Bicentennial Bonanza: Party Like It’s 1976!

Carolyn Cochrane 0:00

One of my favorites were the Old Glory Bicentennial Condoms, and one of the little things on there, it said, "For novelty use only. So, I guess maybe they're saying that your one firework explosion was maybe not going to be protected by the, by the Old Glory.

Speaker 1 0:17

Hello, there's a song that we're singing. Come on, get happy. We'll make you happy.

Kristin Nilsen 0:33

Welcome to the Pop Culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who still have a rusted bicentennial quarter stashed in a drawer next to the pearls they got as a confirmation gift.

Michelle Newman 0:46

We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters, and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear like Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition.

Carolyn Cochrane 0:58

And today we're celebrating the spirit of 76 through your eyes with a collection of special star spangled bicentennial memories straight from our listeners. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen,

Michelle Newman 1:11

and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists.

Kristin Nilsen 1:15

This land is your land, this land is my land from California to the New York Island, break out the flag, strike up the bands, light up the sky. That is a quote from President Gerald Ford about our 1976 bicentennial celebration, and it is the opening line to a new book called Bicentennial Chic by Mike Derrico. I hope I'm saying your name right, Mike. I'm gonna say Derek, oh, and you can, if it's not that, you can change it after this, and you can say your name is Derek. Mike Derico, hope that's right. Mike Jericho says, if you are a baby boomer or a Gen Xer in America, the two most anticipated events of your life were the bicentennial and the new millennium, quoting from his book, he says the early years of the 1970s were always filled with the constant reminder that America's 200th birthday was coming up in 1976 As the decade began, committees were already being formed to plan for the worldwide events that would simultaneously take place when that day finally arrived. Even in the year of this publication, 2026 the bicentennial has never been surpassed as the most talked about and widely anticipated day in American history. You heard about it in 7273 and in 1974 but around 1975 it really began to take hold of the public conscience. If you were a student during the 1975 76 school year, rarely did a day go by where you didn't hear about something in preparation for the bicentennial. People, this was years in the making. And Mike Derico, again, Derek, oh, that's me. Okay, and again, Kristen, stop it. And Mike Derico says the big question that was front and center in the literal years of lead up to the bicentennial was what are you doing on july 4 1976 where will you be when this milestone is upon us? This year's semiquincentennial, say that times,

Michelle Newman 3:17

say that

Kristin Nilsen 3:18

five times fast, it's hitting different because it doesn't appear that we are collectively culturally embracing our upcoming 250th anniversary in the same way that we did the bicentennial, and we don't need to get into why, but maybe because of that melancholy or apathy or anxiety it's making some of us nostalgic for the fanfare and the true collective celebration that was the bicentennial, as you will hear from the literally hundreds of stories you submitted to us. It was just as Mike Derrico said, clearly an epic event that was one of the most anticipated events of your entire life. So much so that Mike Derrico is declaring this year the 50th anniversary of the bicentennial. I love that. I love that. Isn't that great? That's what I think I'm celebrating. And he has so many interesting arguments in this book. It's not.. I'm gonna.. I want to make sure that everybody knows this is not all about the bicentennial. I haven't finished the book yet, but it really is intriguing. He's using the bicentennial as the backdrop to everything that was happening during that time. The subtitle of the book is Bronx Bombers, Son of Sam, Kiss Teria, and the Birth of Saturday Night Fever, and he really regards this book not really as an analysis of all of that, but as a source of these are his words, time travel. This is the source of time travel, that's it. He says, "I'm not going to pick it apart, I'm just going to present it to you on a silver platter, and he says the bicentennial, whether by accident or by design, was not just a party, it was a real pivot point in our culture, so much so that the heart of the 1970s like everything that we know about the 1970s how we picture the 1970s existed in the. Span of the 18 months surrounding America's 200th birthday celebration, like all things that you think of as emblematic of the 70s happened around that time, from Jaws and Star Wars to, like he said, Kiss and Saturday Night Fever, and my God, that soundtrack, and disco, and the Bee Gees, John Travolta, come on, whether it's Barbarino or the boy in the plastic bubble or Tony Manero, John Travolta is an emblem of the 1970s and he was emerging like with fireworks, but you, during the bicentennial, he was the it person going into the summer of 1976 and the bicentennial historically is just, it's just bigger than we even knew. Well, it's like the 1970s everything, no matter if it was 1976 if it was 1974 or 1978 all those things you just mentioned, almost in our memories have they're kind of clouded in a red, white, and blue cloud, aren't they? Like a haze

Michelle Newman 5:59

around them, that's for I, that's what I see. At least everything I think of in the 70s sort of centers around the bicentennial. And, man, Mike, where were you and your book about five years ago when we did our entire episode devoted to the entire year of 1976 That would have been prime, you know, a prime source for us.

Kristin Nilsen 6:19

We could do part two of 1976 based on the book that he's just written. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 6:23

I love that. That book's available now. Correct,

Kristin Nilsen 6:25

it is available now. We will put all that information about how to access his book in our show notes. It's available everywhere. Yeah, Bicentennial Chic is the name of it. What were you doing leading up to the Bicentennial?

Carolyn Cochrane 6:36

Well, I can tell you that I realized getting ready for this episode, that one of my lifelong dreams was actually born in 1976 and a direct result of the bicentennial. I know what it

Kristin Nilsen 6:48

is. I know you

Carolyn Cochrane 6:49

do. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. My desire to become a colonial actor in Williamsburg, Virginia, can be traced directly to me donning a colonial dress and cap for Colonial Days in fifth grade, which happened to me 1976 I loved that costume so, so much. I would wear it all the time. I wore it to bed as, like, my nightgown, kind of channeling Laura Ingalls. I, it was like I was putting on clothes I forgot I loved, I think, I think I am a colonial person reincarnated the

Kristin Nilsen 7:28

Carolyn of the past, like 1776 Carolyn existed, and that, and the bicentennial woke it up.

Carolyn Cochrane 7:34

Yes, that's a great way to put that. Yes, I love that costume, and I saw a, an image on social media somewhere of like the Butterick or simplicity pattern that was out in 1976 for kids of like colonial, yeah, for the colonial, I was about to say she's about to make it colonial dresses that so many moms and grandmas and aunts and everybody was sewing, because I know I was not alone in that dawning of that colonial. I remember

Kristin Nilsen 8:04

turning those pages in the Butterick or the calls, and I'm looking for the Colonial dress, and you know, do you remember that everybody standing in the sewing store, in the fabric store, and those giant books, you guys were so heavy. I tried it, was like

Michelle Newman 8:18

torture for me when my mom would take, when she would say, oh, we've got to go to the fabric store, like you know, Hancock Fabrics, or whatever it was, because she would spend forever. It's probably how my kids felt when they were little, and I'd be like, guys, we got to stop by Michaels, or whatever, but I would sit there being so bored, like I had nothing to do. I would flip through the books and, like, look at the costume section, whatever. Yeah, right. You know what the

Carolyn Cochrane 8:43

worst thing was. Sometimes my mom would say, okay, you know, colonial dress, whatever, that's pattern 17246 And then you went to these giant file cabinets, and then you went and you tried to find it, and then you found the section, and there were no, there were no packets in there, like it was sold out, yeah, and your heart was just, if it was something that you wanted, oh, my heart would be so broken, be like, yeah, everyone's got that smock, you know, I wanted that smock outfit. Well,

Michelle Newman 9:13

I was, my dad's birthday was July 5, and we always spent the month of July in Woodson, Texas, y'all still to this day, I think a very tiny, like one stoplight town. I think I've mentioned this many times on the podcast, but I didn't have a big memory. I was seven, so unlike Kristen, I don't have a lot of memories of a lot of things when I was really, really young, so I had to, you know, ask my sister, and she did remember, and she said we were in Woodson, and we went to the Woodson parade, and she said she remembers the fire trucks and all the every the red, white, and blue, and then she corrected herself and said wait, it was Woodson, probably one fire truck, but she does remember, you know, it was my dad's birthday, so we. Had just a ton of fireworks, and, and when we say fireworks, this was West Texas in the 70s. The what I remember are the actual firecrackers that you would just throw, and then the big deal for us was Roman candles, so you would hold, we could even hold them, and they would go, and here's the sound they make, they go, you know, that little, but that was a big deal. Firework back then, like, they didn't. I remember firework stands all over the place, so we had a ton of the little black snake, the little black thing you would light, and it would make the snake. And and then she said we went to the lake, you know, my dad's family had a lake, like a cabin, a lake house on Possum Kingdom Lake, just, oh yeah, popping the tar bubbles at Possum, Possum, yeah, I know, I popped the tar bubbles other places, but, but at Possum Kingdom, she goes, that was the summer that they tried to teach you to water ski, and Uncle Barney tied your skis together, so back in the day, so your skis didn't go out in both ways, they would tie the tips of them together, and I remember this so clearly. She said, "You got up, but you immediately fell forward, but you didn't let go. And everybody, we could just see your head under the water as the boat was dragging you, and but you couldn't hear us, and everybody on the boat was yelling, "Let go, and I have such a memory of that, you guys, and I will say that might be the last time I ever attempted water skiing, because that would, that scarred me, many things scarred me from that cabin, that's where my fear of snakes, my debilitating fear of snakes started too. So I'm not going to tell you that story, but so I think my fourth of July was just kind of hometown, you know. We didn't do anything big

