1/26/2024 0 Comments Bob seger night moves chordsYou had expected a scary and well-executed monster movie, but it was so much more. The film more than lived up to everything you had imagined in fact it exceeded all expectations. You almost passed out with anticipation on the way to finally see Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. You saw films there like John Milius’ Evel Kneivel with George Hamilton, Walking Tall Parts 1 and 2 with Joe Don Baker and Bo Svenson respectively, and Rolling Thunder with William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones.īut there was nothing quite like seeing the new movies you had previously only dreamt about when you came back home. The drive-ins were the place to see the low-budget exploitation and violent action films you all enjoyed (with the possible exception of Mom, who kept quiet about it). There were at least a dozen such cinematic wonderlands in the Fort Worth area, but the Belknap with its two-story tall street art depicting a buffalo kicking a football at the entrance remained the family favorite. No matter the household, the TV was always on in the evenings in the American 1970s.ĭrive-in movies had been a big part of family life before moving to Iran and the tradition was revived each visit home. Period family dramas like The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie also appealed to you and you also stayed up late for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, hoping to see your favorite stars including comedians like Rodney Dangerfield. The Brady Bunch had a similar essence, but lacked the groovy music. Traditional family values, hippy pop music, and lots of positive vibes in a nice neat package. You were fascinated by the undersea exploits of Jacques Cousteau and were also quite a fan of The Partridge Family the music was excellent, David Cassidy was cool, and you loved the way the show subverted hippy culture and presented the musical family as hip and slightly psychedelic but also clean, wholesome, and always loyal to one another. For pure escapism, there was The Six Million Dollar Man, the new Planet of the Apes TV series, reruns of Star Trek, The Rifleman, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie (Barbara Eden, you have seduced my soul…), My Favorite Martian, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, Batman, and The Carol Burnett Show. Network television taught you something of American diversity and inequality while making you laugh through episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (such a great cast of characters that three of them got their own spin-off series), All in the Family (Archie Bunker was brilliant, especially when he stuck it to his annoying bleeding heart pseudo-intellectual hippy son-in-law), Good Times (JJ was cool, Thelma was hot, and John Amos was a black version of your own father), The Jeffersons (the least socially conscious of the lot and probably the funniest), Maude (Adrienne Barbeau was your dreamgirl), Rhoda (and so was Valerie Harper), and Sanford & Son (while you loved Redd Foxx, you insisted that Demond Wilson was a great thespian and should be hailed as the Black Brando no one got the joke). Brooks, intelligent shows that tackled tough adult themes with barbed but humorous social criticism. You also enjoyed the golden age of socially conscious sitcoms produced by a combination of Norman Lear and James L. Only The Rockford Files with James Garner slightly deviated from this strict nomenclature. These included a half dozen gritty crime dramas and cop shows whose titles were always simply the detective protagonists’ names: Baretta (Robert Blake), Cannon (William Conrad), Colombo (Peter Falk), Kojak (Telly Savalas), and Starsky & Hutch (Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, who also had a hit song at the time). These trips also allowed you to pick up the latest comics, see movies you had only dreamed about, and catch up on your favorite television programs, many of which had still not been exported to Iran. Reuniting with your extended family was sheer joy as was the impossible comfort of you grandparents’ home. “Home,” the US, had attained a mythical status for you, a symbolic lost paradise that you feared might disappear in your absence or change into something unrecognizable. These returns were very exciting, ecstatic even. The long uncomfortable flight was often worth it because the movies that were played on the plane were much newer than the ones playing in Iran you were able to see films like All the President’s Men with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford and Three Days of the Condor with Redford and Faye Dunaway while they were still in theaters as you made your way back. You also traveled back home to Texas on two occasions. “When the world stops turning, Then I'm going back Home…”
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