What did people do in the 1970s, before the internet?

[Treeview]

Went to the drag strip...in the trunk...got caught....had to pay double o r ticketed for tressasing

 

[Greytruck]

I was 5 at the end of the 70s, 15 by the end of the 80s.

We woke up very early every day, did all our chores, whatever farm work needed doing, came back in, ate breakfast, got run out of the house by mom or whichever adult was at home and in charge (aunts, uncles, grandparents) with a lunch bag and apples for the rest of the day until supper. No one adults ever knew where we were, only the general area/plan of the day. Despite the ladies knowing how to stretch a meal for drop by guests, and we always had plenty of those, when the horn blew, you had to beat it back home as fast as possible if you wanted to eat before it all disappeared. Which meant if you were not there by blessing time, you got scraps. Those ladies sure could cook.

It was a great treat to go to the library, be there for story time, read books, pick out ones to take home

Another treat was going to the pharmacy for root beer in a frozen mug, hamburgers/fries, and ice cream, or floats.

Went to most everyone's birthday party in our grade when young. Small school. Tight community.

While we were younger, the rest of the day was running, playing, exploring the woods, sports, riding bikes, go-karts over time, then motorcycles. We made and threw paper planes, boomerangs, frisbees, shot sling shots, climbed ton of trees, built forts, attacked each other with sticks, pine cones, acorns, mud, and about anything else we could throw or sword fight with. Went swimming in any water hole, creek, river we found, played tag, freeze tag, hide and seek. If we wanted to reach out to a friend, we hiked through miles of woods until we made it to their house.

Friday nights were all about the local high school football games and gatherings. As kids, we played our butts off with friends under the bleachers.

The clothing I remember at 4-7 was tough jeans with patched knees and butts, almost always hand-me-downs. Tough shirts for all the sticker bushes we walked/rode through most days and heavy boots. As others have said, "We lived in a real world rather than a virtual one," it was outside, rugged, we created our own play/fun, had hatchets, knives, compasses, water canteens, could build forts faster than builders frame homes.

Sundays were all about family day, church, and pro football season. As someone posted, everything was closed. We went to after church picnics or potlucks. Once home, we watched black and white tv with rabbit ears when young, graduating to a large antenna pole that we'd have to go out and hand turn to get different signals, especially in storms. We got our first color tv somewhere during all this and everyone (extended family, friends, neighbors) came over to watch games. Still only a few channels on a good day.

Music was family playing, radio (am/fm), an old cabinet radio/stereo, vinyl records, 8 tracks became popular but I do not know when. Saturday mornings somehow became kids morning with cartoons. Got up early as always, ate breakfast watching cartoons. Did chores, farm work, and was out the rest of the day. Sports took over Saturdays as we had more offered to us.

When it was no longer football season, we loved going to local community gatherings which is where we'd schedule times to hook up in the woods at various locations so no one had to travel a crazy distance to meet up. That's when we often met up at various swimming spots all over. We swam year round no matter the temperature. No one cared. Crazy to think back on it, cold, bugs, snakes, mosquitos, wild life, we swam with no concerns.

Bows took over sling shots, then BB guns and stronger bows, next was hunting rifles, we began going hunting (for food, not for sport). We learned to fish, clean, cook, camp.

As we aged, we went to more school events, basketball and football games were even bigger, we discovered girls (strange how they all of a sudden appeared out of nowhere), went to school dances, talked, hung out, parties became more spin the bottle, 7 minutes in heaven, and that darn shoe game (no idea what the name is). We called them kissing parties. So much kissing. Also skateboarding and roller skating became an extra thing to do with places to hang out when there were no sporting or community events, as did video arcades when we went to town with friends.

We wrote letters to people on the other side of the county during the summer and other far away friends that we met at some camp somewhere away. Our school was over 20 miles away, many school friends further. We lived near islands and would attend camps in the islands making amazing friends from all over the world.