Kristin Nilsen 11:46

for me. It was the first fourth of July after I had moved from California to St. Paul, Minnesota, and you've all heard this before, into this little cozy little tree-lined neighborhood, which had an annual Fourth of July celebration. What I know now is a lot of what I experienced on the bicentennial is what they do every year, but for me I thought it was the bicentennial, so it was, you know, Christmas is always the pinnacle of how a child, what a child is excited for. The question is always, what is better, your birthday or Christmas? The bicentennial, July 4, 1976 was way bigger than Christmas, way, and I think I talked about this in our 1976 episode. The, my, the way that I experienced that joy was by opening our back door to go out to get my decorated bike, and there was a dead squirrel with the head eaten off on the doorstep, because my cat would catch squirrels and then eat the head off, and that was always very dramatic, and I couldn't go outside, because how do you get outside? There's a dead squirrel there, and I remember seeing that headless squirrel, and just like I just hopped right over it, like I'm not even scared. I don't care, because it's the bicentennial. Yeah, and I had my banana seat bike all decorated with red, white, and blue streamers, and we had to bike over to the beginning of the bike parade, and it felt like a million people there, and I, for me, it felt like the Boston Marathon, like, here we go, you guys come on, and when I look at pictures now, this, there's so much that we're going to talk about today from people's comments are about what we were wearing, and it's only in retrospect that I understand that everything that I was wearing was red, white, and blue, including the red, white, and blue ribbons in my ponytails, and I just could not contain my joy, I couldn't do it, and then you ride your bikes in the parade down to the big park with the big bandstand, and there were bands, and there were games, and there was lemonade, and there were hot dogs, and I just thought I was gonna die the happiest person on earth, and I think what, like, just to bring it down deep again, I'm gonna refer to Mike's book one more time. I think one of the biggest differences that we're feeling right now and back then was that there was a real sense of optimism, right? It wasn't just the day that we were happy about. We needed that day because we had just been - the country had just been through something really difficult. The Vietnam War had just ended, and we were kind of sweeping that under the rug. We were in the midst of a presidential election, where there was this peanut farmer who, after years of Watergate scandals and resignations and people going to jail. This peanut farmer has nothing to do with Washington, and we're just like optimism, optimism. He was an outsider, everything was going to get better. And I think that is one of the biggest differences between then and now, is that we're having trouble finding where's our peanut farmer? Right, where's the peanut farmer? We don't have everything is ongoing instead of just ended, so we can sweep it away, and so I think that's just something that we can lean into and understand. If you're trying to figure out what your feelings are, that could be where your feelings are coming from.

Carolyn Cochrane 14:55

Yeah, I would totally agree. It was, you know, you mentioned the clothes. And stuff, and it wasn't just that day, it was like the whole year, like the school leading up to it, and stuff, and it was everybody, and so you just felt a part of this huge just team and collective and community, so everybody, nobody looked dorky wearing red, white, and blue on, you know, may 13 or something, because it was just, you got away with it, and we just were on Team Red, White, and Blue,

Kristin Nilsen 15:27

you're that's such a good point, it was that was the team uniform, and so our optimism, part of our optimism came from the fact that fact that this was a very unifying event, we all wanted to get past these things, and we all wanted the world to be better, and we were collectively, every single one of us, excited about this event. And I shall we give credit where credit is due? Like, is that our teachers like getting us excited for it? Like you said, it started so, so early. I think

Michelle Newman 15:56

it's, I think it is just the collective, the collective, you know, community, and the collective community, and what I say, community, I don't necessarily mean exactly where you live, that community, I mean the community of America. Yeah, it was, it was, you had a very strong sense of that that year, and for that event you felt it differently than we do today, for sure. And is that because we're adults now? Are the kids feeling it today? Maybe, but you know, it's not like I see paper plates when I go out. That's about it. I don't see, you know, we're a month away, and I, well, listening to this, we're, you know, days away, but like I don't see a lot of stuff out, like I don't see things like signs. I think

Carolyn Cochrane 16:45

the school part that you mentioned, that was a big part, because there were so many things that were different that year that were special. I mean, because you know, school is school, and you have your SRA books, and you know, you go and do the parachute and gym, and it's kind of the same, all same old, but all of a sudden we're having like assemblies, or we're having special speakers come in, or we're getting to wear colonial garb, and just having the time of our lives, and so I think the specialness of these activities, and I mean, come on, parades, decorating our bikes, all the things were super fun in our eyes, in a, you know, a child's eyes, so I think that all kind of was part of it as well.

Kristin Nilsen 17:24

Let's not forget one of the most important things that was getting us excited about the Bicentennial was Schoolhouse Rock. What we didn't know was that they were giving us this tremendous civics education that kind of helped us invest in what America meant. Now we understand that there are lots of things that they were covering up, we were right, Schoolhouse Rock was not honest about how we stole land from native people, so we, there was a lot of omission there, but all of that is to say that we knew about the shot heard around the world, and we were so proud of what happened on that day, and it wasn't just the act of the day that we were, so we knew what we were celebrating. We weren't ignorant about what we were celebrating. I think maybe today kids might think we're having a birthday, but we knew what the birthday was because of what was happening in school, and because of Schoolhouse Rock. And then, because that was the year that America rocked, this, you know, every year of Schoolhouse Rock had a different theme, and so, of course, 1975 1976 was America Rock. Not only was it teaching us about what happened, but it was teaching us civics lessons, like how what happens to a bill, what is it called? I'm just a bill, there we go. How does it, how does a bill come to become a law? We knew, we knew about suffrage. We knew about women's suffrage. We knew that that women couldn't vote. We knew about the famous American inventors. We knew about, I don't know, name them all. I have no melting.

Carolyn Cochrane 18:52

America's great American melting pot. Yeah, yes. No more kings,

Kristin Nilsen 18:56

no more kings. We knew why, why kings that bad. We, so we came educated to this event, and that I think also helped us get excited.

Carolyn Cochrane 19:07

Yeah, it was everywhere, and much to that point, that it was everywhere. We had one of our great friends, Erica Wides, who you all might have remembered. We've had a couple podcasts with her, you might know her as Chef Smarty Pants on her social media, and what she did was sent us a link to a New York Times article called How a Radical Historian Saved the Schlock of 76 So, in terms of bicentennial being everywhere, and kind of like you were just saying it was Schoolhouse Rock, we were saying it was in schools, it was everywhere, you guys. This article points out it was everywhere,

Kristin Nilsen 19:47

literally. Yeah, yes. So,

Carolyn Cochrane 19:48

so the article starts by letting us know that sharing space in the Yale library, okay, alongside a Gutenberg Bible, an original printing of the Declaration of Independence. And hand-drawn maps from the Lewis and Clark expedition. Okay, think of the weight of those things. There is the Bicentennial Schlock Collection, and of course, if you don't know what the word Schlock means, it's actually a Yiddish word for cheap, mass-produced, often tacky merchandise. In other words, all those mugs, plates, keychains, toilet paper rolls, all those things that we were seeing at this time. Basically, the stuff that your grandmother bought from a gift shop, and then proudly displayed for six months, and then put in a box in the basement. That is the kind of, like,

Kristin Nilsen 20:31

that's literally the name of the exhibit.

Carolyn Cochrane 20:33

It is literally the name of the exhibit.

