Your dad in the 70s

what was he like?

drunk, overweight
had sideburns for a while

Managed a singles apartment complex, has many stories of the poolside bar and night club.

He was a Danish guy that somehow discovered the crap that is US Country music.

had long-ish hair and a luxurious beard
was a farmer
got drunk in car on way to drive-in movies in the next town, ruined 200m of some farmer's wire fencing

country music in the 70s was pretty good
xpost

Had a mustache; smoked; worked pretty much all day & late nights (plumber); took us to the park on weekends to play; took us all on Sunday drives where we would get him to pretend car was rollercoaster (slow up the hill & fast down the hill)
He was pretty cool imo

in his 40s, traveled overseas a lot for his job, listened to country music station when my mom wasn't in the car. drank johnny walker red label. dressed like he did in the 50s/60s - no wide lapels or sideburns. didn't defend nixon but claimed that watergate proved "the system works."

my dad joined the army right out of high school and looked like a younger version of himself now. in high school he had long shaggy seventies hair for a while. the end.

just kidding there's still a lot of classified military intelligence shit he did that he won't talk about!

mustache, coke, steely dan

great thread!

oh, forgot to mention my dad survived a baader-meinhoff bombing

much mustaches and many longhairs

Smoked back then, pub every other night, would bring home takeaway chinese food late in the evening sometimes (perhaps out of guilt, in hindsight), sideys, a beard at one point, but always short hair. Gruff, country bloke, but a big softy really. Sold Holdens. Liked to teach me little ditties when I was a kid, such as:

'Twas an evening in October, I'll confess I wasn't sober,
I was carting home a load with manly pride,
When my feet began to stutter and I fell into the gutter,
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Then I lay there in the gutter and my heart was all a-flutter,
Till a lady, passing by, did chance to say:
"You can tell a man that boozes by the company he chooses,"
Then the pig got up and slowly walked away.

...mind you dad's version went "and the effing pig got up and walked away" I think.

back from 'Nam, had a mustache and wore corduroy suits, thought John Kerry was otm about Vietnam war on the Dick Cavett Show, acquiesced to marching around the living room with me banging on pots and pans to the State of Siege soundtrack, drove a Ford Pinto, taught junior high math

The upright sub officer you all know and love from that YouTube/Captain Kangaroo clip. (Filmed in 1982 but his personal style hadn't changed much.) In the seventies, had a luxuriant mustache for a bit in the early part of the decade. Loved Bonnie Raitt and Crystal Gayle and, above all else, Linda Rondstadt when it came to music. Dedicated to either Coors or Olympia beer depending on availability. Easy laughter, always quietly dedicated to those things he saw as greater than himself without making a fuss over it. For a while there in 1979 or so each night we'd read a couple of stories out loud before I went to bed, me from a nutty book on sports stories, him from a children's adaptation of the Bible. Sometimes absent for long stretches when on duty, gone but I always knew he'd be back. And he was, and he's never left.

My dad was going to Univ. of Utah in Salt Lake City and went to a lot of concerts. When I was a teenager he started telling me about all the concerts he went to bcz I was just getting into music and they impressed me. The thing is, though, he never really had anything good to say about them. "Yeah, everyone thought Heart were cool because they were girls, but I didn't really fall for that." "Everyone acted like they liked Led Zeppelin, but if you ask anyone honest, they will tell you all those long drum solos didn't make any sense." "The Talking Heads were all on drugs, you could tell by how they moved around. Especially that bassist, how she moved her eyes was really spooky." "I liked Jethro Tull until Ian Anderson knocked the Book of Mormon in between songs. I thought lightning would hit the stage."

New York City public school music teacher with crazy jewfro hair and bushy stache, teaching tough urban youths a la Mr. Kotter. Also owned a tiny unsuccessful art gallery at one point.

