Where Were You in the Summer of '72?

Sweltering in a hot apartment with my parents because air conditioning was for rich people.

I was 16 years old and got CHICKEN POX! Had to stay in recovering for ages, especially with all those pox all over me. My younger sister and brother felt okay with theirs, I had a fever and felt like shit.

I was about 10. The main thing I remember from that time was the Munich Olympics, with Olga Korbet, Mark Spitz, and the tragic massacre. I remember watching Jim McKay announce live that "they're all gone". Still hits in the gut when I see that film clip.

Just 13. Beginning that horrible journey into 8th grade and beyond.

In my dad's nutsack.

I was 11. I fucking hated the late 60s and 70s until about 1977, then life got fun. There was so much anger, discord, violence and failure locally and in society during those years. It was difficult for a kid to make sense of any of it and it all seemed catastrophic.

I was in utero.

I love DL, it makes me feel young.

[quote]I was 20 years old

#MeToo!

I was in college with a very low draft lottery number (68.) Thank goodness for student deferments; by the time I got out of school two years later, the war was winding down and they weren't drafting anyone. I started working for the Feds in October of 1974 and stayed with them until I retired in 2010.

I spent the days outside playing with my neighborhood friends. I probably stayed a week or two with my grandmother in the country. My grandfather had died a few months before. It was my last summer as the baby of the family. My sister was born later that fall.

I was watching the Munich Olympics.

I was six and living in Tucson. I can't remember a lot, but I remember the era fondly, especially the movies and TV shows and all the psychedelic stuff.

I watched the Summer of '42 in the Summer of '72.

On Long Island, so either at the beach or the movies.

Other than Vietnam, all of the “violence and hatred” was nothing compared to today. I was a teen having a great time. Good movies like What’s up Doc and The Godfather, TV like Mary Tyler Moore. Chicken was safe to handle, there was no term “food safety.” I went to the US Open tennis and saw Stan Smith and Billie Jean King.

Hitchhiking from NY to LA. Met a lot of good people. Did it with $2.67 in my pocket.

Everything went swimmingly for Mark Spitz.

I was a cute tot wearing my mom's wig acting like Geraldine and saying, "What you see is what you get sucka!"

I was 12, figuring things out, or rather figuring out that college would be my big opportunity, but not just yet. I realized that I would be in a holding pattern for another five years before I could get away to better choices. In most cases I had only a vague outline of what those choices might be, but through books it was time to pre-expose myself to everything I didn't know yet.

I was 2. I was probably watching The Secret Storm with my Grammy.

I was 7, about to turn 8. Had no idea what my dick was for. That would come 5 years later, in the summer of ‘77, when I blew my first load.

I was 16 - I spent a month working so I would have some spending money for Italy. I spent a month in Italy meeting all the family I really didn't know I had for the first time.

I was glued to the TV watching the summer Olympics, especially Olga Korbut and the other female gymnasts. The whole thing was very exciting to my 11 year old mind. Mark Spitz made me all tingly. I have no memory of the massacre of the Israeli athletes.

- R6

I was six, and I was turning on and tuning in.

I had just graduated from high school.

My mom was still in DIAPERS you geriatric ewwwwww, kill it!!!

Not born yet.

I was six years old and my father had recently moved on up because he was in a financial position to be able to purchase a 1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. That car had uncompromising comfort.

I was years away from existing.

I wasn't around back then, but it must've been nice not having to worry about being shot or stabbed when you went out in public. Our society sure has gone straight downhill in that regard. Shootings are practically an everyday occurence in the US today.

I was 13. Both my older sisters (26 and 25) had their first babies that year. My older brother (22) moved out. I finally had a bedroom to myself! My grandfather died.

I just graduated from high school and started my first job working for a company. Watched Spitz win all those gold medals!

I had just turned one. A fabulous one, nonetheless.

I was 15. I'd just discovered the cruising area at South Mountain Reservation in West Orange NJ. I couldn't get enough.

Dad was a "menopause Hippie" in his 40s who went around saying stuff like "Far Out!" He flipped out and decided he would start a fucking commune in our house on Long Island. They ended up selling the house, buying a boat, and taking off meaning I had nowhere to live. I moved into the city and got in with a gay Warhol-adjacent crowd. It was nice to feel accepted and to get a boyfriend or two and hang out with upper-class fags at their designer clubs. But the drugs wear off and what do you do then?

The Catskills for two weeks.

Donald Trump at r29.

[quote]My mom was still in DIAPERS you geriatric ewwwwww, kill it!!!

Because mom was 81. That makes you 87, bitch.

I think R30 was an "oopsie" baby.

R36, everything is not about Trump. Try to move the record in your brain out of that groove.

You thought right r38. And I was followed by a set of twins 7 years later. Mom lost an ovary in a miscarriage a few years before I was born.

My 42 year old mother had her tubes tied around 1972. She needed my father to CO-SIGN the paperwork because they needed his permission in ‘72.