Music products progressed to where we could do as another poster mentioned, "We made mix tapes based on whatever albums we had or else waited for a song to come on the radio. Music was better." No doubt the music was incredible. We were all hitting that age where it meant something. At some time I wound up with a Walkman, must have been my brothers.

I agree with so many here:
No cell phones for sure. Didn't even use the phone much.
We walked everywhere or rode bikes all over.
We listened to rock and roll groups on the radio and stereo.
Things were calmer and I’d say safer.
We didn't worry about some chickenshit pussy pulling a gun out and shooting everybody back then, or an adult doing something inappropriate because we had our own guns and would have most likely shot them.
Unlike today we didn’t believe that men could be women and feelings weren’t offended by anything and everything. We didn’t hate someone who didn’t vote the same way we did and we could disagree with someone and still be friends. All in all it was a better and simpler life tougher in some ways but with friends and family we still enjoyed it.

Funniest thing is that black, white, hispanic, asian, never came up with us a kids. We were great friends hanging out all through growing up there was no color or differences as far as we knew. We still talk about that when we meet up. Crazy how sensitive new generations have gotten.

High school changed quite a lot, but that wasn't until the 90s.

You lived thru the stuff.. love your story

 

[Greytruck]

Went to bars, hopped up our cars, drag raced, (street and strips), and chased the women. You had to make first contact face to face back then. I wonder if guys now days can talk to a woman without getting to know her online first?

Ha, no they text now… ha

 

[EmmAgain]

Aww fuck, I was a teen in the 80s albeit 6 years younger than your grams.

You ready to grow your bush for your visit to the 70s? You'd be a super freak if you shaved.

Oh NO!! Weren’t at least landing strips a thing?

I can’t do hair down there. (And really can’t since getting laser.) So I’d still keep it bare and have people laugh at me.

Like seriously, how did you even eat a girl’s pussy?

 

[strongnsensual]

Oh NO!! Weren’t at least landing strips a thing?

I can’t do hair down there. (And really can’t since getting laser.) So I’d still keep it bare and have people laugh at me.

Like seriously, how did you even eat a girl’s pussy?

Save money on dental floss...

I prefer she be shaved or waxed or lasered for that very reason! Hair between my teeth? No thanks.

 

[strongnsensual]

I spent a good portion of tmy time in the 70's crapping my pants and sucking titties.

I still spend a lot of time doing one of these!

No, not that. Sheesh.

 

[Mike130]

Oh NO!! Weren’t at least landing strips a thing?

I can’t do hair down there. (And really can’t since getting laser.) So I’d still keep it bare and have people laugh at me.

Like seriously, how did you even eat a girl’s pussy?

No problem eating a hairy pussy. No one shaved, so a hairless one was almost analogous to underaged girls. My favorite was my girlfriend in the late 70’s with a thick hairy bush. Sometimes if she wore a small bikini, some hair would show around the edges of the material, sexy at the time. That’s why I would usually take her to the nude beach. All the girls in Playboy and Penthouse had full bushes at the time.

 

[Baztrachian]

I've always been interested in life before the internet. I've read that people drank cloudy beer, polished their shoes and kept quiet on Sundays. Did my Dad have a chopper bicycle, turned up jeans and throws stones at steam trains with his chums? I don't how people thrived in the Cold War years, or how people died in coal mines or unwanted babies got 'put up for adoption'. Tell us about the 1970s - what did you do in your leisure time... did you have any?

Well, for starters I was a kid in the 1970's.

We played marbles in elementary school until some idiot fuck decided to ban the game because it was "gambling". And when we played off school grounds the rotten motherfucker tried to punish us for that and that was enough to send our WW2 veteran fathers into a seething rage.

I knew a kid named Mark Macias whose father had been at Guadalcanal (serious shit). When Mark got suspended from school for playing marbles at the park Mr. Macias went to the school and fucking trashed our vice principal. The San Jose Police decided that Mr. Macias was right and refused to arrest him. I remember my father being cool with it too.