My dad got engaged to a woman for a couple years in his early 20s, and then he broke up with her. Apparently his proudest moment in their relationship was getting her to give their engagement ring back after he called it off. The only other story he had about her involved her overplaying John Lennon's "Shaved Fish." Any mention of her would end with, "If I'da married her, you kids would sure look a lot different."

Went from a Memphis transplant selling real estate in north-central Arkansas to becoming the inspiration for Boz Scaggs' "Lido Shuffle".

You just reminded me of a story about my dad, he was also engaged to someone else before my mum, but apparently came home one day and found her in bed with some guy? So he threw his engagement ring at her, picked up some stuff, walked out and never came back.

Which is so o_0 I dont know.

True story, I know a guy who sorta went out with this girl in junior high. She invites him over when her mom's not around and they're necking, etc. Once that gets boring, they start snooping around and find a photo album with full-on wedding pictures of HIS DAD and HER MOTHER.

Wait, does full-on wedding mean an actual wedding or is that some kind of dirty thing I don't know about?

if you haven't been in a full-on wedding you are yet to become a REAL MAN

I mean tuxes, wedding dresses, family members... not some Vegas thing.

I should also clarify that this wasn't his sister he was necking with. Turns out the marriage only lasted a few months before they quietly divorced and re-married other people.

my dad in the 70s:

life: eating a half a jar of peanut butter a day and living in a shitty rat-filled apartment while in law school, a few miserable drunk years as an associate in new york, met my mom, got married to my mom, helped her through her first bout of cancer.

looks: wavy hair pushed forward (a trend that ended in the 70s for him), sideburns, lots of awful suits but amazingly weird weekend attire (including some shirts, one of which i'm wearing right now! 1975 vintage), and a total closet smoker.

drank: Old Crow and Schlitz

oh, forgot to mention: total freak for garage rock from the 60s and 70s funk. i gave the guy the Nuggets comps a few years ago as a present, and he knew EVERY SONG. it was amazing

long hair and beard. was in a prog rock band with a Lord of the Rings inspired name.

"Yeah, everyone thought Heart were cool because they were girls, but I didn't really fall for that."

lol. My dad was introduced to my mom at a Heart concert!

He had big sideburns and flares and worked in a factory.

I can't remember much about him being at home because I was born in 1976 and my parents broke up in 1980, by which time he'd joined the fire brigade.

My adoptive dad was a soldier, was in his 50s in the 70s and never got with the age at all. Hair never a millimeter part the ear, tweed jacket and cavalry twill when out of uniform. Never drank, never smoked. Was partly deaf and didn't care for music.

He didn't like me much, nor me him - we argued about everything for a while, him shouting me down, then I just ignored him, then I left, then he died. My younger sister has much more positive memories of him - he liked her, and she him.

my dad was a workaholic surgeon who did medical research on burns, skingrafts and reconstructive microsurgery

crazy 20 hour long procedures where severed limbs get re-attached one bloodvessel at a time

in the 70s he still had the short haircut of somebody from the early 60s, but the bowties got bigger and more colorful

gradually the hair came over the ears and he started to look more "70s"

to relax he drank gin and listened to rod stewart, esp. the "Blondes Have More Fun" LP

he bought abstract paintings and took up archery (?)

my parents got divorced in the 70s

once divorced, Dad listened to more Bob Dylan and got wistful / angry

he found new love with my stepmother, also a surgeon

she was his student in medical school (he was also a professor of surgery in a medical school)

he lived in a stone house that was kind of spooky

and worked in a hospital that looked even spookier, like Dracula's castle

I was afraid of him

http://fineartamerica.com/images-medium/royal-victoria-hospital-in-montreal-reb-frost.jpg
where Dad worked

This thread makes me wish I knew more. Was in the Canadian navy. Based on...a few things... I gather he had a way with women back in those days, before he became a secretly soft-hearted, but very convincing curmudgeon. Met my mother late in the decade, possibly in the early 80s, at which point I gather he changed his sailor-y ways. Now worked as a "consultant" in slightly shadowy fashions, so I feel ya bloomer.

pretty decent taste in music - Songs of Love and Hate, Zep, Weather Report etc.

dudes

caek those photos / captions are amazing.

