By Tony Foote
As a kid, I was, what I consider to be fabulously lucky to grow up in the 1960s and ’70s in Christchurch. I was a baby of the ’50s, a child of the ’60s and a teenager in the ’70s. Life was pretty free and easy for kids back then, even though times were changing.
Hits and protest songs played all day on the transistor radio in the ’60s, the “flower power” years. We had a wringer washing machine, free milk, and apples in primary school to address hungry kids, until the mid 1960s.
We all rode bikes – without helmets or knee pads, there were no video games, computers or iPods and phone numbers only had five digits. There were coin-operated, ice cold Coca Cola fridges in garages.
There were school bullies. We played outside, had Matchbox cars and board games like ludo and snakes and ladders, and a Scalextric slot car set.
We got one of the first TVs. It only went for a few hours a day and was black and white. The Lucy Show and Casey Jones and the like were what we watched – fantastic, clean viewing. Our parents would not let us watch willy nilly!
We wandered everywhere in complete safety. There was a gasworks, and everything bustled. Friday night traffic was bedlam but little on the weekends because nothing was open.
There were anti-Vietnam war protests and casual racism was everywhere. A small number of hippies were about, scruffily dressed, dirty and smelling of weed.
Decimal conversion in 1967 caused recession! No-one had any money and there were quite a few bikie gangs.
SUMMER FUN
We kids went all over town – to the movies, the gardens, museum and all manner of places. Life rolled gloriously and innocently into the ’70s – the end of the flower power movement. The Vietnam war was still going on and I went off to intermediate school.
Music began changing – fewer protest songs and more commercial pop.
As teens, we lived near the beach and all the summer fun that came with it. We rode bikes, played ball in the street and wandered the sand hills. Ah, those long, hot, hazy summer holidays.
High School, school certificate, driver’s licence – in that order. School came and went. The usual bullies came and went and school life was awkward as we made our way through the minefields of growing up.
WORKING LIFE
Time to get a job. I bought a Morris Minor and got a job as a storeman. I worked through that summer, then found an apprenticeship as an engineer.
The oil shocks arrived causing carless days. I had a motorbike and a car. People had discovered credit. Pay was very low and you couldn’t really buy what you wanted without paying it off. Contact between teens was real, not virtual.
The Vietnam war finished in 1975. When our soldiers came home, they were spat on and called “baby killers”.
There were all kinds of drugs, booze and wild parties. ’70s music was great. I rode motorcycles all through the ’70s. Calculators and walkmans appeared, but still no computers, or “i” anythings! Most people smoked – it was considered cool.
Those decades were a little slower, with fewer toys, and we all felt a little more secure as kids, but not necessarily as adults. Same stuff, different time.
But were they better? In a few ways, maybe as a child, but the more you think about it, the more they seem no different than today.
There was something back there – something innocent – something with a real feel which is missed deeply by all of us who grew up back then. Was it good or bad? I have no idea. All I know is it was real and impossible to find again.