My Little Black And White Kitchen

If there was a worse cook than me in the mid-seventies, I don't know her. When I got married, I knew how to make absolutely nothing. I'd made Kraft macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. I'd heated up Campbell's soup on the stove. Why was I so inept? I simply never cared. I had a mom who cooked dinner.

I also rarely ate actual food that didn't tumble out of a vending machine. My parents owned a business that had magazine racks in the lobby and cigarette machines and spinning candy dispensers; not to mention cold eight-ounce bottles of Coca-Cola. Thus, I read every movie rag available and rotted my teeth on chocolate and developed a life-long nicotine habit. My sixteen-year-old dietary regimen consisted of menthol cigarettes, Seven-Up candy bars and sickeningly sweet Coke and Dr. Pepper. Not to mention refreshing Fresca, which contained enough saccharine to hobble an African elephant. Regrets? I have a few.

But cooking? That was so passe. Old women (in their forties) did that. I was young and hip and liberated. I had pantyhose and polyester mini-skirts and long swinging hair and Cover Girl makeup.  I had the Grass Roots on my transistor radio. Aside from the candy, I really didn't eat. I smoked a lot and hid the black plastic ash tray under my bed. Sometimes I drank a can of beer, if I was able to procure one. I was still pseudo-religious, so I gave up snacks for Lent, which meant I essentially ate nothing, since snacks were my only source of nourishment. My teenage years were a cornucopia of excess, as if life was tenuous. And it was, then.

At age eighteen, when it was deemed that life was passing me by, I became engaged. My fiance and I trudged the mobile home lots in the dead of winter to find a suitable home we could afford. Renting was not even a flitting thought. No one we knew actually rented except for my friend Alice II, and her apartment was only a brief stopover until she, too, became married and bought her own mobile home. We perused a few units, clambering the wrought-iron stair steps of each; and they were all essentially the same ~ except for the one that had a kitchen floor of black and white geometric linoleum. I became fixated on that floor, and no other selection would do. We purchased our first home based upon pretty flooring. The color scheme of the remainder of the home was burnt orange and lime green ~ long-stranded shag carpeting. And we didn't even yet own an upright vacuum cleaner. We hoped to secure one as a wedding gift. We owned absolutely nothing except the console stereo my parents wanted to be rid of.

Around '75 we splurged on a microwave oven. Mom and Dad had a microwave, a monstrous behemoth that claimed almost all the kitchen retail space.

It was good for almost nothing, but like halter tops and leisure suits, it was the thing to do. It defrosted ground beef defectively, but it did work for boiling water. There were no prepared foods created exclusively for microwaves, so using the noisy apparatus was trial and error...mostly error. Major companies did have the foresight to market special ceramic serving dishes exclusively for microwaves, so there was that expense (we were scared to use paper plates ~ they might burst into flame). There was also the niggling dread that these "waves" could potentially poison anyone who consumed anything nuked in them, but we were young and indestructible, so we took our chances.

I eventually learned how to cook ~ in fact, I became more and more adventurous as the months ticked by. I shed my fear of electric appliances and began experimenting. It wasn't so hard after all! As unschooled as I was, I developed an affinity for Chinese cooking (and we didn't even own a wok). Like every other thing in life, cooking is scary until one actually tries.

My black-and-white linoleum required a weekly pan of Spic 'n Span and sore knees to maintain. I still liked it, though. It was the centerpiece of my home. Everything else in my trailer was shit, but I had that floor!

I was learning how to be a grown-up, bit by bit. It wasn't necessarily by choice, but it was time. I also was learning about poverty and how to make a life out of nothing. Our first Christmas tree was a two-foot-high plastic proxy for the real thing that I set on an end table and trimmed with decorations I fashioned out of folded paper. I scoured my checkbook daily to determine if money existed with which to buy groceries. Benevolent gifts from parents saved us from starving.

But I had music. That hand-me-down console stereo in the living room kept me company as I "housewifed". Memory is a funny thing ~ when we think about music, we cull the charts for those tracks that are timeless, but that's not how music actually worked in real time. These are the songs I remember:

In retrospect, aside from America, the hit songs of '75 were kind of mopey. No wonder I spent a lot of time staring into the abyss that was my shiny new, scary microwave oven.

1975 was the last time I could label myself a "kid", albeit a married kid. The last time I would prioritize music over everything. Before long, a completely new experience would change my life forever.

In the meantime, I did have that floor....

1974 ~ Music and Ineptitude

Hindsight is essentially useless, other than reminding us that we're (unfortunately) human, and therefore dumb.

