Totally Normal in the ’70s: 25 Bizarre Things That Would Shock Us Today

0:00 Welcome back to the Strange History Podcast, the podcast where we dive deep into the weird, the wild, and the often wonderfully uncomfortable corners of the past. I'm your host, Amy, and today we're going back, way back to a time of shag carpet, asbestos insulation, and the Marlborough Man. That's right, we're taking a psychedelic trip down memory lane to the nineteen seventies, a decade so packed with oddities and contradictions it feels like it happened in a parallel universe, except that millions of us actually lived through it.

0:37 So put on your flared genes, fire up the fondue pot, and get ready to marvel, laugh, and maybe cringe a little as we explore a long list of things that were completely normal in the nineteen seventies and would be absolutely bonkers today. Back in the nineteen seventies, smoke was practically part of the decor. It hung thick in restaurants, floated through office buildings, and filled the air on airplanes. You could sit in a hospital waiting room and watch your doctor exhale a cloud of Winston smoke between patient visits.

1:11 Teachers smoked in the teacher's lounge and occasionally right in front of the blackboard. Entire family dinners were hosted around a haze of secondhand smoke, while the kids passed the ketchup and ash trays in equal measure. And speaking of transportation, hitchhiking wasn't seen as reckless. It was seen as normal. Teens with duffel bags and patched up jeans would just stick out their thumb and catch a ride. Sometimes cross country Hitchhiking was how you got to music festivals, to college, to grandma's house.

1:43 Parents might even offer some friendly advice, like make sure it's not a weirdo and send you off with a bologna sandwich in a brown paper bag. Drinking and driving far more socially accepted than you'd imagine. A man could finish a six pack on the drive home from the bowling, and if the cops pulled him over, the likely outcome was a friendly warning, drive safe, pal, they'd say, perhaps even tipping their hat as the driver peeled off half in the bag. For kids, freedom meant something truly wild.

2:15 No supervision. You were expected to leave the house after breakfast and not show your face again until the street lights flickered on. Parents had no idea where you were, and most of the time, neither did you. You climbed trees, dug questionable holes in the backyard, and rode your bike like evil Knievel over homemade ramps made of plywood and cinderblocks. Helmets, please. Helmets were for professional motorcyclists and nobody else. Cars themselves were rolling metal living rooms with ash trays in every seat.

2:48 Seat belts were often shoved deep into the upholstery, unused and unnoticed. Babies bounced on laps in the front seat, Toddlers lounged in the back window, and no one thought twice about it. Family road trips were survival of the fittest, and if you got car sick, tough luck. Here's a napkin. In science class, your teacher might casually let you play with mercury. You'd roll the silvery beads across the desk like some kind of magical alien goo, then chase them with your pencil as they broke apart and reformed.

3:21 No gloves, no warnings, just don't swallow it. Most kids were latchkey kids. You'd get off the school bus, unlock the door with the key, hanging around your neck and fix yourself a snack, usually something like a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich washed down with a glass of tang. Then it was time for the Brady Bunch or Gilligan's Island reruns before starting your homework with a pencil sharpened by a loud wall mounted grinder. Kitchen decor was a fever dream. Everything came in harvest gold, avocado green, or burnt orange.

3:55 If your fridge, stove, and tupperware didn't match one of those colors, were you even living? And the shag carpet, it was so thick you could lose your shoe in it. Vacuuming felt like hiking through underbrush. Television was an instant gratification. You had three, maybe four channels, and you had to get up and walk to the TV to change them. Click click, click, You'd smack the side if the picture got fuzzy, And when you wanted to watch something, you had to wait all week for it to come on. If you missed it, you missed it.

4:28 No replays, no DVR, no mercy. Doctors rewarded you with candy. After getting your tonsils checked, you'd get a lollipop from the doctor, and dentists had bowls of sugar retreats in the waiting room. Sugar was everywhere, in cereal, in drinks, in health snacks. You'd start your day with a bowl of fruit loops and end it with a tube of pixie sticks and a can of tab. Lead paint was still coating every toy chest, windowsill and crib rail and asbestos. That was the miracle material that kept your house fireproof.