My dad in the 70s:

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsD/29871.gif

(I've never seen this photo before)

lol caek - was just coming here to post:

my dad in the 70s = dudes

Look at a picture of Carl Wilson in the 70s and you've basically got it. Sold equipment for International Harvester for a while, then cotton gin machinery for Continental. Insisted on he and his groomsmen wearing powder blue tuxes for his wedding to my mother in '74. She is still kind of mad about it.

dad graduated from college in 74, the year i was born. I was conceived in his frat house to Teddy P. End.

Insisted on he and his groomsmen wearing powder blue tuxes for his wedding to my mother in '74. She is still kind of mad about it.

LOL/I wore a hideous powder blue tux to the senior prom in 76 - truly the decade fashion forgot

not really sure about the specifics, but I know he worked on a farm for a few years thanks to the cultural revolution in the 70s, before being sent back home where he met my mom and they plotted their escape to america

Let's see . . . in 1970, my dad turned 25 years old, had been married for five years, had two kids, and was in his eighth year of military service. Early in the year he had just come back from Vietnam, having been there for the last three months of 1969 and missing my birth.

Throughout the 70s, he continued to be redeployed to Vietnam every year until 1974, as well as to Okinawa and the Philippines; while spending stateside assignments in Massachusetts (Ware AFB), Arizona (Gila Bend AFB), Virginia (Ft. Lee) and Missouri (Ft. Leonard Wood). In 1976, he made Warrant Officer and we were sent to Germany for three years.

I remember him being away from home a lot (obvs), but I also have a lot of great memories of when he was around. Especially in Germany, when he wasn't always doing TDY somewhere in the Pacific, and we did a lot more things as a family.

Two pictures - the first of mom and dad in 1972 (lol at my dad's shoes there), and the other from 1976, when he made Warrant Officer. He has never, for my entire life, not had that mustache.

http://img708.imageshack.us/i/momndad.jpg/

http://img109.imageshack.us/i/dadw1.jpg/

Poop.

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/694/momndad.jpg

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/9553/dadw1.jpg

I don't think it was the greatest decade for my dad. He sold his variety store around '73, spent a year or two bouncing around, then became a car salesman mid-decade; the first few years were a struggle, and he really didn't become successful at that until his third dealership a decade later. In terms of the culture, well, I think my dad's world stopped sometime around "The Twist." He wasn't a '70s guy in any sense of what that might mean.

Those photos are great--I think that's Larry Bud Melman to the left of your dad in the second one.

I'm pretty bad about remembering this kind of stuff, but I know he had shaggy hair, a beard, and a mustache for a lot of the '70s. He was in the Peace Corps very briefly (was sent to Iran but couldn't hack it). He worked for his dad as a salesman, which did not go well. He got his Master's in something mental health-related and worked at a mental facility in Buffalo. He and my mom got married in like 77 or 78? and I was born in mid-79 when they were living in central Florida. My dad took his job with the State Dept. very soon after.

The '70s would've been my dad from ages 26 to 36. At the start of the decade he was still serving out his conscientious objector term (after spending a few years prior fighting for the C.O. status), doing various kinds of community service, and working on becoming a full-time potter (which he'd spent most of 1968 learning in England, as an apprentice to a friend's mother). He and my mom were in Cali at the beginning of the decade, where I was born in '69, but they moved pretty soon after, to Rochester, so they could join the Rochester Zen Center. Their social/spiritual lives revolved around that place for about five or six years, and then we moved out to the country. Basically during this whole time, Dad spent all day by himself in his pottery -- first in the basements of the houses we lived in, then after we moved, in the old barn that he fixed up to be a full-size workshop with a big brick kiln. After school I'd go out there and he'd be spinning pots on the wheel or rolling clay out on the big slab, listening to Bob Dylan or NPR or occasionally something newish (like Fleetwood Mac). He smoked a fair amount, but always made himself go outside to do it, never even did it in the pottery. He liked it when my sister and I came out to the pottery to say hi, but it was understood that we weren't supposed to linger too long, because he was working.