Kristin Nilsen 20:35

Oh my god. So, in

Carolyn Cochrane 20:36

1976 a professor named Jesse Lemish at Yale asked his students, like, start collecting the schlock, the stuff you see just everywhere, that's commemorating this bicentennial of ours. This kind of time of consumerism during 1976 is often referred to as the bi-buy centennial, because everybody was trying to make some money off of America's 200th birthday, and I wanted to share with you some of the crazy, absurd things that are in this collection. There's also a collection at Central Florida University that another professor had done, kind of a similar assignment to his students, and there are some additional items there that are just over the top crazy, so just bear with me here, because the rabbit hole of Bicentennial Schlock was deep, and I won't bore you with everything, although you wouldn't be bored, I'm just going to share with you maybe some of the most unlikely things that you could have come across, because not only did these merchandisers and marketing people want us to purchase things, they wanted us to be consumed by this bicentennial moment, so it was things that you didn't even have to buy, like those sugar packets that you would put in your coffee, or condiment packages, all of those things bicentennial themed. Okay, we also had a few different things, surgical caps, so in certain hospitals, if you were having surgery, your doctor or nurse's surgical cap would have been emblazoned with some kind of patriotic design. There were beer cans, there was toilet paper, there was my favorite, and just hold on here, because this is such a flashback. Do you guys remember the bags that would be in the women's restroom, the kind of elongated bags that, when you removed a dirty sanitary napkin, you would put them in this bag and then dispose of them accordingly? So, are they only white and blue, big, red, white? No, I know, I get it. Red, white, and blue. Oh, okay, whatever. Michelle, but yes. 200 years of freedom, really maxi pads in there that people had on belts, but it

Kristin Nilsen 22:58

says right on it. She's showing it to us right now. It says Santa bag right above the Liberty Bell, it says Santa bag for

Carolyn Cochrane 23:04

personal hygiene, so insane, you guys. It wasn't just merchandise like that. Things like magazines were the covers of the magazines were very influenced by 1976 including, and this is going to be a really nasty thing for me to say, but the July 1976 cover of Hustler had a woman's genitals covered by American flag underwear and nothing else. Yes, so now we're like objectifying women while we're celebrating the Fourth of July bicentennial. Is that just secreting

Kristin Nilsen 23:39

the flag? It feels like it might be if you can't let it touch the ground. I don't think you can let it touch your coochie.

Carolyn Cochrane 23:45

Oh God, but gotta look for those undies. Yeah, Playboy was a little bit more highbrow. They featured a woman who was wearing a see-through kind of red, white, and blue robe while she was holding up the American flag, so it wasn't touching the

Kristin Nilsen 24:05

coochie over the ground,

Carolyn Cochrane 24:06

that's right. So one of my favorites were the Old Glory Bicentennial condoms, and one of the little things on there, it said "for novelty use only. So I guess maybe they're saying that your one firework explosion was maybe not going to be protected by

Michelle Newman 24:21

the by the old glory for looks. I just want to know what for novelty use only. I just want to know what novelty you use. Wear it is it just for like maybe

Carolyn Cochrane 24:39

you could wear it, but you couldn't sue them if for some reason it like had a leak or something, and there was a pregnancy, like maybe

Michelle Newman 24:48

novelty, like just like not to wear for sex, just like did they wear them just like walking around wearing it to work, like that's like sort of like the women, like the women wore the undies, did the guy. Just wear that when they wanted to raise their flag, yeah, straight up, or I don't know what, if they were like little puppets, and one of them it was like the guy playing the fight on the end

Carolyn Cochrane 25:13

of it, yeah, and Kristen, I think you had commented in our text thread about this New York Times article, it had a picture of those colonial Campbell soup cans, so you could collect the labels from Campbell's soup, and then send it in, and you could get a little Colonial doll.

Kristin Nilsen 25:32

I wanted that so badly, I collected and collected, but I was never good with the follow-through.

Carolyn Cochrane 25:37

Yeah, and I don't even know that those always, you know, got to the appropriate places, because sometimes it was, and send with $1.99 and so I'd be the one sticking like quarters and pennies in something that was so heavy, and I'm sure I put one eight cent stamp on it, or whatever, doesn't

Kristin Nilsen 25:53

get there, yeah, and it never

Carolyn Cochrane 25:55

got there anyway.

Kristin Nilsen 25:56

Do you remember the, the lunch box, there was just a like a generic American Revolution lunchbox,

Michelle Newman 26:04

yeah. Yes,

Kristin Nilsen 26:05

and that actually would have been a bummer for me. I want.. I would rather have Charlie's Angels than, like, of course, kind of a one

Carolyn Cochrane 26:12

and done, because if you were.. you gonna.. I don't know, but I.. it's that scene, right, that

Kristin Nilsen 26:17

yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 26:17

scene with the fife and the drama and all that, so Americana. A

Michelle Newman 26:24

few weeks ago, we asked you, our listeners, to share your memories leading up to the bicentennial, like we said. And, as usual, you all flooded our comment sections with stories from that year, from hometown parades and homemade costumes. Big shout out to the Tricorne hat, by the way, to school pageants, to collecting bicentennial quarters like they were pirates' treasure. And for a lot of you, just being born that year was reason enough to celebrate. We got a lot of comments that were like, well, I was born that year,

Carolyn Cochrane 26:55

I'm a bicentennial baby, I'm not. Some of you are bicentennial, yeah. Happy birthday, had them in like bicentennial diapers and all that at the hospital.

Kristin Nilsen 27:03

Yes, yes.

Michelle Newman 27:04

Happy 50th birthday to all of you, by the way. This year, so settle in, because we have a lot, a lot of sweet and fun and hilarious memories to unpack. And thank you just so much to all of you who took the time to leave us such fun stories.

Kristin Nilsen 27:19

This has been so fun for me, because this has become my new dinner party question. As we, as we're prepping for this episode, I've been asking people, this is just another way to break the ice, right? Another thing to ask that is not, so what do you do? So I've been asking, do you remember the bicentennial? Do you remember what you did for the bicentennial? So I asked my friend Tony. Tony is the one, do you remember from our road trip episode, his mother was the one who kept three bags of candy for the three children in the front seat, and when one of the children did something wrong in the back seat, she would grab a handful of candy and throw it out the window, Tony. So, when I asked him about the bicentennial, he got so excited, because he said, "That's when I got my Evil Knievel bike.

Michelle Newman 27:59

Oh, a worse.. oh my god, Evel Knievel, our true hero, our

Kristin Nilsen 28:03

bicentennial hero.

Michelle Newman 28:04

Yeah, even

Kristin Nilsen 28:04

though it turns out he was a really, really bad person. You guys don't even handle it, don't even, yeah, don't need to. So he had, he was able to find a picture of his Evil Knievel bike, and it's like, uh, like a proto motorcycle instead of the bar across it has like a motorcycle body, and it is, of course, all stars and stripes, red, white, and blue,

Michelle Newman 28:24

of course,

Kristin Nilsen 28:25

and Tony is perched on that on that banana seat again, dressed 100% in red, white, and blue, everything has red, white, and blue stripes on it, from the shorts and the little eyes odd shirt to the tube socks, the tube socks, the red, white, blue tube socks, I mean,

Michelle Newman 28:40

stripes and our roller skates, everything was, and listeners keep an eye out this week on social media, perhaps tomorrow. I can't promise anything, but we're going to do a fun little reel with all the pictures you all sent in, so keep an eye out for those. Okay. Well, let's get to it. Our first story comes from Mouser 70. I, oh, this is so great. Okay, my grandpa made me a red dollhouse with a white roof for the Christmas before he would work the pipeline in Texas, January to March, when the ground was frozen here. He got me a big circular bicentennial sticker from the Johnson Space Center, and I slapped that sticker right on the middle of my dollhouse roof. She's so proud, right? Because also everything's bicentennial. That must have been like this is the coolest thing ever. My parents were not happy with that choice. He thought it looked very nice. My grandpa died just a couple of years later, and both the sticker and the dollhouse reminded me of him every morning when I woke up looking at it, and we made paper tricorne hats in school. Of course, you did. MVP of the of 1976 the tricorne hat down.

Carolyn Cochrane 29:48

Well, one of the things I love the most about reading through the comments that everybody shared was the distinct like memory that was shared with like a parent or a sibling that they. Still to this day, is so it has such a special place in their hearts, and so I loved that this dollhouse reminded her every morning of her grandfather, and,

Michelle Newman 30:11

and what I love about Mouser's memory is that it's not like a giant parade or something like a big pageant or giant fireworks, it was a sticker, a sticker that she slapped on the dollhouse, and that her parents got mad at her for, but that's what reminds her of the bicentennial, and it's such a good small memory tied to her grandpa. So we love that. Thanks for that one.

Kristin Nilsen 30:36

And little did she know at that moment in time, nor did her parents, who were angry, is that she was then marking that as a historical artifact. Oh my god, seriously. Yeah, well, yeah, much like

Carolyn Cochrane 30:46

the bicentennial schlock that we talked about. These become cultural artifacts. I mean, at the time you wouldn't think that the, you know, sugar packet or whatever was going to find its place next to a Gutenberg Bible. That's how you know significant these items were much like this item that our friend Stephanie DTN shared. She was four and she remembers these really cool scratch and sniff activity books, and she remembers the Canon Gunpowder Sect.