I was 4 years old.

OP, we're the same age. I was in college at a very liberal university where women's rights, the black movement, and gay liberation were all competing for focus amidst the anti-war, anti-Nixon movement. I was facing being drafted when my student deferment expired upon graduation in '74. (My draft lottery number was 2, so there was no doubt I was going in.)

Lo and behold before I got out of school the government abolished the draft. So instead of going into the army in '74, I moved to Chicago and the neighborhood which became Boystown. But within a decade it felt like we were fighting another war right on our doorstep with the AIDS crisis. Fifty years later still here, still queer, and thankful for having lived through all that.

Do we really need to know this, R41?

I was 16, living in a small town in Iowa, working in a grocery store. When I wasn’t working, I was jerking off constantly. There was nothing else to do.

I was buying a house in East Hampton.

R43 Very similar story except I was a high school dropout so no deferment for me. But fate took care of everything. I got my notification to report for my physical. My hippie Dad said "Tell em you're gay!" My right wing mom said "Join up. It'll make a man outta ya." But I was a deer in the headlights. The week before I reported, I fell and sprained my ankle badly. I also broke out in a weird rash all over my body and a goose egg on my forehead from bumping into shit. They looked at me, said come back in two weeks. Canceled the allowed one time and went back, still not healed. Another two weeks. Cancelled one more time and on the date I was to report fully healed and ready to die in the jungle, they did away with the draft.

I was 7, and probably like r1, having insomnia from the hot Chicago nights.

I was years away from birth, but I love reading these!

I really feel for you guys who were draft age.

Baby. I was born in 69. So yeah, sucking my thumb

R47, you sound like a total dork, but bless your heart - you missed out on getting killed, which is good

I was 21.... my draft number was #7, but I was a conscientious objector. Was hurrying to finish my last year in university. (Why I wanted to finish in four years is... unknown? I think to save money and start grad school.) I was scheduled to start working in a veteran's hospital in the Bay Area as alternative service. To report in October, 1972.

I had lived on campus, but in the summer of '72 I had moved to a "co-op" off campus. I was half hippie commune and half highly structured co-op - I had scheduled chores (making breakfast, yardwork). The co-op had bedrooms of 2-3 occupants, but only a couple bathrooms with locker-room-like showers. I was not out, I was highly confused, and had "successfully" dated women... I was free love minded and said I would sleep with anyone but terrified of the idea of having sex with a man.

At the co-op there was young man who was not conventionally handsome, but his lithe body and curly dark blond hair, and sharp facial features and soulful eyes...."reminded me" that I was attracted to men. I was such a pathetic introvert, I barely said hello to anyone, and clearly not to him.

One day in early August I was returning to my room and he stopped me on the stairs. He said he had a proposal for me. He said his cousin was coming to visit CA and ..well... he had seen my body in the showers and thought I had an attractive body and his cousin would be happy to date me when she came. I was baffled. He smiled broadly, comfortably.... his bright white teeth, his tan skin, and his twinkle in his grey eyes. I forget what I said...something non-committal. Of course I didn't date the cousin and the only other interaction I had with him was a few weeks later, at night I was sitting out on the wall near my room, he walked up the stairs next to me, looked at me, smiled brightly, leaned over closer to me, his expression changed. I must have looked sad or depressed. "you ok bud?" I forget how I answered. He walked away.

A few weeks later I got a letter from the draft board. I had been "released" from alternative service. That fall I canvassed door-to-door for McGovern. I really thought there was a "peaceful revolution" possible that would heal the wounds of the world, open up the hearts of humanity... well, you know the song. Yes, it was naive. Yes, all generations have their "moments"... but for many of us who lived through the late 60s and early 70s the whole universe seemed on the verge of changing... everything was possible.

And yet I couldn't figure out how to talk to the lovely young man with the curly blond hair and the sweet, warming smile.

Thank you, R53 for that story! These stories make history real.

[quote]So yeah, sucking my thumb

Then you moved on to bigger and better things to suck.

Inhaling cigarettes from my crib

I'm ashamed that I felt hatred towards the soldiers that came back. I was still in my early teens but this one guy came back, he couldn't have be more than 20, living with his mom around the corner and we treated him like the Boo Radley of the neighborhood.

In utero.

Playing golf, getting high, and getting laid, if not necessarily in that order.

My mom was born in 72...Oofa i had no idea how old this place was.

R60 It's this thread, duh. See the title. Who might respond to that question, ya think?

I was six; an unbearable two and a half weeks in the dead of summer vacation to Phoenix ended up being a dry run for the three summers that followed when my dad hit his midlife crisis moment and moved us from suburban Chicago to Mesa in June of 1973. Icky hot weather, Mark Spitz (same birthday to boot), buying 45s, and started 1st grade in August 1972.

I'm getting a Godspell vibe about this time as well.

