THESE TIMES

A trip back to America in 1971

Kirk Ericson | Jan 11, 20240

The light bulb in our kitchen started flickering last week and I realized I hadn’t replaced a light bulb in maybe a year. It used to be light bulbs going out was a constant irritant of modern life, but with incandescent bulbs being replaced by longer-lived fluorescent bulbs and LED lights, we can go months now without thinking about light bulbs.

I brought this matter up with Mrs. Ericson. Remember when, I asked her, we used to put light bulbs on the list of things to get? Do you remember when we always had a supply of light bulbs in the house? Do you remember checking the interior of light bulbs to see whether the filament was still intact? Do you remember …

“Check the closet in the kitchen,” she said.

A few days later, an edition of Look magazine, dated Jan. 26, 1971, fell into my hands.

Look was a twice-monthly publication that had more than 6 million subscribers in 1971 and some of the best staff writers and contributors in the business. It stopped publishing just nine months later, slain by the new sensation — television — draining ad dollars from print publications.

You think things were better in the past? You want to take America back to a better time? Consider life back in 1971 …

■ The subscription label on the front of the magazine was addressed to “Mr. & Mrs. William Vivian, 170 Prospect Park W, Brooklyn, NY.” It was common in those days for wives to identify themselves by putting a “Mrs.” in front of their husband’s name, as though their own name was no longer relevant. My mother, Beverley, often identified herself as “Mrs. Don Ericson.” Now, married women can keep their birth surname, or not, and I haven’t heard a married woman identify herself as Mrs. Husband’s Name in decades. It’s a freedom thing, and the widespread practice of wives choosing what last name to use accelerated in the 1970s — like a Chevy Super Sport.

■ A story titled “The Homosexual Couple” profiled two 28-year-old men, living in Minnesota, who said their relationship “is just like being married.” The story included a picture of them applying, unsuccessfully, for a marriage license in Minnesota in May 1970 (it would take until 2013 for the state to legalize same-sex marriage.) The story included this paragraph: “Sex researchers are beginning to realize that homosexual behavior can be as varied as heterosexual conduct. Not all homosexual life is a series of one-night stands in bathhouses, public toilets or gay bars. Some homosexuals — a minority — live together in stable, often long-lasting relationships …” The paragraph was probably breaking news for most of Look’s readers, but it wouldn’t be news now, and that’s a good thing.

■ Full-page ads for the Cadillac Eldorado, the Oldsmobile Cutlass and the Pontiac Grand Prix promoted those cars’ virility (“it’s an 8.2-liter, V-8 engine”), their appearance (“luxuriously appointed interior” and “sculptured rear end”) and their ride (“always smooth”), but there’s no mention of gas mileage or safety features, staples of car ads today. Here’s something that’s better today than in 1971: Motor vehicle-related fatalities in the U.S. fell from 27.6 deaths per 100,000 population in 1970 to 11.5 deaths in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cars are better now. They’re more reliable, they’re safer, they don’t burn as much gasoline and they’re less likely to project you out the windshield. These are all good things.

■ Thirty percent of the advertising was for cigarettes, some of which are long gone brands: Pall Malls, Parliament, Winston, Vantage, Raleigh, Old Gold, Belair, Kool and Benson & Hedges, and several ads featured people lounging on a beach in sports coats and fancy dresses, looking as out of place as the impeccably attired people who populate casino advertising today. In 1971, about 40% of Americans smoked cigarettes. It’s nearly one-quarter of that today. It’s probably better that fewer people are smoking these days. Our public places sure smell better.

■ The magazine had five well-known writers and thinkers tackle this question: “Is the family obsolete?” The contributors were Alvin Toffler, author of “Future Shock,” Erich Segal, author of “Love Story,” Margaret Mead, the only anthropologist you’ve ever heard of, Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique,” and actress Shirley MacLaine. And it was Shirley MacLaine who might have answered the family obsolescence question best: “Our problem is not whether the family’s obsolete but whether the autocratic family is obsolete, and I think, yes, that’s so.” That was insightful. Just ask the wives who now make more money than their husbands.