Michelle Newman 31:23

It's like those awful Harry Potter jelly bellies that are like this one tastes like barf, that's such a distinct smell, though. I can smell it right, I can smell it. It's like the caps that you

Kristin Nilsen 31:36

would make on the ground, it's like, and just, you know, scratch the cannonball genius, and love it. Dina Schwyne, she says I was 10. I collected bicentennial quarters and wore a lot of red, white, and blue. I hear you, Dina. My father put a bunch of pennies on the rail right before, wait for it, the freedom train went by, even though they said on the news not to do that, and I still have a couple of those melted pennies. My mom bought a commemorative plate that she displayed proudly for years, so many tchotchkes. My father was a veteran who belonged to multiple veterans organizations, and my mom was in the auxiliaries for them, so there was a bunch of bicentennial themed things happening for weeks, picnics, dances, even a camp out, it was huge for the semiquincentennial. Well, I get to have the day off of work on Friday the third. Whoop de doo, I know

Michelle Newman 32:30

she says I'll probably catch up on my sleep. Yeah, yeah, Dina, you're feeling, you're feeling what a lot of us are feeling. Yeah, I love of all of this, I love the penny on the train track, because that's also such a 70s thing to do, and we thought we

Kristin Nilsen 32:48

might die so badly, but you might die,

Michelle Newman 32:52

but how cool that it wasn't just from a random train, it was from the freedom train, yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 32:57

freedom train, you guys.

Michelle Newman 32:59

Well, I just wanted to touch on, too, I should have said one of my, I guess, greatest memories of the Bicentennial are the quarters, and that came from it was such a big deal when we found out they were minting these special quarters, and then for years after, I would say well into the 80s, anytime I would get a quarter, I would look at it to see if it had the little drummer on it, if it was a bicentennial quarter, and if it was, I would just sort of say to myself, Bicentennial quarter, don't

Carolyn Cochrane 33:26

mean rush, little unexpected joy. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 33:30

trained in 1976 to turn the quarter over and look at it to see if it was a bicentennial quarter.

Michelle Newman 33:35

Yes, for sure. Well, let's keep talking about the Freedom Train, because Sue underscore tune underscore was in first grade in 75 and 76 Same that year was full of all sorts of activities. The freedom train came through our town, and we went on a field trip to it.

Kristin Nilsen 33:54

Nice,

Michelle Newman 33:56

I mean, that would be like a teacher's wet dream, wasn't it? Like knowing, oh my god, it's coming here. That's a win on a field trip. She says there were display cases inside holding historic artifacts and a moving floor that would keep us moving through the train.

Kristin Nilsen 34:13

I remember that part. I don't remember this at the moving floor.

Michelle Newman 34:17

Oh my god, I just think that's so cool. Like, she got to peek inside it. I don't think a lot of us got to do that. We did have a lot of memories of seeing the freedom train, talking about the freedom train. So, if you also wrote in a memory about the freedom train, you were one of many who were lucky enough to see it pass through your town. But Sue underscore tune underscore, she got to go inside, and I think that's super cool, and I also love this memory she had. She said another time during the year our whole school let loose red, white, and blue helium balloons with notes we had written attached to them. Another very 70s and 80s thing to do in school. We don't do that anymore, because that kills the winds, so it. It's a lovely memory that we all have, not for 1000s and 1000s of whales that we probably endangered by doing all the

Kristin Nilsen 35:06

whales at the time. Maybe one of those notes was like,

Michelle Newman 35:09

"Good luck whale,

Kristin Nilsen 35:10

and we had the image, like we just knew that it was gonna land in France, and some other child was gonna find it. Right, my note, somebody was gonna grab.. we didn't know that they would end up like trash.

Michelle Newman 35:21

Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 35:23

well, I gotta say, a lot of people were all in on this whole bicentennial thing, and a cat mom sent to us that her entire bedroom was red, white, and blue, a bit bozo circus, a bit bicentennial. Red, white, and blue flag afghans were on our bunk beds. I mean, you guys, there

Michelle Newman 35:42

had to have been a shortage of red, white, and blue yarn with all the grandmas crochet so hard, so much that

Kristin Nilsen 35:49

I didn't know at the time was related to the bicentennial, so I'm sure I've shown you my afghan that my grandma made me, that is like neon pink, yellow, and green. Well, my brother's afghan is red, white, and blue, and she would have given it to us in 1976 Yes, duh, I didn't realize I have a bicentennial artifact like in my home right now, knitted by Grammy. I

Michelle Newman 36:11

love that,

Kristin Nilsen 36:11

or crocheted. What is crochet? I don't know. Okay, she

Michelle Newman 36:14

crocheted. I've seen it, it's crocheted.

Kristin Nilsen 36:16

Okay, here's something from Chef Smarty Pants. We just talked about our friend Erica Wides. I also have to add that Erica Wides has a fantastic Substack that has cooking videos. She's a really great writer. She's got shelf on it,

Michelle Newman 36:29

yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 36:30

such good ideas to do with things that you have in your fridge. So, and again, that Substack is called Chef Smarty Pants. She says our Long Island town was founded in the 1600s and has many colonial era houses, museums, etc. The museum organized a colonial festival where everyone chose their thing, like quilting, cooperage, you know, cooperage, blacksmithing. I did toys and games. The kids' options were obviously more limited and safe. We spent months in classes and workshops, months, oh my god, we spent months in classes and workshops learning our skills, and then there was a festival where everyone showed off their special talents. My mom sewed us calico dresses and bonnets, a la El Hop. She said Little House on the Prairie was a huge deal, and we all coloniald it up. No mention of all the slave owning that also contributed to the wealth and development of the town, of course, yeah, we're

Michelle Newman 37:21

just gonna brush that under the rug, that

Kristin Nilsen 37:23

under the.. we're gonna celebrate, yeah, we

Carolyn Cochrane 37:26

knew better, we did better. We know, I don't know, we're doing it now.

Michelle Newman 37:29

Wait, let me just say, I mean that for now. By the way, that was very something we should not have been sweeping under the rug, right? But that's what we were doing. Okay, carry on.

Kristin Nilsen 37:37

Yes, we are. We are being snarky. Then on the actual fourth, we drove to New York City to watch the tall ships parade. I remember watching this on TV. I think we watched from the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and the fireworks. All I remember is that it was really hot, and once it got dark and the fireworks started, everyone stood up, and I couldn't see anything. Then we drove home through 1970s Brooklyn, and my dad made us keep the windows closed. Oh my gosh, we never had an air-conditioned car till the late 80s, because he was afraid that fireworks would come through the windows. It was like driving through a war zone, but overall, being so young, it just seemed like everyone was super into it, and really rallied behind the idea, not like this time. Yeah, got a lot of that from people, a little bit different today.

Michelle Newman 38:24

Erica, your day was a little bit different than my day in Woodson, Texas, with the one fire truck parade. She's on, like, the Brooklyn Bridge, watching the tall trucks. I'm the tall chefs, the tall trucks, the tall ships. I'm lighting like fireworks, fire trucks, throwing them in ant hills, yeah, in West Texas. Okay, tortur reform, is that how you would say that? Sure, reform. This person, oh, an attorney. Yes, I see that. I see it now. Yes, I had a bicentennial themed swim bubble, swim aid. First of all, tort reform, I had a bubble, and it's styrofoam, right? I hope you're nodding your head right now with a little strap that just went around your belly. It looks like a styrofoam oval kind of bubble. Remember, my

Carolyn Cochrane 39:12

sister had

Michelle Newman 39:13

a strap, and you put it, so basically, unless you held your head up, you would just float face down.

Carolyn Cochrane 39:20

Yeah, but that

Michelle Newman 39:21

was our swim. I wore it all the time, I had to take it everywhere, so much. And then all my paint, like, flaked off my styrofoam, but hers was Bicentennial themed, so I'm imagining some stars and stripes on that. So she had that at her Learn to Swim class at the Y. She also remembers seeing The Tall Ships, and this is going back to our point about how the bicentennial was celebrated all year long, because she went to a haunted house called the Boo Centennial. I love it. Now I'm imagining that's around Halloween later, but it could have been just a haunted house they had on july 4. I don't know, we don't know, but she says it scared the bejesus out of her. She was three, I. And she goes, I wish I could find some evidence that this actually existed, because I've never run into anyone else who remembers it, probably in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. So, if you remember that DM tort reform,

Carolyn Cochrane 40:11

okay, Heather's pretty world, she thought that 1976 was a great year, as we all did. She was in fifth grade, and her dad was in the military, and she said we happened to be stationed in Philadelphia that year, so we participated in all things bicentennial. My mom did make me a beautiful dress for colonial days at school. I see you, Heather, and I bet it was the best time of your life. I made my hat out of white eyelet lace. We all had to learn how to do things from the colonial era for an entire month at school. You guys, we could have our own little Colonial Williamsburg. I know Erica, she's got a skill, Heather here's got a skill, I can give, I'll be the tour guide. Anyway, we also took field trips to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. She really wanted to see Betsy Ross's house too, so her parents took her, and when Fourth of July came, it was such a huge patriotic celebration. I can only imagine in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, a great time it was. The fireworks were insane. My dad bought me a whole bunch of sparklers, and if I close my eyes, I can see myself skipping around the grass, a slice of watermelon in one hand and waving a sparkler in the other. She's

Kristin Nilsen 41:18

got a red heart, a white heart, I mean, being in

Michelle Newman 41:22

Philadelphia, how cool, right?