He had dark, shaggy hair then. He was skinny, 6 feet and I think just 150 lbs or so, and wore jeans every single day. He was (and is) a good acoustic guitar strummer and a good singer. He wrote a handful of songs himself, mostly funny ones about chickens. ("Hey chicky chicky-i-o/Got a friend who's a chicken, don'tcha know"), even though we didn't at the time have any chickens. (That came later, in the '80s.) He had friends who he played music with and for a few years was in a local softball league, but he's never been a very social guy. He was known in my parents' social circle both as a funny guy -- loved jokes, puns, etc -- and, somewhat paradoxically, as kind of grumpy. Both were true. He was also a baseball fan, which he passed on to me -- we'd listen to Yankees' games on the radio together. After dinner, we'd go out in the yard and play catch or practice shagging flies and fielding grounders. It's funny to me now that this entire period -- when of course he seemed very, very grown-up to me -- he was younger than I am now.

Worked as a machinist at Vauxhall Motors for the entire decade; I think the last record he bought was Frank Sinatra's Main Event (Madison Square Garden, 1974).

Here we are in Southport, summer '73...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/7/6549260_04bd0abf8a.jpg

^^^
Sharp dressed man

my dad was like 10 years old in 1970 lol

in the 70s my dad looked EXACTLY LIKE ME, it's really kind of scary to see photos.

Michael what beautiful parents you have!

My dad looked like the drummer from Grand Funk Railroad.

my Dad was too old to be a hippie but looked more like Kris Kristofferson every year. he worked for NASA so I mostly grew up outside of Houston but we lived in Southern California during the mid-70s, my idyllic childhood and where Dad was in his natural habitat. i think the 80s broke his heart a bit. a totally righteous dude RIP

my Dad was too old to be a hippie but looked more like Kris Kristofferson every year.

It would be scary if this were literally true and he eventually looked exactly like Kris Kristofferson.

The Portrait of Kris Kristofferson

Michael what beautiful parents you have!

Dad passed away in 2007, Mum is in a care home - it's lovely to think of them like that...

There's an awesome photo of my Dad somewhere from their wedding, where Dad, his best man, and a couple of the other groomsmen are sitting on a bench having a smoke in their tuxes...when I was a kid that photo just amazed me. "My dad was COOL!" bc all I ever saw him in was overalls and a beanie for about 20 years.

My Dad was a civil servant who rowed for the first half of the 70s and was a football referee for the second half. He listened to a lot of classical music, grew vegetables in the garden and watched any sport that was on telly. Here he is in his boat (with speech bubble and beer).
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2217/2344999251_e1a844399f.jpg
DD Dad by madchen, on Flickr

My Dad was a quantity surveyor. He kept his hair short during the 1970s and used that as a disguise to sneak in through the police gate at Firhill. Here he is at a village dance, looking a bit glum (fifth from left, middle row). My mum's in here, too (front row, second from left).
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4121/4777044403_c265f9a636.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5245/5277863284_20b192744b_z.jpg http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5282/5277863244_16a5a6785d.jpg

these from a very short period in which he lacked a mustache

he still has that motorcycle btw

awwwwww

This is such a great thread--hope someone starts one for moms in the '70s too. (Although I think it was good to start with dads; moms get lots of sentimental tributes, but dads are often overlooked.)

It's hard to find good photos of my dad in the '70s--he was a madman with the camera, but most everything ended up on slides (which, later on, were transferred onto VHS).

http://phildellio.tripod.com/dad1.jpg

http://phildellio.tripod.com/dad2.jpg

my dad was like 10 years old in 1970 lol

As was I....