1979 ~ Back To Real Life

I had no misconceptions regarding what work would be ~ a series of dead-end jobs; maybe I'd eventually land one with tenure and I could coast my way to retirement. I really didn't want a job. I wanted to be a mom, but President Jimmy saw things differently. Being poor wasn't all that bad, but I hated having to charge basic needs, plus the hospital let me know my five dollar-a-month payment for my new son's delivery just wasn't going to cut it. That telephone conversation convinced me I needed to find a job. Before I became a mom my work life was scattershot at best. I'd tried the real world and didn't like it. Being a clerk-typist for the state, I found, didn't mean sitting in a cubbyhole and typing all day. I had to interact with customers, which I guess was the "clerk" part. I didn't know what it was called then, but it turned out I had social phobia, which is in essence a fear of making an utter fool of oneself. Whenever I heard the front door of the State Health Department creak open, I had to steel myself for the inevitable person-to-person interaction. In retrospect, I am convinced I didn't instill confidence in my customer. I would toddle off and retrieve a copy of their birth certificate and mumble, "two dollars". I think I also said, "thank you", because while I was a near-mute, I was perpetually polite. After little more than a year I'd scurried back home to work for my parents. I quit working all together in November of 1976 and nested.

By the summer of '79, the fiscal writing was on the wall. As we pedaled down the expressway in our tin-can Chevy Malibu, I gazed at the building being erected, with a big sign out front that announced, "Future Home of LaBelle's". I said, I'm going to work there. I don't know why; maybe it was the close proximity to home, basically a zip up one street and one zip down another. Possibly it was because the one skill I was confident I possessed was ringing up a cash register. Plus I still retained the naive certainty that this place would be all my hopes and dreams tied up in an azure package; a retail nirvana. And it was part-time.

1979 began nine years of inhabiting second shift, forgoing toddler's bedtime baths, snuggling with little towheads, missing all my favorite TV shows, But life is a series of have-to's. I couldn't place Lego sets and Fisher-Price parking garages under the Christmas tree without the money to buy them and without my ten per-cent employee discount.

LaBelle's was a catalog store, which no longer exists in today's Amazon world. Customers would wander about with a stubby pencil and a pad and write down the number of the item they wanted to purchase; then hand their paper to an associate who'd punch it into a "computer" and the bored guys back in the warehouse would fetch the item from an eight-foot high wobbly shelf and dump it onto the conveyor belt. My job was to grab a hand mic and announce, "Johnny Jamsicle, your order is ready at Register Three. Johnny Jamsicle, Register Three." Johnny would step up to Register Three and I'd ring him up.

Some nights were excruciatingly quiet. Especially Tuesdays. Nobody ever seemed to shop on Tuesdays. So I'd stand behind the counter in my high heels and eye the one person in the store longingly, willing them to order something. Truthfully, LaBelle's was quiet most of the time, except during Christmas season. I would, of course, be scheduled to work Saturday days, and Christmas was the only time the hours whizzed by.

When I had my yearly review, my manager docked me for not coming up with a product display, which I didn't even know was a requirement! I subsequently visited a travel office and gave the girl behind the desk a line about a school project, and talked her out of a vacation poster, which I pasted in the luggage department, along with the words, "Flights of Fancy". Casey, my manager, didn't understand the saying and argued that my word choice was wrong. "It should be flights of fantasy," she proclaimed. I tried to explain to her what a flight of fancy meant. She finally gave up the ghost and let me keep my display. I didn't even get a five-cent raise for all my effort. I did, however, learn a valuable lesson about dealing with morons.

I frankly didn't have much free time to devote to music listening, but I couldn't escape the fact that Kenny Rogers was everywhere. This dude who'd had a minor career with The First Edition in the sixties had reinvented himself as a precursor to Lionel Richie.

The number one song of 1979:

Kenny had five, count 'em, top twenty hits in '79. And that wasn't even his best year. I'm not sure why, but I rolled with the flow. I even saw him in concert once, sitting in the nosebleed seats in Duluth, Minnesota. It was a spur-of-the-moment impulse on my mom's part. We were there; he was there ~ why not?

There were better country songs in 1979; for instance, Eddie Rabbitt:

The Dirt Band:

Don Williams:

Waylon:

T. G. Sheppard:

The Oaks:

I had my Bang and Olufson component stereo I'd bought on credit and a stack of country albums. Sometimes I'd come home from LaBelle's in the dark and slip the needle on one of those LP's, quietly, as to not awaken the kids snug in their beds, and relax with a cup of instant Sanka. 

And think about the pitiful state of my "career".

1979

(Can you imagine taking your music with you?)

1979 was in many ways a depressing year. We had a depressing, nay, dreary president. He could sap the fun out of any gathering. He lectured us on TV about our "malaise", not realizing that he was the one who caused it. It was as if by telling us how disappointing we were, we'd snap out of it.

One exciting event of that year was the exploding Ford Pinto. When you drove a Pinto, it definitely took you for a ride. Lucky for me, I had a Chevy Vega.