Kristin Nilsen 41:24

Kidding. Here's Robin Joy Art and Stitchery. She says, I was in fourth grade. My wonderful teacher, mrs. Murphy, wore only red, white, and blue clothing every day. I was fascinated by this, and she says patriotism was strong back then. I love that shout out

Michelle Newman 41:42

to mrs. Merton, and everybody

Carolyn Cochrane 41:45

would want to come to school too. It was like a great way to get your students to not miss out on school

Michelle Newman 41:51

today. Yes, she's gonna wear today. I know we wear

Carolyn Cochrane 41:54

something that's great.

Michelle Newman 41:55

Okay. CS Java says, I remember being super excited about it, collecting the bicentennial quarters and decorating my bike, and her next memory is something I had totally forgotten about. Our family went to Disneyland that summer and saw America on Parade and the America Sings show, that like who screwed youed me. I must have gone that year or something, because I was like, I feel like I've seen that. They showed it on Wonderful world of Disney. Oh, maybe that's why. Justin, I bet you're right. Yes, yeah, I bet you're right. So, yeah, I just feel like that was something. So I'm sure many people listening probably visited Disneyland, or Disney was, yeah, Disney World was open then during the year of 1976 I'm sure all the parades, the Disney parades, everything, the characters were probably dressed in red, white, and blue, and all the merch you could get, probably, yeah, right, you know, remember just those felt banners, I had just like a Disneyland, was a big, like a pennant, yeah, that's what I mean, a pennant, yeah, that was a big deal, souvenir,

Carolyn Cochrane 42:57

yeah,

Michelle Newman 42:59

well, thanks for that memory,

Kristin Nilsen 43:00

Jenny K Marsh, 72 She says, I have 1776 beaded pin ornaments, and a 1776 necklace of my mom's that I am wearing. I am wearing.. I remember so many like stick pins, little flag stick pins, and stuff like that. I had star earrings, I had little iridescent red, white, and blue star earrings that I wore

Michelle Newman 43:21

lovely, very cool.

Carolyn Cochrane 43:22

Kay Duffy eight said she grew up actually right next to the Stony Point, New York battlefield, and there were Revolutionary War reenactments all summer. She has that all capitalized, man and fire and popsicles. I can only imagine that's probably kind of fun for the first day or two, but for all summer to hear that. In, I mean, that's probably just a very loud memory that she has of hearing that. All of the,

Kristin Nilsen 43:49

yeah, yeah, yeah. So, funny that you associate it with popsicles. That's such a childlike, yes, because you didn't get popsicles any other time of the year, right? Just in summer, yeah. And probably those bomb pops, the red, white, and blue ones shine, that's

Carolyn Cochrane 44:03

right. And did you guys have those? I can't remember who made them, but they came in like grape and stuff. They were almost.. they had two sticks inside, and they were like the true popsicle, and you

Kristin Nilsen 44:16

break it in the middle.

Carolyn Cochrane 44:17

You break it every once in a while. Lillian didn't make us break it. We got the whole thing. It was probably in 1976 Can you

Kristin Nilsen 44:27

see your mother's breaking it, like putting on the side of the table to

Michelle Newman 44:31

break it? My mom used to put a butter knife in the middle of it, and like chop, chop, chop, chop. And

Carolyn Cochrane 44:37

while it wasn't perfectly even. Oh, those were rough days big fight house that is right.

Michelle Newman 44:43

Well, Halle Berry, 1217 Our friend Halle Berry, she remembers something about the Freedom Train that we didn't mention before, which is a fact that I love. She remembers going to see the American Freedom Train. She has a lot of details about the Freedom Train, like. It was 26 cars. It toured all 48 contingent states from April 75 through december 31 1976 Over 7 million people toured its exhibit cars. Holly, did you Google this? I know, but she said it showcased over 500 priceless historical artifacts. Her favorite thing on the train was Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz. She was 13 years old. I don't think I remember that fun fact about the Freedom Train, that it had all these almost like a traveling Smithsonian museum, right? Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 45:30

I don't think I knew a damn thing about it, except there was a train. I remember there

Michelle Newman 45:35

being a train again. What's in Texas? Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 45:40

AQB kid says our neighborhood was on a cul-de-sac, so we were big into block parties. We shot off loads of fireworks, loads of fun. I also got a special bicentennial coin bank, where I collected all the bicentennial quarters. Still have the bank, which is chock full of them. Sometimes I'll randomly get one, and into the overflowing bank it goes. Oh, I love that little green

Carolyn Cochrane 46:03

rush of anyone. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 46:04

I'm gonna start looking for him, but I don't use.. I know I was just thinking of that too. I don't.. I don't ask or change anymore. We do have a big jar of quarters in our laundry room that I moved here from Minnesota because I couldn't.. I didn't have time to roll all the quarters, and I couldn't find a counting machine, so we still have it. I'm gonna go through them all. I'm gonna find myself a bison. I bet you've got

Kristin Nilsen 46:27

several in there. I bet I do. That's your monument to, um, to doing laundry. I collected quarters for so long, it was like a tick. I couldn't stop. Yeah, oh yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 46:38

when you saw, like, even when I even saw the shape of a quarter in a pile. I got excited immediately, had to go look at

Michelle Newman 46:45

it.

Carolyn Cochrane 46:45

So, our friend Gigi Halloween Baby said that my classmate pen pals with kids in another state. I love that. She also remembers colonial costumes for famous people on Halloween in 1975 which reminds me that's also when I reused my colonial costume was on Halloween, I probably, probably was until I outgrew it. Probably Betsy Ross slash Laura Ingalls slash colonial baker lady for many, many years, and she said she also made a red, white, and blue cake for the Fourth of July, which I am sure was a very popular.. I can just see, like, an ad in Good Housekeeping. Yes, you know how you could do that. You probably put gelatin in the, in the imagining

Michelle Newman 47:27

layered Jello Jello salads. That was a big deal. So, can you imagine all the people who made, like, layered gelatin salads or cakes like that? Laura Minardi Jacobson was in a bicentennial club, which is kind of student council for bicentennial stuff. She had

Kristin Nilsen 47:49

bicentennial club bicentennial stuff.

Michelle Newman 47:53

Yeah, there's so much

Kristin Nilsen 47:55

Johnny question. He said, I rode on top of a parade float dressed as John Hancock,

Michelle Newman 48:02

of course he did. Also, don't you know, Johnny? I say don't you know, but you'd have to corroborate this, but I bet you felt super cool because your name is John, you know, when you're a kid things like that were a big deal, like, and I, and I am John.

Kristin Nilsen 48:19

Did you hold your hand in the air instead of waving, did you sign your.. did you pretend like

Michelle Newman 48:24

you, you pantomime signing? Yes, you want to

Kristin Nilsen 48:27

see him, like, like standing.. like, what did he do on the float? Is John Hancock uniform? What did he pretend that he was

Carolyn Cochrane 48:34

like Quill? Yeah, and I can only imagine that. And you know what is kind of sad, you guys, with our generic Gen X names, we were never gonna find a revolutionary hero that was a Michelle, a Carolyn, our Kristen, never,

Kristin Nilsen 48:45

it was never gonna happen if you were

Carolyn Cochrane 48:46

Betsy, yeah, like our friend Betsy, yeah, we're all over that, okay, I think this is so funny, and this was not the only comment we got like this, but our friend, so very Nicole said the only thing that I remember about the bicentennial is that our individual kindergarten pictures had a flag as part of the scene the photographer set up. Yes, and we have had people send in photos of they were posed with the little miniature Liberty Bell. I mean, all of our school, yes, like we're

Michelle Newman 49:17

just that 70s backdrop, you know, kind of JC Penney's backdrop. I love that. So fun. Gray Matters Photography says that my sister and I turned six on july 8, so we had a bicentennial themed birthday party. Of course you did. Yes, here is here's what's such a fun and kind of pondering something I need to ponder on for a minute. I remember my dad bought a red, white, and blue hose that was 76 feet long. So, did the hose company did they design a special hose? Yeah, because not only was it red, white, and blue, but it wasn't 12 feet long. No, no, wasn't 24 feet long. Nope, wasn't 56 feet long. Long wasn't 63 feet long, it was 76 feet long. You guys, that's very long. It's

Kristin Nilsen 50:06

very long. We don't care how much you need, you're getting 76 because, yes, the goddamn bicentennial,

Michelle Newman 50:11

that is right. And so I don't know, what did you guys do at the party? Did he squirt you with it? Did you hook it up to a sprinkler like four blocks away, and then you guys had to run the four blocks down to the end of the hose and run through it. Also, she's the one that says at school we all had our individual portraits that you're grasping a small Liberty Bell with a prominent American flag behind us, and I think we have a photographer

Kristin Nilsen 50:35

like, like forming their hands on the Liberty Bell just right, because it really was like grasping, and you know that wasn't natural. They're like, okay, put your forefinger here, lay your palm right over, yeah, stinger. Okay, good.

