Bring Back the ‘70s (if You Can Find Them)

Just when you’re sick of nostalgia, the nostalgia turnaround time starts speeding up. An aggressive ad campaign for the new Mazda Miata convertible panders to baby boomers with its instant nostalgia approach. “It was a time,” the ad reminds us, “when T-shirts and jeans were in.” Seems like only yesterday because . . . it was.

Those of us who are still recovering from the loss of our poodle-skirt and Flintstones-lunchbox investments wonder: What next? Nostalgia for the future?

We were hardly prepared for the upsurge in tie-dye futures. Department stores across the country are opening ‘60s boutiques fueled by Woodstock publicity. You can now buy color-coordinated tie-dyed skirt-and-blouse sets, love beads, big flower icons, fringed leather jackets and other neat expensive stuff. (Hey, kids, here’s a hot tip: If you have to buy it in a department store it isn’t really the ‘60s.)

One TV fashion report showed a Macy’s manager talking about the booming sales among the junior-high set. “Of course it’s a cleaned-up ‘60s look. We wouldn’t want to bring back the dirty stuff,” he said, bringing back the myth of the “dirty hippie.”

(Reality check: Some of my best friends in the ‘60s were anal-retentive hippies. Their yurts were spotless.)

One problem with bringing back the ‘60s is that most of it happened in the ‘70s. What we call the ‘60s was actually a period from 1967 to 1974. And this is where the nostalgia sell is going to be in big trouble. Who actually remembers the ‘70s?

The other day, my friend Steve walked out of the ‘70s and back into my life. Steve had moved to Maine 10 years ago to teach philosophy at a tiny college in a tiny town. He was back for a conference--an ‘80s kind of trip, not a ‘60s kind of trip.

He started talking about the good old days--things we had done together, meals we had had together, places we’d gone. Only I couldn’t remember any of it.

Was it substance abuse? No; Steve remembered me not as a substance abuser but as a health freak. He remembered the whole-grain bread I used to bake. I was the person who inspired him to start jogging. He often thinks of me as he jogs somewhere near the coast of Maine.

Is it senility? But I can remember virtually everything that happened up until 1971. I can picture the hospital room where I woke up after my tonsillectomy in 1949. I can recite my line from the “What Is America to Me?” assembly in 1957. (“It’s the peppermint ice cream on the Fourth of July. . . .”)

I can tell you where I was when I heard that Robert Kennedy was shot. I can recite chapter and verse from “The Teachings of Don Juan” by Carlos Castenada.

Then fast-forward to 1982, also clear as a bell. I published my first newspaper story--a 4,000-word piece on jogging in my neighborhood. I bought my first yuppie business-gal tweed jacket. I stopped wearing jeans.

But all those swell times with Steve, that hole in my head called the ‘70s--where did the time go?

Could it have been--oh no!--just me-generation egomania? Was I so absorbed in my self-improvement and my self-care and my self-esteem that I forgot to notice the people and things going on around me? Once again, that unique, all-improved ME turned out to be just another trend slave in the demographic jungle.

So here’s the upcoming challenge for the marketing “community.” Can they find the lost ‘70s and resell the self we forgot we were?