Memo: Don't fuck with a Mexican's kid especially when that Mexican has killed people. Lots of them.

There were very few black kids at my school but they told the most outrageous 'nigger' jokes. I know this site is fairly wide open but most of the jokes they told are memorable and also nothing I'd post here. Even in DM. Seems this was part of black cultural history where they'd play the dozens with each other and us white kids were handy to practice on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dozens_(game)

'Polack' (Polish) jokes were popular and they generally focused on stupid people humor.

Dead baby jokes were a thing in the late 1970's. They focused on shock value.

Example:

What's worse than a truck full of dead babies?
A truck full of dead babies with a live one in the middle eating its way out!

I had a Huffy bike that was a cheaper knock-off of the highly desired Stingray bicycle. It got stolen when I was seven. My idiot older brother lent it to some friend of his and either it got stolen from him or it got sold. In any case it was stolen from me.

We would never call anyone before going to see them. We'd just get on our bike and go knock on their door.

We used to LOVE riding in the backs of pickup trucks! That was some fun and it's sad today's kids will NEVER have that experience. It was a cheap thrill.

I wasn't into smoking or pot but I hung out with the kids in the high school smoking area in my early high school years which were in the late 70's. They were cool and I got along with them just fine.

It's not the 1970's but in 1982 I got detention this one time and the douchebag vice principal (we had a few and most of them were cool) had me sit in his office for two hours while he did who knows what.

Having access to his office phone I called my brother who was in Japan at the time and we had a nice chat of about an hour or so. This was about a $600 phone call and that's in 1982 dollars.

Edit: We rode our bicycles without helmets and we made fun of the spaz kids who did.

 

[EmmAgain]

No problem eating a hairy pussy. No one shaved, so a hairless one was almost analogous to underaged girls. My favorite was my girlfriend in the late 70’s with a thick hairy bush. Sometimes if she wore a small bikini, some hair would show around the edges of the material, sexy at the time. That’s why I would usually take her to the nude beach. All the girls in Playboy and Penthouse had full bushes at the time.

Sounds like eating pussy was quite the adventure! Well, I’d say you managed to have a lot of fun back then despite the absence of waxing salons, so it can’t have been all bad!

 

[EmmAgain]

Well, for starters I was a kid in the 1970's.

We played marbles in elementary school until some idiot fuck decided to ban the game because it was "gambling". And when we played off school grounds the rotten motherfucker tried to punish us for that and that was enough to send our WW2 veteran fathers into a seething rage.

I knew a kid named Mark Macias whose father had been at Guadalcanal (serious shit). When Mark got suspended from school for playing marbles at the park Mr. Macias went to the school and fucking trashed our vice principal. The San Jose Police decided that Mr. Macias was right and refused to arrest him. I remember my father being cool with it too.

Memo: Don't fuck with a Mexican's kid especially when that Mexican has killed people. Lots of them.

There were very few black kids at my school but they told the most outrageous 'nigger' jokes. I know this site is fairly wide open but most of the jokes they told are memorable and also nothing I'd post here. Even in DM. Seems this was part of black cultural history where they'd play the dozens with each other and us white kids were handy to practice on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dozens_(game)

'Polack' (Polish) jokes were popular and they generally focused on stupid people humor.

Dead baby jokes were a thing in the late 1970's. They focused on shock value.

Example:

What's worse than a truck full of dead babies?
A truck full of dead babies with a live one in the middle eating its way out!

I had a Huffy bike that was a cheaper knock-off of the highly desired Stingray bicycle. It got stolen when I was seven. My idiot older brother lent it to some friend of his and either it got stolen from him or it got sold. In any case it was stolen from me.

We would never call anyone before going to see them. We'd just get on our bike and go knock on their door.