Michelle Newman 50:48

The dinger. What are

Kristin Nilsen 50:50

the parts of a bell? I have no idea. Oh God, okay. J Wolf 34 says we made colonial skirts and caps in our sewing class, and we wore them to a special assembly. How special would you feel?

Michelle Newman 51:06

How 70s to have a sewing class?

Kristin Nilsen 51:08

I know that's

Carolyn Cochrane 51:10

like home ec, probably, but I don't know, home ec, you learn other things. Yeah, Jay Jay Wolf says that it was sewing class, sewing class specific. I love that home economics back in the day. Floss J said we went to the start of a bicentennial wagon train that started in Blaine, Washington, and ended in Valley Forge. The wagon train started almost a year before the actual bicentennial, so I'm thinking this is in addition to the American, you know, train, that's freedom train, yeah, the freedom train, we've got a legit wagon train, horses, buggies, whatever, the thing, man, I would

Michelle Newman 51:49

have taken the free, I would have been in the freedom train for sure, Miss Moonstruck, you were so lucky right now, so many people are going to be jealous of you, very memorable year, I'd say. My dad went to Sears and bought us white with red and blue contrast free spirit bikes.

Kristin Nilsen 52:10

Okay, you guys, this one, who's gonna be me too? Because I had a cool spirit bike, I did not put that together. Free spirit, of course, that's 1776 the spirit of 7070s whatever, I can't say it. I had that bike, everything was bicentennial, and I didn't even know it.

Michelle Newman 52:28

Oh yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 52:29

that was my bike from Sears, the Free Spirit.

Carolyn Cochrane 52:31

So, you guys, I had that bike too. You might remember I had the three speed Free Spirit bike. I probably got it the Christmas of 1976 or 75 and boy, did I not want that. Did I want a real 10 speed with the handles and all of that? So, you guys were all excited about your Free Spirit bikes, and I was not. I

Kristin Nilsen 52:50

was a little kid, though. It was my first bike. It was just in 1976 I had just learned to ride a bike on my Free Spirit, so I was little. I was little. I was not Jones, and for a 10 speed yet. Yeah, Honey West 1117 They say each class of our elementary school made a patch and art class, and then the art teacher sewed it all together to make a quilt. There were about 30 patches, each one represented US history or a US landmark. It hung for about 35 years in the school, and then it was donated to the History Museum in our city. Think about that. People were wanting to leave their mark. It wasn't. Yes, I know there was a lot of schlock, and there was a lot of, like, you know, disposable shit, but some people were really trying to do things for longevity and for posterity, and I just think that's really cool.

Carolyn Cochrane 53:38

Yeah, I love that one. I love that memory too. I do too. And here is a nod to those favorite clothes that we had during that time. So, Miss Yingling reads said, 'My says my red, white, and blue plaid pants, sneakers, and polyester disco shirt with the spirit of 76 on the back. It was in frequent rotation all year long. Oh, I tell you,

Kristin Nilsen 54:05

I feel you so hard because, again, something I didn't even know was Bicentennial oriented. My red, white, and blue plaid pants were my - those were blue jeans, they were red, white, and blue, and they were my favorite outfit. And my mom and I would battle when I would try to wear my red, white, and blue plaid pants. You've heard this before, people with the orange and yellow granny square, and my mom would be like, "It doesn't match, and I'd be like, "What is matching? I don't even know what you're saying. And we would just battle it out, because I had to wear those pants every day. They were so freaking cool. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 54:39

can you imagine? I'm sure there was a spread in our Sears catalogs during 1976 of the of those pants, because I think mine were tough skins. Yeah, and then you could just see them being somebody wearing that exact disco shirt with a spirit of 76 on it, yeah, and the sneaker, so it was. Yeah, it was everywhere.

Kristin Nilsen 54:58

I have such all that stuff, I want that disco. Pictures

Michelle Newman 55:00

of those spreads and all that kind of stuff will be on social media this week, along with the pictures you all you have all sent in. Okay, Tammy, oh writer, I'm right with you. So many memories of the summer of 76 but here's one that stands out. My friend's dad had a CB radio and my handle was Liberty Kid, so much better than my handle, which was baby shrimp,

Carolyn Cochrane 55:25

and that was a big deal, like coming up with your handle, like it was your first chance to kind of name yourself, and she chose Liberty Kid, was all in. Love it.

Kristin Nilsen 55:36

Kay Foster, historian says my mother was bicentennial obsessed that year, I turned 10, and my birthday party was all red, white, and blue. She also had me dress up as a colonial girl for the Fourth of July and Halloween, so Mom was driving the bus on that

Carolyn Cochrane 55:52

one. Yeah. Oh gosh, I love that. And another birthday party, I mean, yeah. Gosh, I wonder if the kids were as excited about these as the parents were, you know, putting on the.. oh, I bet, because

Michelle Newman 56:04

that, because you know, the whole year leading up to it, like the last half of that school year, once it turned well, probably even when I was 75 but especially the anticipation then for their birthday was right at the same time of the anticipation of the bicentennial, so that's like double the excitement for your birthday,

Kristin Nilsen 56:21

my friend Tony, who had the Eve of Knievel bike, he's his birthday is just prior to july 4, and so I, he mentioned that he got his red, white, and blue tube socks and striped shorts and eyes odd shirt for his birthday. I said, did you have a bicentennial-themed birthday? And he stopped for a moment, and he was like, oh my god, I think I did like he didn't even.. it had like left his memory until the pictures start coming back to him, and everything red white, red wine. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 56:49

Oh, I love this one that ice cream lady 25 shared. She said my cousin Brad and I were on a float that my grandma's workplace sponsored. I was Betsy Ross. Oh, you lucky duck, and Brad was Ben Franklin. Our moms and grandma made our outfits. I love that dress with American flags and white apron. I had to act as if I was sewing the flag, and Brad held a kite. Oh my god, memories, yes, and red, white, and blue hearts. After that,

Kristin Nilsen 57:17

I would.. I totally see her, she's pulling the thread. Yes, very serious about this in America. I am making the flag. It's like John Hancock was he writing in the sky, so good.

Michelle Newman 57:29

Holly JH 65 brings up something that I feel like the last, maybe last year or the year before, we have posted on social media, because this was, I feel like in most cities the painted fire hydrant. Yep, I won a school contest and got to paint

Carolyn Cochrane 57:46

one. Whoa,

Michelle Newman 57:47

that's so lucky. I painted it as a policeman, and now my son is a policeman. Oh, there was a little foreshadowing there. Yes, there are so many great images of these fire hydrants painted everything that you can imagine, from dogs to Betsy Ross to John Hancock, Ben Franklin. To they're just great, they're so fun. Those will be shared this week on social media as well. It's going to be kind of a whole bicentennial themed week. Yep, over on socials this week. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 58:18

Julie Kennedy says, I remember the months leading up to the bicentennial, my dad was a runner, so he participated in some event where you committed to running 200 miles over the year. I was not a runner, but I committed to running 200 laps around the track. I learned that I hated running around the track.

Michelle Newman 58:35

The bicentennial taught us all lessons, valuable lessons,

Kristin Nilsen 58:42

Daniel.

Carolyn Cochrane 58:42

And I think about it now. I wonder, how many things that we maybe did 200 times, like it's also the number 200 you know? Did you bring in 200 I don't know, pennies to school or something? We probably did a lot of math, something

Kristin Nilsen 58:54

with the

Carolyn Cochrane 58:55

number 200 Right? This might be one of my favorite memories. So good. Shared this is from Kim Thomas Imbrigiada. Okay, ready. Kim says, I was nine years old. We went on vacation to Washington, DC, for the fourth. Very exciting time to be there. Here are some of the trip highlights that she shares. My brother got separated from us on the White House tour. No, he bumped into Bob Hope.