The Iranian Ayatollah decided to take 44 Americans hostage in December, which resulted in the launch of a 10:30 p.m. TV show called "Nightline", starring Ted Koppel's hair. Our hapless president only managed to make things worse by authorizing an ill-fated mission to rescue the prisoners. The operation went spectacularly wrong. 

In household news, Black and Decker introduced something called the "Dustbuster", It was ingenious. Everyone who was anyone raved about their little cordless vacuum. One pitfall of the new invention was that the batteries went dead right in the middle of sucking up toast crumbs from the shag carpet in front of the sofa. Yet we all felt so "with it". 

ESPN came into existence in '79. I never watched it, because---sports. On the other hand, a new network called Nickelodeon showed up on cable and we watched it religiously, because---kids. Otherwise we watched 60 Minutes on Sunday nights and followed Mike Wallace as he stalked some unsuspecting scofflaw around dark corners. 

Jack Tripper and Chrissy and Janet lived upstairs from the Ropers and sexual innuendo ensued. Eventually, Suzanne Somers wanted to leave the show because she felt her salary was a mere pittance; so thenceforth she phoned it in, literally. Every episode featured a shot of Chrissy on the phone with her apartment-mates, to convince the TV-watching rubes that all was all right on ABC Tuesday nights. 

Friday night was "Dukes of Hazzard" night. My three-year-old was obsessed with the show. I wasn't sure why. I did get a kick out of the fact that my son thought the sheriff's name was Roscoe PECO-Train. For my part, I liked the theme song that I surely knew was performed by Waylon Jennings, even though they only showed his hands, but not his face on TV.

Musically, we still possessed stereo components. Sure, Sony had this new gadget that claimed to let one port one's music, but that was kind of goofy; silly. Why did we need to carry our music with us? We had the car radio! This seemed to me akin to the Dustbuster; a sad trail of dead batteries.

Country music was sad, and not in the traditional way. Our big stars were Kenny Rogers and Dave and Sugar.

There were a few sparks, though. This song featured Linda Ronstadt on the original recording. This performance, however, does not. But she couldn't be everywhere. I do want to say, thank you, Rodney Crowell. If it wasn't for you, 1979 would have been lamer than it already was.

Speaking of the Dukes of Hazzard and Rodney Crowell:

In kids news, a McDonald's Happy Meal was a treat that was affordable, even for us, at $1.00. The Muppet Movie was the tenth highest grossing film of the year, and taking a one-year-old and a three-year-old to the movie theater was an experience no parent should miss, for the wailing and the seat-climbing and the chaotic showers of popcorn. Oh, and the movie was good, too.

To relieve the stress and relax my tendons, when we reached home I listened to this:

Anne Murray was still making hits, and I liked this one:

Fashion-wise, we favored bib overalls. Beneath those, we wore blouses with puffy sleeves and a tiny bow at the neck. Throughout the seventies, women wore one-piece contraptions that were hell to undo when one had to pee. Therefore, we were careful to limit our liquid intake. I worked part-time at a retail establishment, so I had to dress up. Since my hourly wage was $2.65, I shopped at K-Mart for work attire. I picked up some below-the-knee skirts and twin sets and high-heeled plastic slides. I purchased my pantyhose at Woolworths, however, because they carried the size that fit best. I honestly don't think I took home any money from that job, after laying out all my earnings to buy appropriate work attire. Wearing pants to work was unheard of. Velour was also the fabric of choice, but if I ever owned a piece of velour clothing, I've blocked it from my mind.

At 9:30 p.m., when I landed at home after work, I poured myself a glass of....Coke...because I didn't drink. I slipped the stereo needle on this:

One can't underestimate the influence the Oak Ridge Boys had on country music in 1979. Aside from Kenny Rogers, who wasn't country, no act was bigger. This video is notable for the lack of giant white beard on William Lee Golden's chin:

In a nutshell, the biggest country acts of the year, aside from Kenny and the ORB's, were Eddie Rabbitt, Crystal Gayle (yes), Moe Bandy, and Don Williams. Some were nearing the end of their careers, some were one-offs, some had a couple of decades yet to go. 

In the daytime hours, TV was what TV was -- game shows in the morning, Days of Our Lives in the afternoon. In between, advertisers took great pains to inform moms what they needed to feed their kids to keep them happy and healthy -- KoolAid, Ore-Ida french fries, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese -- all the nutritious choices. On the plus side, however, mothers were still a "thing" then. And kids. 

Also, AT&T urged us to reach out and touch someone. I didn't know many people with whom interaction required a long-distance phone call, but if I'd made any "friends" on vacation, trust me; I wouldn't have called them.

Generally with music, I chose to avoid chaos. Life was chaotic enough, with two kids under the age of four, and with my part-time job that ostensibly "contributed to the family coffers". Better days were to come, but that's what days generally do, if one is lucky. 

Meanwhile, I relaxed to this: