If you were to visit my home…
(and you’re welcome any time)
…you’d see three rooms upstairs that Realtors would call “bedrooms.”
None is a bedroom. There’s my comic book-and-music room, our library,
And my office.
When you enter my office, you’re likely first to see artwork that my mom made — a sun on an orange canvas – and then the shelves beneath it. Those shelves contain about five decades of stories, sliced, diced and ordered in scrapbooks.
Recently, I realized that, for all the time I’ve spent on the scrapbooks, they’ve been seen by fairly few people — my husband, siblings, parents, a few friends.
It’s time to open them up and share them.
In taking this journey back in time, I want to recognize Jim Bartlett:
A Wisconsin DJ, writer and pop-culture historian who has done similar work for 20 years (!) on his blog The Hits Just Keep on Comin’.
I hope our lives and approaches are different enough to limit any reader’s feeling of déjà vu.
Let’s start with 1978, a year I began as a high school freshman.
Although my first scrapbook covered my senior year (1980-81), I captured some of these earlier moments in a scrapbook I built later.
On The Big Screen:
“Grease” is the word.
The box-office smash starring Saturday Night Fever supernova John Travolta and ’70s pop-chart superstar Olivia Newton-John pulled in $8.9 million in its opening weekend:
Immediately recouping its $6 million budget, on its way to a $159 million domestic gross in its original release.
The movie’s popularity immediately translated to the pop charts, as its soundtrack spun off 2 No. 1 hits:
(“You’re the One That I Want,” “Grease”) and two more Top 10s (“Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Summer Nights”).
On The Small Screen:
No one can pop the bubbles of Soap.
Despite its share of boycotts and ecclesiastical pearl-clutching, the first-season comedy made TV stars of Katherine Helmond (Jessica), Robert Guillaume (Benson) and Billy Crystal (Jodie).
It pulled in about 16 million viewers an episode, landing it in the Top 20 for the season.
My dad didn’t want me to watch it, despite my protesting that I was now in high school and could handle it. It wasn’t until he watched and practically bust a gut at the antics of “The Major,” Jessica’s senile father, that I knew it would be OK.
On Stage:
I saw my first major concert, Billy Joel touring between The Stranger and 52nd Street. My mom got tickets.
And it was fantastic.
I especially liked the sprawling album-track performances. “The Stranger’s” opus, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, with its tale of “Brender and Eddie.” But I actually liked the “52nd Street” track “Until the Night” even more.
In pop culture:
Comic books, long considered a cheap novelty for kids, were starting to catch on with an older audience and command bigger prices.
The Marvel revolution of the late ’60s and DC’s exploration of socially relevant titles such as Green Lantern/Green Arrow laid the groundwork.
In 1978, the oversized (almost twice as large) tabloid Superman vs. Muhammad Ali was a big seller despite its $2.50 price tag.
(By comparison, the standard monthly comic book was still 35 cents.) In the 21st century, DC would reprint the Superman/Ali one-shot with a $15.99 price tag.
On my radio and turntable:
Adult contemporary and disco loomed large in my 100 favorite songs of 1978:
Some songs you might expect to see that had landed in my Top 100 of 1977.:
- “How Deep Is Your Love”
- “Baby Come Back”
- “I Go Crazy”
- “Here You Come Again”
And at home:
This was the year I learned my dad had my back.
I didn’t know I was gay until I was a college freshman.
But the other guys at Notre Dame High School for Boys in the Chicago suburbs sensed something different about me – whether it was the way I held my textbooks or the enthusiasm I had for interacting with teachers. High school boys seemed to have a sixth sense for who didn’t or wouldn’t fit in. And punish accordingly.
They knocked my books onto the floor, razzed me for not excelling in athletics. One sophomore delighted in coming up to me from behind in P.E. and twisting my nipples until I yowled.
Some of these guys were in my Algebra I Honors class, and the teacher didn’t, or wouldn’t, notice their misbehavior or my discomfort. I withdrew into drawing my favorite superheroes in my spiral notebook.
When the teacher reviewed it, he gave me a hard time for not paying attention and daydreaming.