In 1974 I was nineteen and ignorantly immature. In hindsight (see?) I realize just how green I really was. I, for instance, had no business pretending to be an adult. Society, however, deemed that a girl needed to be married by at least age nineteen or twenty. Every girl didn't do that, but most of us did. Our life's goal was to become betrothed. I remember when I told my parents that I was engaged, they were delighted. They almost clapped their hands together in glee, and muttered under their breath, "It's about time." I was still a few months shy of nineteen. My concept of marriage was having a sofa and a TV, and maybe a microwave oven. Life wouldn't change much, except that I could escape home. Truly, my primary motivation was escaping, as if that would make life better. Living a dysfunctional existence no doubt played a role. I had to get away from the craziness I'd lived with for the past seven or eight years. I was desperate. Additionally, my self-esteem was so minuscule that I couldn't pass up the only chance I'd ever have to snag a husband. (Happy ending: both of us have since found our true soulmates.)

I now think a good age to marry would be thirty ~ young enough to still have children; mature enough to know oneself.

I had a "starter" job ~ I could definitely type, so what better fit than a job as a clerk-typist? Living in the state capitol opened up a plethora of possibilities. There was never a dearth of job openings. One only needed to pass a test in order to qualify. The exam consisted of alphabetizing and vocabulary...and typing. All things that were well within in my wheelhouse. I didn't care or know how much I was getting paid for my position within the State Health Department. I did notice that my paycheck seemed to deduct a bunch of dollars for this and that; something called "Social Security" and other things I didn't understand, but that was neither here nor there. Shoot, I was still living at home, which was free, so all I needed was some clothes and new records.

All I knew about "credit" was my JC Penney charge card. Securing a place to live, in anticipation of my marriage, was contingent on what I liked; cost be damned. Payments? No problem. We perused the mobile homes on the sales lot. I was particularly enamored by the one with the black-and-white geometric kitchen linoleum and the harvest gold appliances. That's the one we got. Our mortgage, with zero down payment, figured out to be $149.00 a month. Everything else we came to own was secured through wedding gifts and hand-me-downs, including my console stereo. I did bring to the marriage a transistor radio.

I certainly didn't know how to cook, and was offended by the unreasonable expectation that I should. It was only after a fortnight of Kraft macaroni and cheese that I was informed a dinner of boxed dinners and toast would not suffice. I subsequently purchased the Betty Crocker cookbook, in a show of "cooperation". Thus began my too-brief immersion in cooking.

I soon quit my State job ~ I didn't even last there a full year. There was something (okay, someone) I didn't like. My pay was so low, one job was indistinguishable from another. Unfortunately, interviewing petrified me, so I nestled back in the bosom of my parents. They let me work for them again, not that I actually asked. I believe I just announced it. I panicked when faced with a new environment; I tended to not even give it a middling chance. Home was home. I knew the lay of the land, the arrangement of the furniture. I'd checked guests into our motel from the time I was far too young to be manning a cash register. Plus there was a lot of down time. I could read magazines, snatched from the rack. Mom had a fully-stocked refrigerator and I helped myself when I was hungry. And the motel office had a TV. It was like leisure time occasionally interrupted by work. I'd get up early, 5:30-ish, throw on some jeans, and scoot my blue '66 Chevy Impala across the Memorial Bridge, with nary another vehicle crossing my sight line. And back home by 2:30 in the afternoon, just in time for a nap.

Life, to me, at nineteen, still consisted of music. Music was number one, and if my new husband didn't get it, then that was unfortunate. I was more bonded to my little sister than I was to my husband, because she, at least, "got it".

I'd been a country music gal for so long, it was embedded in my bone marrow, but strangely, the songs I remember from 1974 are firmly Top Forty. One's exposure to music consisted of AM radio and television. There were still enough variety shows on TV that musical guests were de rigeur. I would sit through interminable comedy skits simply to see the hokey setup the show's producer had envisioned for the night's rock act, because he didn't trust that people would actually enjoy the music. Twenty-three minutes of torture simply to catch a two-and-a-half minute song. Truly, network television was awful. I guess people watched because they had no other choice but the Big Three, and the cathode rays hypnotized them.

There were tons of one-hit wonders in the seventies, and more power to them. Don't knock one-hit wonders. Do you think, I really enjoy the Dave Matthews catalog, or do you surreptitiously boogie out to the Hues Corporation?