5:05 Kids could pull apart crumbling insulation in basements like they were harvesting fluffy white snow. Nobody blinked. Parents didn't hover, They pushed. If you told your mom you were bored, she'd say, then go outside and find something to do. That was the end of the conversation. You were expected to entertain yourself, which led to hours of tree climbing, worm collecting, and mildly dangerous games involving pointy sticks and questionable dares. On Halloween, strangers handed out homemade treats, popcorn balls, candied apples, even hand wrapped fudge.

5:44 Parents encouraged you to take one from Missus Jenkins down the street. She was known for her chocolate turtles, razor blades, poison That urban legend hadn't caught on yet. Trust was still currency in the neighborhood economy. Mascots and advertising were a wild, unfiltered jungle. Joe Cammell was a cartoon character designed to sell cigarettes to adults and unintentionally to kids. Beer commercials aired during primetime TV, and women were always shown giggling in bikinis while men grilled steaks and drank schlitz.

6:17 Ronald McDonald showed up at birthday parties unannounced and didn't terrify anyone until much later. Roller rinks were like Studio fifty four for sixth graders. You'd show up in striped tube socks and short shorts, circle the rink to KC and the Sunshine Band and hope the DJ called for a couple's skates so you could hold sweaty hands with your crush under the disco ball. Everyone had a bowl cut or feathered hair. You either looked like a mushroom or a Charlie's Angel. Parents cut your hair in the kitchen using a mixing bowl for precision.

6:50 Photos from the era looked like everyone was auditioning for the mod Squad, whether they meant to or not. Birthday parties often involved clowns, full clown painted faces, squeaky shoes, big red noses, and not the ironic kind. Kids loved them. Nobody thought they were creepy until much later, when pop culture gave us nightmares in the form of Pennywise. Dinner was often served in a metal tray. TV dinners were a marvel meat, peas, potatoes, and a brownie, all compartmentalized in microwave together or baked in the oven if your family didn't have a microwave yet.

7:27 Tang was served with pride. After all, the astronauts drank it, and anything the astronauts did was basically gospel. Flying on a plane was an event. People dressed up, men wore suits and ties, women wore skirts and heels. You got a hot meal and a tiny bottle of wine. Even in coach, the seats were plush, the windows had curtains, and the stewardesses as they were then called, served drinks like it was a cocktail lounge in the sky. Women wore pantyhose with everything under dresses, skirts, and somehow even shorts.

8:04 You might be dripping sweat on a summer day, but if your legs weren't covered in sheer nylon, you were practically indecent. Phones were tethered to the wall with long cords that could stretch halfway across the house. Privacy meant dragging the receiver into a closet and whispering while sitting on the floor. If someone called your house and the line was busy, they got a busy signal, No voicemail, no call waiting, just beep, beep, beep, and try again later. You take photos on a thirty five millimeter camera and have to wait a week for them to be developed at the drug store.

8:41 Half the photos would be out of focus or have someone blinking, but it didn't matter. You slid them into a sticky photo album, wrote the date on the margin and called it a memory. TV shows, commercials, even board games, were riddled with casual sexism and off color joe folks that no one questioned. Game shows like The Dating Game treated women like door prizes. Ads praised floor wax and dish soap as the greatest gifts you could give your wife. Public pools were cloudy, overly chlorinated, and full of unsupervised children.

9:17 Lifeguards spent more time flirting than watching the deep end. If you got a mouthful of pool water, it was just part of the experience. Nobody questioned the hygiene, and best of all, no one knew where you were, and it was glorious. You were off the grid, truly unreachable. If someone wanted to find you, they had to drive around the neighborhood calling your name, or wait until you showed up at dinner time, sunburned, filthy and thrilled from a day of freedom. It was the seventies, a time when your mom smoked in the grocery store, your dad wore socks with sandals unironically, and you thought riding in the way back of a station wagon was the pinnacle of luxury transportation.

10:00 It was unsafe, unsupervised, and in many ways, unforgettable. If this episode gave you a nostalgic chuckle, a cringe, or a flashback to your own bowl cut, be sure to follow the Strange History podcast wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review, tell a friend, or just shout it out your car window like it's nineteen seventy seven and you've just discovered disco. Until next time, keep it strange, but maybe skip the asbestos