Michelle Newman 59:19

So random, is that the most random person to bump into at the White House?

Carolyn Cochrane 59:26

Oh my gosh, Kim, you have got some really fun memories from this trip. Her little sister got her long hair caught in the wheel of her stroller, and her springs were memorable. Happy

Kristin Nilsen 59:39

Bicentennial. Oh my god. Also,

Michelle Newman 59:41

how long was your sister's hair? Was it 76 feet? Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 59:45

it was the 70s.

Carolyn Cochrane 59:47

And she said this is interesting, because I didn't realize this. One of the big events that week was the opening of the brand new air and space museum that was happening on a Friday, I believe, and huge crowds were expected. Thursday night we were just strolling around. Maybe before or after the hair incident, I don't know, and behind the museum we saw some people going in. My dad thought, why not join them? So we somehow got the VIP early access. The best was knowing I was one of the first kids to touch the moon rock, and I always felt a little snug about that. I love that you should also love, we had another person share a memory that you know some parents were breaking a few rules. It seems like during the bicentennial we got dad sneaking in here, we got the dad putting the pennies on the track when everybody was saying don't put pennies on the track. And do you ever remember, like if your parents did something that you thought that's kind of naughty, like my parents are breaking a rule? Then it was kind of fun to see that.

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:42

Was like, we're on the same team.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:00:45

Okay. And then on the actual fourth, Kim says we celebrated the birthday of our favorite American, my mom. Oh, she didn't want to go into the city, she wanted to drive through the mountains, probably the most Americana day of my childhood. Wow, wholesome 70s family road trip, four kids stuffed into the brown Chevy Impala, driving through the most beautiful place I'd ever seen, stopping for lunch with where my parents surprised us by getting ice cream sundaes, just ice cream for lunch, obviously still a top meal of my life 50 years later, that's bicentennial memory, not to forget, for sure.

Kristin Nilsen 1:01:23

Again, the parents breaking the rules, like, yeah, no vegetables today, children, just ice cream, right? I love the memory.

Michelle Newman 1:01:31

I actually, I love that memory, Kim, all of it, but especially the day of the actual fourth. The memories you shared are so 70s. Tina Chandler Pryor says in 1976 the Lexington, Massachusetts Patriots Day parade included President Ford waving out of the top of his limo. My mom snapped a photo. I was in fifth grade. One thing I love about this memory, about it being so 70s, my mom snapped a photo. Right now we would all be just going, we would be touching the button on our phone 100 times, and watching

Carolyn Cochrane 1:02:04

in the moment, like, yeah, you snap the photo, you put your photo, and you might be blurry,

Michelle Newman 1:02:10

maybe I didn't get it, he might have been looking away, but I got my photos right, and I bet you

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:14

anything that photo you're looking at, and you're like, is there a person in now,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:02:19

I was gonna share, I forgot to share this a little bit earlier, but when we were talking about the schlock, there is in the presidential, in Gerald Ford's presidential library, a can of bicentennial air.

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:33

I remember that. Yes, I totally, and I was like, what do you do with it? People are like, you breathe it, like, why? I don't get, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:02:40

I thought that was kind of fun, and again, enough of a cultural artifact that it is in Gerald Ford's Presidential Library. Oh my, I was

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:48

just there a year ago, I don't remember seeing that, but I bet I did. Wow, here's from Alana Mac Bishop. You guys just, I just want you to picture this scene, just picture it in your mind. Alana says, my family dressed in period costumes and sat at the end of our driveway to watch a wagon train travel past our house. Alana, did

Michelle Newman 1:03:10

you live in Woodson, Texas?

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:12

They probably had some flags they waved when the wagon train went by. That's the one

Michelle Newman 1:03:18

that was traveling from Blaine, Washington to Valley. Yes, I bet it was, but my favorite is the whole family did it, like mom and dad too,

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:27

sitting in their webby little

Michelle Newman 1:03:31

breachers, breeches, yes, those, those kind of plaid woven,

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:36

yeah, poly holdout chairs, folded

Carolyn Cochrane 1:03:38

chairs, yeah, you know, even Dad, like, for me, when Dad got involved in something, this was like a huge deal. So dads are really invested in this.

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:49

Yeah, Terry Schlicht Scarbollus says my Catholic grade school had a parade. I dressed up as Betsy Ross, cap and all. I was seven years old. My older sister was a colonial drummer. Everyone dressed up in colonial outfits, definitely a lot of red, white, and blue. The more we talk about this, the more we realize the costuming was probably the best part.

Michelle Newman 1:04:11

Well, but I also love that they have a colonial drummer. They always probably had the person playing the little fife as they're walking along. Jana Keller says my dad, who was not an arts and crafts type of guy, insisted that we decorate our Christmas tree. Oh my god,

Michelle Newman 1:04:28

in red, white, and blue that year. We cut stars out of styrofoam and sprinkled them with glitter. I still have one of them. Of course, you do. I bet that's a treasure to put on your Christmas tree. And I bet every year she starts to tell the story, and her kids are going, "We know Grandpa made you decorate the tree and red white. We know

Carolyn Cochrane 1:04:48

still it's a great memory. Now the grandkids can start. Oh, I love

Michelle Newman 1:04:52

it. I love it. Yeah, even at Christmas, the

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:54

involvement of the dads is equal to the moms. That is such a rare thing, like we've all. Told stories about things that our dads were into, but it wasn't a family thing, necessarily. This was the whole family was all in. Okay, here's Anne Rice Else. She says it was so exciting to celebrate America's bicentennial. I remember many activities at my school to celebrate, including a cherry pie baking contest. My pie placed first. I remember wearing a colonial dress and bonnet to school. Everybody drink if you dressed up, because that's, yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:05:25

right. The

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:26

best part was attending a big bicentennial party thrown by my aunt and uncle. My sister, brother, and I went in costume drink as George Washington, Uncle Sam, and the Statue of Liberty. I love it. The costuming, it makes me want to go get a Butterick pattern. Right, right now,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:42

probably costs a pretty penny. It's probably a collector's item. Yep, this is one of my favorite memories that someone shared. This is from Yvette Steen. She was six, and her small hometown had a greased flagpole climbing contest. Oh my gosh, so like all in Crisco or something, up and down this aisle, or up and down this flagpole. The first person to ring the bell at the top of the flagpole won a special prize. I stood in my star spangled bib overall shorts and watched all kinds of people attempt to reach that bell as they slid down. My mom grabbed me and said that I was going to ring that bell. Before I knew it, I was the third and top person in a human ladder. Oh, Mike, I was sitting on some guy's shoulders who was standing on another man's shoulders. How incredibly safe was that? I think the prize may have been a bicentennial quarter. I was more excited about getting my picture on the front page of the local newspaper. Yes, the local newspaper. Mom's like, 'You're ringing that dim bell, that's right. Oh, and you guys, let's just a little nod to the local newspaper when that could be on the front page, and that was, yeah, and you got to cut it out, and you were all excited to see, you know, either someone you knew or, in this case, yourself. Just, I'm just imagining how

Michelle Newman 1:06:57

terrifying she has to get on the guy's shoulders first somehow stand on another man's, so think how she's like teetering around, I mean, she's not super old because she's in bib overalls, but she was probably four or five, yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:17

I mean she had to be light enough that, yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:07:20

okay, Elaine Hesser was born in 1962 and says my mom and grandmom put a lot of stuff together for our town's bicentennial. Mom was the chair of it, and my grandmother could write a pageant like you wouldn't believe. I know we painted fire hydrants to look like colonial soldiers. I participated in a bicentennial princess contest, there was a pageant in which I danced a minuet with a cast of dozens, a parade and colonial Olympics. I won for the longest continuous apple peel. Carolyn, this is right up your alley. You need to be taking notes for one day when you're working at Colonial Williams.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:08:05

Congratulations to somehow

Michelle Newman 1:08:07

introduce an Apple Peel contest. Yes, yes, yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:11

Colonial Olympics. Like, what other things did they.. well, maybe it was, you know, somebody who had their cooperage skills was in the.. I don't even know. Yeah, but I just can

Michelle Newman 1:08:20

only imagine how long that continuous apple peel was, and then on july 4, Elaine was awarded the God Home Country Medal in the Girl Scouts. I can just picture that God Home Country Medal. I can just picture that, that like that, the celebrate or the ceremony of it. Yes, I'm sure there's many flags.

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:37

Kimberly Rose says our dance studio did a salute to George M. Cohen for our recital. I collected Liber dolls, Liberty dolls, I remember Liberty dolls, Liberty dolls. I bet they're, yeah, from Kmart. I had a Spirit of 76 bike from Sears. Woo hoo! For the free spirit. On the actual day, we had a picnic at our local recreation park. Our next-door neighbors came with us. We ate, played, rode some rides and stayed for the fireworks. It was so much fun.