I know what I do:

This was one of my little brother's favorites:

Grand Funk:

Some new girl singer, who'd, I guess, go on to make a movie, appeared on the scene in '74. She had a hyphenated name and was Australian, which was odd, because I only thought Americans made music:

 A song that will always scream "tornado!" to me (but that's a story for another time) was a hit in 1974:

Paper Lace had a big hit (and I didn't know there wasn't an east side of Chicago ~ geography was not my strong suit):

The biggest phenomenon of 1974 was ABBA; no question. '74 will always shout ABBA. 

'74 was a watershed year for me. Maybe it's because I was nineteen, embarking on adulthood. I'm not sure. I could include twenty more songs from that year. These will suffice. For now.

These tracks take me back to that black tile and to a time of utter obliviousness. 

We all have to grow up. I think it just took me longer than most.

Jobs and Things

I was thinking about work tonight, which is not like me. When I leave my workplace on Friday afternoon, bye-bye! One needs to maintain a separation between work life and actual life. I know people who live for their jobs. That used to be me, but I'm older and much wiser now.

I got my first real job in 1973; and by real job, I mean one in which I didn't report to my parents. As a newly-minted high school graduate, with no idea why I would want to attend college, I realized that I needed to put my two years of typing class to use. I'd also taken two years of shorthand, but you know what? Nobody in the course of history has ever employed shorthand in an actual job. Shorthand was a scam, but I prefer to call it a "lost art", because it sounds mystic.

Living in the capitol city of my state, government jobs flowed like water. Luckily for me. I landed a job as a Clerk Typist I in the State Health Department, Division of Vital Statistics. The office housed all the birth, death, and marriage records from the early days of Dakota Territory to the present day. Of course, the first thing I did when I had the chance was scan the shelves to find my own birth certificate, and then my dad's. Then I located my mom and dad's marriage document. None of those records contained anything eye-opening. But, after all, who wouldn't have looked? There were rack upon rack of big dusty books in the bowels of the Vital Statistics office.

Folks would pop in from time to time, ride the elevator (that had its own valet) up to the seventeenth floor, fill out a form and leave with a certified copy of their record of birth. I typed up my own copy for myself; made myself three years older than I actually was, so I could go to bars and not get kicked out. (Is it okay to admit that now? I'm thinking after forty-four years, the statute of limitations has run out.)

After a few months of manning the front desk and trying to look busy during the quiet times, I was chosen to be part of a new (exciting!) project. The big dusty books had to go -- we were now going to microfilm all the ancient reposing records. Microfilm. Much like shorthand, microfilm is a remnant of a bygone era. A microfilm machine was a big camera that one slid papers under and pressed a round red button. Oh, but I bet everyone else in the office was keenly jealous! Who wouldn't be?

As an eighteen-year-old, I didn't fully understand the solemnity of my charge. We were a three-woman team -- our new supervisor and a girl named Alice and me. We had an office in the back with a door that we closed behind us. We sat at two desks -- one for the supe and one for Alice and me. And we lugged those powdery books from the shelves in the catacombs of the warehouse back to our little cubby and traced with pencil over the ancient typing that had turned faint from decades of being encased between stiff binders. Ahh, the glamour! Then each of us would take a turn behind the secret curtain and snap pictures for an hour. Over and over and over.

Do that for a day and you will never want to come back. Do it for a year and you will be tempted to hurl yourself out the seventeenth-story window.

Luckily, we had our radio. And cigarettes. It was a putrid, smoky closet that had nice tunes.

AM radio was our suicide repellent. It was all that saved us. KFYR featured all manner of songs; radio was not yet compartmentalized in 1973-74.

We heard songs like this:

That's when I realized Barbra Streisand was actually a really good singer.

Nadia's Theme, we knew, was the theme song for the Young And The Restless. You can call it what you want, but come on.

I wonder if they still use that theme song today. My soap days are long behind me, so I don't know. I suppose Katherine Chancellor is long gone. She'd be about a hundred and ten years old if she were still around. 

