1975 was an eventful year. Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a company and named it Microsoft. There was competition going on between two types of video recorders so we didn’t know whether to buy Beta or VHS tapes because we felt only one of the two devices would survive. In 1975 the war finally ended in Vietnam and the first disposable razor was available from a company named BIC. Gerald Ford was president and Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. NBC released a new show called “Saturday Night Live” with the first show hosted by George Carlin and “Jaws” was a hit movie in theaters. The Eagles had a popular song titled “Best of My Love” but the number one song of the year was “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille. Angelina Jolie and Tiger Woods were born that year. Motorola obtained a patent for the first mobile phone and Kodak invented the digital camera. I graduated from high school in May of 1975. I weighed sixty-six pounds less than I do now and was two inches taller. My mother was still alive. My great grandmother was still alive and so were all my grandparents except one. We were planning my sister’s wedding and my brother was in Germany serving in the Army. My parents went to Europe on vacation that summer and visited him while they were there. It was the end of August in 1975 when I turned 18 and I moved in to the dorm at St Joseph School of nursing just prior to my eighteenth birthday. I remained there less than six months as I found the environment too confining and restrictive. In 1975 things cost less. A letter could be mailed for ten cents. A quart of milk could be purchased for forty-six cents and a loaf of bread for thirty-three cents. A bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple Wine would cost a person ninety-nine cents. But wages were less too. My job as a nursing assistant at a nursing home paid eighty-five cents an hour with a five dollar bonus at Christmas, although minimum wage was $2.10 an hour. The average yearly income in 1975 was $8,630.92. The average cost of a new car was $4,250.00 and you could put gas in it for fifty-seven cents a gallon. An average house would run you $52,000. There were 310,387 less cases of aggravated assault in the US in 1975 than in 2016, and 39,640 less cases of forceable rape but 2016 can boast of 3,260 less murders than 1975. 14.9% more high school graduates enrolled in college in 1998 than in 1975 but in the time frame the number of young women who enrolled in college after high school rose 20%. Heart Disease was the leading cause of death in the United States then also but it was 12.4% higher than it is today. Cancer was the second leading cause of death then also but it was 4% lower than today. The average life expectancy was five years less. Looking back the 42 years to when I was 18, it seems that some things are worse and some things are improved and some things never change. Today our cell phones are more powerful computers than what the astronauts of the 70’s had on their spacecrafts. But human beings continue to struggle with relationships in their homes, with loneliness at different times in their lives, and with feelings of self doubt from time to time. People remain selfish deep down in their beings while some continue to try to resist those selfish urges more than others. People still get angry, they still cry and they still laugh. But clearly, love remains the constant that accompanies the constant of change.
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