50 Things From the 1970s That Would Be A HUGE Scandal Today
How It Used to Be
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If you lived in America in the 1970s, you could smoke a cigarette in a hospital room, drink a beer while legally driving in several states, send your eight-year-old to buy cigarettes with a note, and watch the neighborhood kids chase the DDT truck's fog on their bikes — and none of it raised an eyebrow.
In this video we count down 50 things that were completely normal in the 1970s. Smoking in the hospital, the grocery store, the movie theater. Cigarette commercials until the stroke of 1971. Kids buying cigarettes with a note. School-made ashtrays for Father's Day. "One for the road." Beer while driving — legally. The drive-through liquor store. The tax-deductible three-martini lunch. Kids loose in the pickup bed. Hitchhiking as public transit. Chasing the DDT fog truck. Drinking from the hose. Fireworks sold to children. Rifles in the high school parking lot. Kids waiting alone in parked cars. The latchkey kid. Leaded gas and lead paint. Asbestos in the hair dryer. Motor oil in the ditch. The burn barrel. Trash out the car window. Red Dye No. 2 and the vanished red M&M's. The saccharin scare. Keys in the ignition, doors unlocked. The milkman letting himself in. The party line. Checks with your SSN printed on them. Banks giving away toasters. The phone book publishing everyone. Driving at fourteen. The TV signing off with the anthem. The school vaccination line and the jet injector. The bare-handed dentist. Riding shotgun by conquest. Help Wanted — Male / Female. Women denied credit cards until 1974. Whiskey in the boss's desk. The cash pay envelope. Blue laws closing Sunday. The draft lottery on live TV. Metal dashboards, no airbags. The neighborhood dogs, loose by design. The doctor's house call. The flammable pajamas — and the fix that needed fixing.
And number 50 explains what happened: the fifteen-year stretch — EPA 1970, OSHA 1971, CPSC 1972, the bans, the acts, MADD 1980 — when America measured the danger for the first time, and the normal could not survive the numbers.
There are about 70 million Americans alive right now who lived on both sides of that line — the last people on earth who remember the world before it was measured.
Tell me in the comments: the thing from this list you did the most, and the one thing from the 1970s this list still missed. I read every single one.
#1970s #normalthen #1970snostalgia #genx #babyboomers #americannostalgia #howitusedtobe #vintageamerica #1970smemories #unthinkabletoday #growingupinthe70s #childhoodmemories #retroamerica #thingsthatvanished #70skids
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I also remember that seat belts were option when buying a car and so was using a car seat for babies and young kids.
50 Things From the 1970s That Would Be A HUGE Scandal Today
How It Used to Be
223,292 views
If you lived in America in the 1970s, you could smoke a cigarette in a hospital room, drink a beer while legally driving in several states, send your eight-year-old to buy cigarettes with a note, and watch the neighborhood kids chase the DDT truck's fog on their bikes — and none of it raised an eyebrow.
In this video we count down 50 things that were completely normal in the 1970s. Smoking in the hospital, the grocery store, the movie theater. Cigarette commercials until the stroke of 1971. Kids buying cigarettes with a note. School-made ashtrays for Father's Day. "One for the road." Beer while driving — legally. The drive-through liquor store. The tax-deductible three-martini lunch. Kids loose in the pickup bed. Hitchhiking as public transit. Chasing the DDT fog truck. Drinking from the hose. Fireworks sold to children. Rifles in the high school parking lot. Kids waiting alone in parked cars. The latchkey kid. Leaded gas and lead paint. Asbestos in the hair dryer. Motor oil in the ditch. The burn barrel. Trash out the car window. Red Dye No. 2 and the vanished red M&M's. The saccharin scare. Keys in the ignition, doors unlocked. The milkman letting himself in. The party line. Checks with your SSN printed on them. Banks giving away toasters. The phone book publishing everyone. Driving at fourteen. The TV signing off with the anthem. The school vaccination line and the jet injector. The bare-handed dentist. Riding shotgun by conquest. Help Wanted — Male / Female. Women denied credit cards until 1974. Whiskey in the boss's desk. The cash pay envelope. Blue laws closing Sunday. The draft lottery on live TV. Metal dashboards, no airbags. The neighborhood dogs, loose by design. The doctor's house call. The flammable pajamas — and the fix that needed fixing.
And number 50 explains what happened: the fifteen-year stretch — EPA 1970, OSHA 1971, CPSC 1972, the bans, the acts, MADD 1980 — when America measured the danger for the first time, and the normal could not survive the numbers.
There are about 70 million Americans alive right now who lived on both sides of that line — the last people on earth who remember the world before it was measured.
Tell me in the comments: the thing from this list you did the most, and the one thing from the 1970s this list still missed. I read every single one.
#1970s #normalthen #1970snostalgia #genx #babyboomers #americannostalgia #howitusedtobe #vintageamerica #1970smemories #unthinkabletoday #growingupinthe70s #childhoodmemories #retroamerica #thingsthatvanished #70skids
I told my grandson about it last year. He looked at me the way you'd look at a man who said he used to juggle knives blindfolded — not disbelief exactly, but a kind of careful re-evaluation of everything else I'd ever told him. Then he googled it, went quiet, and said, "Grandpa, that was DDT." I know, buddy. We were the healthiest-looking generation of lab rats America ever raised, and I'd be lying if I told you those Tuesday evenings weren't some of the happiest of my life. Both things are true. That's the whole channel, really.
So tell me. Two things. The thing from this list you personally did the most. And the one thing from the 1970s that these 50 still missed — because there's always one, and it's always somebody's favorite. Both. I read every single one, all the way down, same as you made it all the way to fifty.
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