I told Alice she should use this next song in her wedding. She demurred. I still feel I was right:

I liked this one. I knew BJ Thomas had done the original, but Blue Swede took it to a whole new level:

I guess the bandwagon was filled to the brim with old songs done in new ways:

I never lie on this blog, or try to recreate history. This was a big hit in 1974, and we liked it:

I'm somewhat proud to say that one of the two worst songs of all time was released in 1974. It's a minor conceit, admittedly, but I'm going to claim it:

No offense to my little sister, but these next two songs remind me of her. While I, at age eleven, was grooving to the Beatles, she was stuck with tracks like this:

I won't delineate here why this next song is, to me, synonymous with tornadoes. That's a whole different scary story, but here it is:

We didn't exactly think Jim Stafford was funny, per se, but he was odd. If I was of a mind to look him up, I'd probably find that he had some serious songs. To everyone's dismay, though, he will be remembered for stuff like this:

"Star Baby" was a revelation and taught me that Burton Cummings was a sex-drenched god. But the Guess Who chose to follow that hit up with this one. Nevertheless, we liked it:

There was also this new guy who popped up around 1974. He was British. He could sing. He could definitely sing. He liked feather boas and humongous eyeglasses. 

But, boy, could he sing:

Yes, the tunes went on forever in that tiny, choke-filled room, and we tried to remember that there was actual breathing life somewhere far below the seventeenth floor.

This song was to me...in 1974...as I struggled to believe that blue sky existed somewhere...everything:

And yes, I wrote about that time. Of course.

Philadelphia Freedom

1975 was a bridge year for me. I'd gotten married in '74, one month shy of age nineteen. I was a "housewife" who still worked part-time for my parents -- because I was essentially afraid of the world. Plus, despite the courage I'd had to muster by age twelve due to the family dysfunction that had reared its ugly head, I'd lived a sheltered life. If sheltered means cloistered behind a sliding chain-lock in my room. I'd gone from high school to my first real job working for State government, which lasted as long as it took me to realize I was now ensconced in another maladjusted relationship, and I wasn't even related to these people! So I'd scurried back to the devil I knew.

Life was quiet. Sometimes we'd have breakfast at the Country Kitchen, when we could spare four dollars. We fished. Fishing sounds quaint and bucolic. In North Dakota, fishing is finding a path through the overgrowth of weeds snagging the shoreline of a "lake", which is in reality a slough at the end of a cow path smack-dab in the midst of brittle prairie grasses. We'd pack an insulated bag with Cokes and bologna sandwiches and Old Dutch potato chips, grab a ratty blanket, and off we'd go to the middle of nowhere. If I hadn't had my Kool cigarettes, I would have passed out from boredom. I learned how to cast a line, but I hoped to God I wouldn't catch anything, because then what would I do?

My husband's boss had talked him into joining the local Moose Lodge, so sometimes on a Friday night we'd drive over for a steak dinner. I hated steak (I had a beef revulsion at that time), but the price was right; something like $5.99, and it included a salad and a baked potato with those little chive sprinkles; and the lodge had a live band. I was a bad drinker. First of all, I never knew what kind of drink to order, so I'd go with a Tom Collins, which included a skewer with a cherry stuck in it. Two drinks and I would be babbling incoherently. I made many, many best friends at the Moose Lodge that I never again saw in my life after that night.

I'd planned out my first pregnancy. I would be married for two years (two years was the prescribed duration of newlywedness before a baby should appear. That was the lay of the land in the seventies.)

So, as I said, 1975 was my bridge year. In '76 I would become pregnant. Thus, I did those things one does when they have few responsibilities. I worked, I came home, I took a nap on the couch. I watched afternoon TV. I "cooked" dinner. (I was the world's worst cook. I knew how to make Kraft macaroni and cheese, which was fine by me until my other half complained that he wanted meat for supper. I abhorred meat, so that transition was a struggle.)  If nothing interesting was on TV, I'd snap on the radio that was a component of my faux-walnut console stereo system.

I was in that uncomfortable place, with one foot in the country world and the other in rock. Honestly, in the seventies it all blended together. Most music fans weren't snarky and judgmental. They accepted a track for what it was. Now, I'll grant you, we were maybe too accepting. We accepted a lot of shit in the seventies. One must understand, though, that we weren't in control of our entertainment -- it came to us. Aside from LP's, radio was king. TV, too. We put up with a lot of sleazy middle of the road trash that showed up on our screens, because what were we to do? Turn off the TV and go to bed?

Looking back at the top hits of 1975, I'm surprised I didn't just die.

Hits like this:

It's weird that I always thought this next song was a hit in 1976. My baby was a bicentennial baby. That was a big deal! And I have the red, white, and blue certificates from the hospital to prove it! Apparently Elton wanted to get out ahead of the curve, so he recorded this song just in time:

If you don't get the Bee Gees, then you weren't alive in the seventies. Barry latched onto a winning formula and wouldn't let go. Barry Gibb's vision took the trio through approximately two years of hits. This is not their most familiar, but the message here is essentially the same:

There was a little basement bar not far from my dad's motel that featured live acts sometimes. It was a tiny spot that couldn't have possibly made up the featured band's expenses in cover charges. I'm thinking Lee Merkel's bar lost money on that venture, but I saw a few acts there, really up-close, and I remember them all.  To be frank, I didn't know who the Doobie Brothers were. I didn't know a lot of things. They performed this song:

It's funny how memory deceives us. My husband would tell you that the premier act of 1975 was the Rolling Stones; yet they had no single in the top 100 of the year. 

