1970's Hazy Recollections (Prompt #1)

By Grace Han Cunningham

I've always archived my memories in good old fashioned, glue and paste scrapbooks but none of them contained anything about world or local events - just my travel, academic awards, report cards, holiday and birthday cards. My sole focus at the time was academic excellence - as was typical for many immigrant Asian families. So most of what I remember of outside events from the late 70s' is based on what I recall seeing on CBS Evening News, which my family watched every single night together in the family room.

We grew up in the modest house my parents bought in 1971 in Durham - a one story, brick ranch style house that was common in middle class neighborhoods - our development in west Durham was one of many "Brady Bunch" style neighborhoods full of identical houses with different roof colors but all NC clay red brick homes. My 95 year old mother still lives there today! My father was a professor at Duke and several other faculty members lived in our neighborhood.

Every night we would sit in the family room after dinner and watch Walter Cronkite deliver the news. Most of what I recall dominated the news was the oil embargo of the early 70s and more clearly, the constant stories and photos of long lines for gas during the US oil crisis of 1979. I remember my parents being worried about how much gas cost and how long my mother had to wait in line to fill up our wood paneled station wagon (was it a Dodge Aspen? I can't recall but we had that thing for decades and all three of us kids drove it to school. My two younger brothers nicknamed it "The Tank" and it was well known at the Durham Academy high school parking lot). We all attended Durham Academy and Mom had to drive us to and from school. My dad would pick us up in the afternoons as he did not teach any afternoon classes.

During that time frame we had two cars - the station wagon and a little brown Dodge Dart which was nicknamed "Brownie". That was what my father used to drive to Duke and had the faculty parking badge affixed to its windshield. But "The Tank" was what we all remember as our family car growing up.

Gas in 1979 was still leaded and cost $0.86 a gallon. I remember when gas first crossed the $1 dollar a gallon threshold in 1980 and how shocked everyone was at the prices then. Ha, if we had only invested in oil stocks then. According to the website, 1970s flashback.com, these were the average prices in 1979:

Cost of a new home:  $71,800.00
Median Household Income:  $16,461.00
Cost of a first-class stamp:  $0.15
Cost of a gallon of regular gas:  $0.86
Cost of a dozen eggs:  $0.85
Cost of a gallon of Milk:  $1.62