His quarterly reports weren’t encouraging. My dad attended a parent-teacher meeting, only to come home and confide to me:
“I see what you mean.”
“That guy’s a jerk.”
I disengaged to the point where I failed the class at year end, dutifully went to summer school taught by someone else, and earned a B.
Algebra I Honors taught me a lot. Failure wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
I could bounce back and, with the right instructor, learn something I didn’t think I understood.
And it was important to speak up – if I could find the words – and seek support.
By the fall, I connected with my sophomore Geometry teacher and had a solid B. I applied to the school newspaper as a cartoonist.
But the editors thought I showed more flair with the word, so I became a reporter and editorial writer.
I wrote a piece about showing respect for others and the school – though I didn’t explicitly describe my freshman-year experience.
As things started to look up for me, the record snows of winter 1978-79 began to fall.
They would usher Jane Byrne into the Chicago mayor’s seat. And by the time the dirty, crusty remnants melted, I would know it was my final winter in the Windy City.
Next up: 1979…
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The oversized comics like Superman vs. Muhammad Ali are called “treasury format” books. There were a number of them printed in the mid-late 70s.
Thank you, Chuck for sharing your scrapbooks and your high school experiences as a underclassman, the good and the bad. I can personally attest to the fact that you were not alone in being on the receiving end of a “purple nurple”. They’re not fun. I love that you found your way to the school paper, quickly rose up the ranks and used the pen to encourage people to do better.
As an aside, you attended the same high school as one of my brothers, albeit about a decade later. And it was a rival school of what would become my alma mater.
Chuck, I have a question.
I hear anecdotally that kids are much more accepting and supportive of each other in comparison to the era that you are talking about here.
The F word slur was ubiquitous at my high school; you heard it more than you heard any other degrading term.
From your educator’s point of view, how much progress has been made, and have you noticed a back slide of sorts over the past year?
I can’t answer this with certainty because I’m a 62-year-old faculty member, not a 14-year-old freshman, but I suspect there’s more progress overall. I can say I have not been involved in any disputes between students because of homophobic language. At the same time, the GSA at my school has been active for decades, so I don’t know how representative we are of high schools nationwide.
I think a lot depends on the area. Where I taught (small-town Tennessee), there was still a lot of ostracism of openly gay young men (less for young women, for some reason). It got so bad for one young man that he took his own life as a result of the bullying. There wasn’t so much physical bullying, but name-calling and rejection certainly live on with a certain element.
I think the difference is that there are also strong advocates for LGBTQ students. I don’t remember that from my own high school years. There were bullies and those who just didn’t pay much attention to the whole issue.
So, progress, maybe? But not enough. Not nearly enough.
NIce shoutout to Jim Bartlett (or “J.B.” as most of his followers know him) and his blog The Hits Just Keep on Comin’, especially since that’s how I first learned about Stereogum’s “The Number One” feature. And thanks again for sharing the bittersweet memories of the time. Most kids nowadays would be horrified at how often and casually the f-word slur was dropped at the time, much less the lack of support by teachers and faculty.
On another note, I remember that Grease was a big deal in theaters at the time, which is amazing because the original cast album from Broadway never made Billboard’s Hot 200 LPs chart. (In fact, only “Summer Nights” from the Broadway show became a pop hit from the album.) Credit goes to Paramount Studios executives who knew how to promote it the right way. Its star, John Travolta, left the TV series Welcome Back Kotter after the success of this and Saturday Night Fever. Coincidentally, Welcome Back Kotter debuted 50 years ago today.
I’m impressed and envious that not only did you compile these scrapbooks but you kept hold of them.
Its fascinating to look back and see the events that made you who you are along with the pop culture accompanying them.
Good on your dad for recognising that the teacher was the problem not you. I think people are more likely to speak out now but my experience as a child of parent’s evenings was that the teacher held all the power and viewed as the font of all knowledge. Whatever they said my parents would accept without questioning and pass onto me.
Nice work Chuck.
Thanks, everyone. Tonight is “Meet the Teachers” Night, so I’m having to respond in the quick break between work today and work tonight. I appreciate all of your comments.