We used to LOVE riding in the backs of pickup trucks! That was some fun and it's sad today's kids will NEVER have that experience. It was a cheap thrill.

I wasn't into smoking or pot but I hung out with the kids in the high school smoking area in my early high school years which were in the late 70's. They were cool and I got along with them just fine.

It's not the 1970's but in 1982 I got detention this one time and the douchebag vice principal (we had a few and most of them were cool) had me sit in his office for two hours while he did who knows what.

Having access to his office phone I called my brother who was in Japan at the time and we had a nice chat of about an hour or so. This was about a $600 phone call and that's in 1982 dollars.

Edit: We rode our bicycles without helmets and we made fun of the spaz kids who did.

Gosh - that’s quite an epic! You have a whole Luke Combs song right there! Thanks for the detail.

 

[Handeguy]

I turned 10 in 1979, so the 70's was peak early childhood.

Every day, there would be some kind of neighborhood kid gathering. Sometimes it was sport centered - baseball, kickball, soccer - which was *just* starting to become a youth sport in my area - touch football, pond hockey in the winter. Sometimes it was a variation of tag. We played war with toy guns that our parents bought us for Christmas. It was always unstructured, meaning no adults, no leagues, no uniforms, no practices, no referees, no schedules, no elite travel teams. You just got a few kids together and played. If there was an argument, you either had a short but brutal fistfight to resolve it (if you think you could take the other kid, anyway), or you argued and settled it. Then you went back to the game. I put holes in a lot of clothes sliding into base. I got muddy and sometimes bloody. Broke a couple of bones. I learned how to get along with my peers and process conflicts and be a reasonably decent loser and winner. My mother had a vague idea where I was (somewhere "in the neighborhood"), but it's not like we could have reached each other at a moment's notice. It built independence. I wore out bicycle tires getting to and from those contests; my mother didn't drive us to friend's houses very often. The only rule was be home for dinner at 6 and at the table before your father arrives. Hell had no fury like a mother who made dinner for a kid who wasn't there on time to gratefully eat it.

I got a tiny allowance payment in exchange for regular chores. I supplemented that with money I made mowing neighbor's lawns and shoveling their driveways. My parents never handed over cash. We got gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but if you wanted something else or in between, you paid for it with allowance or earnings.

We didn't have cable TV - it didn't run the 4 miles from downtown out to our house. We had three network stations and Public TV. No matter what, you made darn sure you had chores and school work done on Sunday by 6:30 so you could watch Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom (sponsored by Mutual of Omaha Insurance!) and Disney at 7:00. Baa Baa Black Sheep was on Thursday night, The Six Million Dollar Man was on Fridays, and Dukes of Hazard was a scheduled event on Saturday night along with The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. These were watched on a black and white TV. Color TV's were around, but it was mostly rich people who had them, or so I thought.

Dad got two weeks of vacation in the summer. We did NOT get on an airplane. Air travel was ONLY for rich people. Like really rich people. Without fail, we spent one week camping at a state park. A couple times, we went all the way to Canada (!). It was a four hour drive to the border, which we crossed both ways without passports or inspection. The other week we spent at grandma's house. If we could not stay in a tent or with a relative, we didn't go. And I loved every single minute of it.

 

[Missmister]

I was just a kid in the 70s, but as other posters have said we wrote our bikes everywhere.

I grew up in a small town so I didn’t know too many people outside of my town. TV was a family activity and mostly my sister’s and I would watch cartoons on Saturday mornings.

I remember them finally is being carefree and fun. I did not know much of the outside world and problems with race relations, the economy, Vietnam. Etc.
———
My wife is 10 years older than I am so she came of age in the 70s. She remembers it being very carefree sexually. She lost her virginity at 13. She slept with a lot of guys - her biggest fear was getting pregnant, not STDs.

it’s always easy to look back at different time periods and say they were great. There’s good and bad everywhere, right now, in the 70s and in the 1570s.

These are the “good old days”!