Michelle Newman 1:09:04

I just love the dance studios salute to George M. Yeah, oh yeah, for the recital. There were so many salutes to recitals.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:12

I bet my sister was in one. She remembers the grand old flag, and she, everything was a tap, of course, dance that they did. But yeah, I'm betting most of the dance recitals on this time has to be yes, at least have one piano recitals. We're all playing

Michelle Newman 1:09:27

songs, you know, patriotic songs for everywhere,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:30

everywhere. And for Jen Abbott Chaffin, um, she was in fifth grade, she remembers the Bicentennial Quarter, and she also remembers those news cut-ins about the Bicentennial on Saturday mornings. Do you guys remember? Like, gosh, I'm trying to remember who it was, but I think it was CBS that would do this, because on ABC we had Schoolhouse Rock, and so maybe a lot of us didn't watch the CBS Saturday mornings, but they would have like legit real almost news stories, but for kids that celebrated. Oh, she says it was on NBC, okay. Time that were about 1776 on NBC, and she says her fifth grade class, much like mine, did a performance about it, and each of us walking across the stage and reciting a line. Yeah, so fun, so

Michelle Newman 1:10:12

cute. Well, Andrea Galenter's dad was a cameraman for NBC. That's what a cool job for your dad to have, right? So he was working, of course, because it sounds like they lived near Washington DC. Because it says my mom, brother, and I went downtown Washington DC to the National Mall with another family. The Concord flew over, and as it happened, my dad was on a huge scaffold, perhaps 20 feet in the air, about 20 yards away from where we had spread our blankets and staked out our spot, we went over to the scaffold and jumped up and down and yelled and yelled at him, but to no avail. My dad never saw or heard us. I know without a doubt that if he had noticed us, we would have been on TV in a bicentennial scene from the National Mall clip on the nightly news at six and 11.

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:00

Oh,

Michelle Newman 1:11:01

so cool, like, yeah, like the other family that went there. What a, what a cool place to be on july 4, 1976 That, the, yeah, just the feeling of community and celebration must have been just next. I got

Carolyn Cochrane 1:11:16

a little, who screwed in when she said the Concord, the Concord flew over the Concord, remember the giant airplane, the Concord, like this was that, like the first one that could go. Oh my gosh, and it looked like almost didn't look like kind of a stealth bomber. I don't know, I could be totally making that up. It's probably regular looking at airplanes, like

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:33

you knew it when you saw it, but it was a big deal,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:11:35

like that was fun.

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:37

Corinne Puttans says my family belonged to a black powder muzzle loaders reenactors group at the

Michelle Newman 1:11:45

time. Let's all can we pause. Okay, can we pause and let that sink in. I don't make my segment

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:54

to a black powder muzzle loaders reenactors group at the time, because bicentennials, because so bicentennial,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:12:03

it's yes, it is specific. Yes, is that a thing? So, is that a thing, even when it's not the bicentennial? Oh, I think

Kristin Nilsen 1:12:10

so. I said today, and she says, my dad, my brother, and I walked in a community parade with a group, with the group in our Pioneer Fur Trapper outfits, homemade by my mom. Drink, continued with the group. Yep, drink every drink. We continued with the group for several years more. Best way to learn history. Amen, sister.

Michelle Newman 1:12:30

I mean, we don't doubt it for one second. Absolutely. And probably a part of history that a lot of us don't know about, right? Right, it's so specific. Oh,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:12:43

these memories have been so, so fun to read. I mean, I get like a little, almost some of them are kind of bittersweet, because I think this was again a time where we all just were on the same page, and we were all celebrating, for you know, I'm really,

Michelle Newman 1:13:00

it's really making me realize right now is just once again something that I know that we're all really proud of, that this podcast does, is that it connects us all, and so I, you know, at the beginning I told you I was just in sleepy little woods in Texas, you know, lighting off my Roman candles and playing with sparklers and whatever, and it's just really making me realize that at that exact same time at that exact same moment all of these other things were happening and I feel really connected to all of these people but I feel connected to all of you by remembering that we were all there doing all these different things on that exact same day and in some way we were all celebrating we were all celebrating

Kristin Nilsen 1:13:40

together the same thing, and think about this. This is all of these comments that we weren't able to include today. We weren't able to include them because they were so similar to all of the others, and what that means is that we were all celebrating the same thing in the same way on the same day. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:13:58

so many community parades and festivals and birthday parties and all of this kind of stuff that that and so many costumes, yes, yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:14:08

yes. Well, speaking of costumes, I'm going to share this. It'll be our final comment that we're going to share with this came from Chatty Cathy 513 and this might - I keep saying every time before I read a comment - this might be my favorite comic, this one is classic. She writes, I was 11, and we were visiting my grandpa on Long Island, New York. The yacht club down the street was having a boat parade on July 4, 1976 So, my dad, sister, and I dressed in red, white, and blue, and wore ketchup-soaked bloody headbands, and played a foil-covered fife and drum, while my grandpa weighed a 76 flag. We won first place in the boat decor contest and made the front page of the East Rockaway newspaper.

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:54

Nicely done, go chatty, Daddy. Nice use of catches. Picture the catch up. In their heads, yeah, just so, and then you take the tin foil around, yep, that's your fife. I am cracking up, and I'm wondering, are they, are they like marching on the boat? Did they, like, did they make those little fingers? Maybe they're standing

Carolyn Cochrane 1:15:12

on the edge, like, wasn't it George Washington, like the Valley Forge? Yeah, with the

Kristin Nilsen 1:15:20

bloody head, you got a bloody head playing posing. Oh my, and we all know exactly what that

Carolyn Cochrane 1:15:26

scene is like. That's another cool thing, like that's an iconic scene in our memories of the American Revolution.

Kristin Nilsen 1:15:32

And bonus points for making it bloody, like that's why they won. That's why it was the catch up for sure. Well, you all might be wondering, as you're listening to this episode, what are you going to do on july 4, 2026 How will you feel? What are you going to do about this day? But I think Mike Derrico, the author of Bicentennial Chic, is going to show us the way, as well as all of these comments that you heard from your friends today. These are all your friends, right? He wants his book. Mike wants his book to be a form of time travel for you. Wait, he wants his book to be a form of time travel for you. Immerse yourself in the celebration that was uplifting and unifying 50 years ago. Here's what he says. I read this as a quote, and, and I just think it's really, it's, it's overarching advice, right. This is for every day of our lives. I think we can take this to heart and embrace it on july 4, 2026 Every generation rides its own nostalgia wave. Sadly, I believe we spend too much time wishing we could go back to something, some particular time and place, without realizing we're already back there in mind and heart, and sometimes without warning, the simple sound of a piece of music will be our transport and make it as real as it was back then. Because of this, it's probably more likely that time travel happens much more than we think, and far more times that we're even aware of. It happens in those moments when we hear that song that delivers us directly into the back seat of our parents' car, and suddenly we're seven years old again. A simple smell could put us back in our grandmother's kitchen. These are the brief flashes that serve as the only conduits to the past. Yes, Mike. Thank you for the pep talk. We can do this. Make this 1976 playlist make afternoon delight the theme of july 4, 2026 because it was the theme of july 4, 1976 Find your pictures of you and your sisters wearing your Betsy Ross costumes, replicate the day with sparklers and dilly bars and red, white, and blue tube socks. We were so lucky to be alive for this moment when unity actually was possible, and maybe by reliving it we can light the spark for making it happen again. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time, and have a very happy 50th anniversary of the Bicentennial. That's how I'm gonna be thinking of it. Before we hit stop, a huge

Michelle Newman 1:18:00

thanks to our crew over on Patreon, you all keep the mics on, the memories flowing, and the Gen X spirit alive. Seriously, we couldn't do this without you. I say the word literally, and I mean it literally, literally. Today, we're giving a special shout out to these patrons. Derek, thank you for being our newest patron. Yes, we appreciate you, Rosa, Christy, Jenny, Sherry with two Rs, Nina, Patty with an I, Rochelle, Joanna, Carolyn, Jennifer, Cindy, Colette, and Susan. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of Three's Company. Two good times, two happy days, two little house on the prairie, and 1976 1976 She's a

Carolyn Cochrane 1:18:47

grand old flag, she's a high flying flag, and forever. The information,

Kristin Nilsen 1:18:51

opinions, and comments expressed on the Pop Culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn, the crushologist, and Hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates, and though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time. The PCPS is written, produced, and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional WJM Studios and our beloved Mary Richards. Nanu Nanu, keep on truckin' and may the force be with you.