knob, Joe Louis, Cobo) but that was ninety-plus miles away. If you even had money for a ticket and could get one before they sold out. When I was in the Army I had a friend from rural Nebraska. He saw his first concert in West Germany at the age of nineteen because he didn't even live close enough to a place that sold tickets let alonehave a concert. I has another friend who grew up in NW North Dakota. He hadn't heard ANYTHING except country music before then. (He wasn't allowed to watch 'WKRP in Cincinnati' because Dr. Johnny Fever was clearly a degenerate advocate for drug use)
Modern kids reflecting on that time have way more access than we did. To music, movies toys and gadgets. They also get to skip living with the late Cold War paranoia and MAD. Warnings about herpes turning into the threat of AIDS.
Oh. By the way young'uns. There was terrorism aplenty in the 1970's. The Symbionese Liberation Army, Baader-Mwinhof Gang, Red Brigade and PLO. There were a shit-ton of hijackings. Not that it concerned us. We couldn't afford to fly places. Credit cards weren't handed out like candy because rates were still properly regulated. The student loan industry didn't exist. I had to join the Army to be able to afford a college education. The factories were shutting down, you gotta go to college and move away for work. If you think worries and financial instability and uncertainty about the future are a new thing you'd be unpleasantly suprised to visit my little town in the '80's.
I'll give you this much. It sucks exponentially far fucking worse now. A fascist theocratic oligarchy for a government. A.I. slop and data centers and a complete absence of privacy. A continuous assault on fundamental rights. Unaffordable healthcare because without unions insurance is no longer ubiquitous. No pensions. Because without unions bullshit fucking 401k's took their place. Disinformation burying facts. You don't own your media. You license it. No job security because without unions and regulations small companies' only goal is to be bought out and merged. Making the founders rich while the workers get fucked.
Eh. Maybe you kids wouldn't mind the 70's and 80's that much after all.