Instead, it was this:

I guess we get to watch still pictures as we listen to the number sixty-one single of the year by Grand Funk Railroad:

Another aspect of 1975 was Barry Manilow. Scoff if you will, but Barry Manilow was huge in the seventies. I saw him in concert. I saw tons of acts. I saw anyone who came to town. 

One of my fondest memories is singing this next song with my little sister. We were on a road trip with countless family members -- my dad and my mom, my husband, a nephew or two; and Lissa and I were in the front seat with my dad. Everybody else was asleep in the back. Lissa and I did an awesome version of this song as it played on the car radio:

1975 wouldn't be complete without this song:

There are two songs that for me memorialize 1975. There is no rational reason -- they're not my favorite songs. They're just there -- there in my pea-brained memory. 

Here is the first:

And then -- ahhh -- this one:

1975 was a bridge. After that, life would be forever changed.

Why Do Certain Songs Get Stuck in Your Head?

For a songwriter, I'm hopelessly lax in actually listening to music.

So, why, out of nowhere, does a certain song get stuck in my head? And it's generally not even a song I'm particularly fond of.

They're called "earworms", in case you didn't know (yes, there is actually a term for these pesky irritants). And I'm here to help! How does one get rid of earworms, you ask? Well, my extensive (30-second) research has found some tips.

I was delighted to learn that, "women, musicians and people who are neurotic, tired or stressed are most prone to earworm attacks." Apparently, I am a neurotic woman musician, although I really didn't think I was neurotic. Maybe I'm just tired and stressed instead. I'm actually none of those things (well, maybe a bit sleepy), so you take your "scientific" research with a grain of salt.

If you don't have time to click on the link (because you're too busy humming the theme song from The Facts of Life), here are some tips for ridding oneself of earworms:

How to Get Songs Out of Your Head

Unfortunately, there's no tried and true way to get songs out of your head once they're stuck in there. They can stick in your brain for anywhere from a few minutes to several days -- long enough to drive even the sanest person batty. Most earworms eventually "crawl out" on their own, but if a song is nagging you to the brink of insanity, here are a few tips to try:

1. Sing another song, or play another melody on an instrument.

Well, that just seems like work to me. I'd have to pick up my guitar, which is halfway across the room. Plus, how can I sing another song, when I'm just going to bust out with the stupid song that's been ping-ponging around in my brain for the last 24 hours?

2. Switch to an activity that keeps you busy, such as working out.

ha ha ha ha. Okay. Working out.

3. Listen to the song all the way through (this works for some people).

I'm seriously going to try this.

4. Turn on the radio or a CD to get your brain tuned in to another song.

Again, this seems like a lot of effort to me. First of all, I don't have a radio, unless you count the one in my car. And I'm not going out to the garage to switch on the key, and sit there like a moron, for my husband to ultimately find me and decide that it's time to call the professional help line number that he's had posted on the refrigerator for lo these many months. Which he wrote "Famous Dave's" next to, as if I'm so stupid that I can't figure out that this is not the number to order barbecue ribs.

5. Share the song with a friend (but don't be surprised if the person become an ex-friend when he or she walks away humming the tune).

ha ha - I've done this! It's great! I like to call it "transference". In my experience, it does actually work. On the downside, if you do this on a work break, you will, in a matter of moments, receive an email containing one simple phrase, such as "Last Train to Clarksville".

6. Picture the earworm as a real creature crawling out of your head, and imagine stomping on it.

This, to me, seems a bit extreme. Or "neurotic", if you will. I really don't like killing (or stomping on) things, even earworms. Plus, that all just seems icky.

So, I've decided that I'm going to combine numbers 3 and 5. That is, I'm going to share the song with a friend (you), and I'm going to play it all the way through.

Luckily (or unluckily, as the case may be), there is no actual "video" of Grand Funk doing this song, but that's actually a good thing. I want you (my friend) to get the full experience of listening to this tune, so that I no longer have to. And if you want to retaliate, knock yourself out. Shoot me a comment, and I will gladly assume your burden.

That's what friends are for.