Working at a concert hall in Boston. Saw just about everyone in those days. Took some decent pictures too, when I could afford film.

Same, r2!

I was 5 and still remember being covered in pink calamine lotion and itching like crazy anyway.

It was right before we moved out of the suburbs and on to the farm.

I was getting ready for my freshman year in college.

I was 8. In Ireland and I remember seeing Sesame Street for the first time on irish tv. I formed the opinion that Americans had Afros.

[quote] I was six, and I was turning on and tuning in.

Some boys grow up fast.

[quote] I was six, and I was turning on and tuning in.

Some boys grow up fast.

We lived at grandmas house, an old stone cottage in England. The coal range was always going. The ghosts of Jesus and the victorians always judging..

I love to watch 227. Marla Gibbs, Jackee Harry…

I also was in England at that time visiting family R70. We were in an old cottage too, down in Cornwall, and I remember you had to put coins in a slot to keep the lights on. Pay as you go.

[quote]Inhaling cigarettes from my crib

I would do the same eight years later. Ah, secondhand smoke!

I was 3, riding my big wheel and watching Mister Rogers (a local hero) or soap operas with my mom while she smoked her Virginia Slims.

I was twelve years old, spending time at the swim club every day. I looked at lifeguard Bernie's bittersweet-colored nipples and the triangle of auburn hair in the center of his chest. He kept his legs spread open while he was guarding, and I looked at the auburn hairs crawling up his thighs and into the mesh covering his crotch.

Lifeguard Mel was a quiet, beautiful man with a dark complexion and black hair. One time I went to the locker room to pee, and he stepped out of the shower, showing an expansive thick bush above a mushroom-headed cock and big balls. I started to pee in my swimsuit. He just looked at me, expressionless.

He died a couple of years ago.

It was the first tingling in my gonads I ever experienced. I still remember these moments.

I went to Kennywood for my birthday. I didn't ride the Thunderbolt. My cousin called me a scaredy-cat.

I was 6 years old living in Texas, getting ready to move to Florida. Listening to AM radio was the best!

I tricked my sister into outing me by taking her to a gay bar that year. She was 18 and I was 20. My hippie dad had the members of his commune (1 other couple and assorted kids) sitting down to breakfast when I heard him ask her where she'd been the night before. "We went to a gay bar." He looked at me and asked "Are you gay son?" I said I guessed I was. "Far out!" he said, hugged me and whispered "Welcome Home" in my ear. And then, following suit, everyone around the table said the same Far Out. But when it got to the husband of the other couple, a 26-year-old hunk who looked like the guy in the Old Spice commercial, he said, "I knew it about you the first minute I saw you." (He was jealous that his wife liked spending time with me instead of him.) From that point, I decided I disliked him and would taunt him. "I had a dream about you last night Sam. Wanna know what happened?" He'd get red in the face and tell me to keep my sick thoughts to myself. I just laughed at him.

R72 Ha, those pay as you go electricity things are still used today. Well Cornwall is a fine place. Much better than Runcorn. We were stuck in the frozen North near Liverpool, The land of the smokey pub my dad was buds with Pete Townsend so we were pretty rock and roll. We had a bar and a stage in the basement. The smell of hash and beer still triggers a childhood nostalgia I can't place being a wee urchin at the time..

R79 The UK was very cool during those days. I'd never seen coin-operated electricity before. I remember thinking all these people have fireplaces but they have electric heaters in 'em instead of wood. I was crazy for The Who.

R76 Was Kennywood open?

[quote] Listening to AM radio was the best!

What was so good about AM radio?

Cousin Brucie!

Yes it was open r74 as was the Highland Park Zoo!

R76/R84 I was joking, of course. "Kennywood is open" means "your fly is open/down."

Engaging in suicidal ideation in New Haven, Connecticut.

LOL, thanks r85, didn't know. But I was a "scaredy cat" so probably a lot of things went over my head. I was very introverted and not a lot of friends, also why I was at Kennywood with my female cousin on my birthday!

Is Kennywood Kenny Rogers' version of Dollywood?

Working my summer job between my junior and senior year in high school.

It is urgent I find out what Kennywood is. I've googled it. Kennywood - Amusement park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania

but I'm mistaken for 35

R17: If only you had a video of that. In any case, in the summer of 1972, I was about to turn 7, later in the summer. I was probably looking forward to our annual trip to Disneyland, before the start of the school year.

Living on the border between the ghetto and the swank in the Motor City, a rich acquaintance had a video camera which he set up at his parties - such a buzz!

Then he died, not very long after. OD.

Then I went West, without any of his stuff.

riding a tidal wave of acclaim for Cabaret

Yes, Kennywood is an amusement park near Pittsburgh and lots of people had fond memories - much like Cedar Point/Six Flags etc.

In the Pittsburgh area, if someone came up to you at school and said "Kennywood's open!" it meant your fly was down.