Mrs. Teabody Says, "It's About Time. Again."

Every August  there comes a moment that lets us know that summer has entered its final phase and it's time to do everything we have back-burnered quickly before it's too late: wear that sundress, eat that fresh tomato, plan lunch with working friends before school starts, see the ocean and get some sand between our toes. Even though this will be the SIXTH August I haven't had to deal with the queasy gut that comes with the start of a new school year, there will probably never come an August that I don't recall a phone call out of the blue in August 1976 that changed my life forever. I was living solo in a tiny apartment in Carlisle -- working one full-time job and two part-time jobs, loving life and having a good time. It was the Bicentennial of 'merica and a year that  had its share of ups and downs just like this year is having forty years later. Stick with me and I'll show you EXACTLY how much August 1976 and August 2016 have in common.

In 1976 the Tall Ships sailed into harbors in Baltimore and New York City.

Lacking the panache of a road trip to Woodstock, nonetheless,  a few of my friends and I climbed inside our uncertain motor vehicles and headed to Baltimore to take in the spectacle of these elegant ships. Arriving on the wrong day, we missed everything. We missed the icing fiasco. We waited for hours and not one sail was raised. For all we could see, these were so many barges--really, really nice barges. Late in the day back home in a watering hole in Carlisle we watched (on a tiny little television) the unfurling of sails and the procession of majesty. So close. So far.

In 1976 an Earthquake in Tangshan, China killed 655,000* people.

"On July 28, 1976 the  Tangshan Earthquake caused unbelievable devastation. The earthquake came at a rather politically sensitive time during the late stages of the Cultural Revolution making accurate statistics especially difficult to find. The Tangshan earthquake killed 242,000 people according to official figures, but some sources estimate a death toll up to three times higher*. This would make it the deadliest earthquake in modern times, and the second or third deadliest in recorded history. It is worth noting that the population of Tangshan at the time the quake struck was estimated to be around 1.6 million and that most of Tangshan's city proper was flattened."  Try to wrap your head around devastation of this magnitude. The Weather Channel would have had fodder to scare folks with for decades. Imagine.

Gerald Ford was President of the United States but do you remember why? Vice President Gerald Ford became president in 1974 when for the first time in American history, a president -- Richard Nixon -- resigned. Nixon resigned as a result of the case known as Watergate which involved the cover-up of illegal activities. Illegal activities in politics  Hard to imagine, isn't it?

In 1976 a Tidal Wave in  the Philippines killed 5000 people.
MANILA, Philippines - Just after midnight on August 17, 1976 an 8.0 mag quake struck. What made the 1976 Moro Gulf Quake most devastating, however, was not just the degree of the earth shaking. With it came one of the most terrifying natural forces known to man: a tsunami. Just minutes after the earthquake struck, waves as high as nine meters reached the shore and inundated communities along the Moro Gulf leaving thousands displaced and missing.

My neighbor on West Street, Anna, an international studies student at Dickinson College, had returned early  to Carlisle for a special music seminar. She waited for nearly a week before learning that her brother  - - who was a Notre Dame student in a summer program in PI in the area hardest hit --  had survived. She played her piano and ate nothing but rice cooked in chicken broth and cried. It was devastating to watch her agonize. Even after learning her brother was safe, she could not shake her sorrow over the loss of life.

In 1976 the First Commercial Concorde Flights took off and transsexual Renee Richards was barred from competing in US Tennis Open. With the advent of Concorde flights boasting quick Atlantic Ocean hops, a true JetSet crowd emerged. One memorable rock concert featured performances in both London and New York. Everyone adored its sleek design. Concorde suspended operations in 2003 after three decades of success.
""Renee" Richards, who was born male, changed her name from Richard Raskind after her transformation and defiantly went on to take the court as a woman in the US Open. To do so, she had to win a legal battle against the United States Tennis Association, which sought to deny her the right to play under her chosen gender. When the association mandated chromosome tests for all female players, Richards refused." Imagine transgendering being a social issue of note.

Science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke had a few predictions for the future during an interview in 1976:
“We're going to get devices which will enable us to send much more information to our friends. They're going to be able to see us; we're going to see them, we're going to exchange pictorial information, graphical information, data, books, and so forth. The ideal communication device would be a high-definition TV screen with a typewriter keyboard, and through this, you can exchange any type of information. Send messages to your friends ... they can wait, and when they get up, they can see what messages have come in the night. You can call in through this any information you might want: airline flights, the price of things at the supermarket, books you've always wanted to read, news you've selectively chosen. The machine will hunt and bring all this to you, selectively." In April 1976 these two dudes below were only a couple of the folks helping to bring these "devices" into being.

Now let's get to the really important stuff of popular culture: In 1976 we listened to music like this:
Play a countdown medley of the top 25 songs of the year 1976

Music was, of course, "the fabric of our lives" long before cotton. The major part of our diversion was about which albums we bought and listened to, which songs our favorite local bands would be covering in clubs for dancing, which songs played in our cars while we drove from adventure to adventure. And what good is music and dancing if you don't have a fashion trend requiring you to break open your piggy bank?

In 1976 disco was firmly entrenched as a part of  the social scene and nobody but nobody could get through this life without owning at least one NikNik shirt. Mine looked like this:

The devices Arthur C. Clarke imagined make all this comparison of the summer of 1976 and the summer of 2016 a piece of cake. The long view always gives a perspective on the current state of affairs. Are things any different? Are things much worse? Or can we all take some small comfort in knowing that natural disasters always have happened and always will, that national celebrations will continue to mark the passage of time, that headlines will be made when politics get dirtier than usual and that innovation will always be there, percolating along? Perhaps Mrs. Teabody takes more comfort from this knowledge than most.

On Sunday August 14  I will make yet another sentimental journey to Carlisle -- the town I left 40 years ago to start the life that is now mine. While there I'll share drinks and dinner with a girlfriend I worked and played with four decades ago and we'll revel in past adventures and speculate about the future. As icing on the cake we will be ridiculously well entertained by a musician friend we've both known for  four decades. Just four blocks away from my old apartment on West Street I will sit in the company of like-minded, like-historied folk in a town we all shared back in the summer of 1976 - - a summer that was not altogether unlike the summer of  now.

•