I was raised in the NY Metro area and was a freshman in high school in 1972. I remember using "cool" a lot. We also said "smokin'!" which was more emphatic than "cool." For brief moment "chilly" became popular. "Take a chill pill!" "Chill out!" Instead of telling someone to f**k themselves we'd tell them to "Sit and rotate." One thing to remember is that slanguage took a while to migrate around, caught on in some places, not in others. The media wasn't very inclined to promote youthful language, and there was no internet. Most of what we got was from FM radio, and those stations were still, at the time, relatively local. Just as an aside... Most of us listened to Allison Steele, "The night bird," who had the late-night show on WNEW FM in New York. I loved her voice and was very disappointed when I finally saw her picture; it destroyed my adolescent fantasies. (She was nice looking, but not the way I pictured her.) I remember one night when she put on a long track and must have fallen asleep on the couch; when the track ended we were all treated to about 15 minutes of needle scratching. As a personal observation, I miss the way that DJs used to actually do a mix of songs that flowed from one into the other, rather than just randomly playing songs off of an approved play list. Another story that might be fun... My church YPF (Young Peoples Fellowship) would do long weekend exchanges with other churches. We visited a parish in a town about an hour west of Boston. Every Saturday night the local kids would pile into cars and drive up the side of a mountain. Besides being an isolated party place where you could see the adults coming, they could also faintly get an AM radio station from NYC that broadcast the New Releases show; that way they could stay on top of music trends, most of the new stuff coming out of New York or LA radio stations.
11 yo in '72. Don't remember anyone actually saying it, but "Keep on Truckin' " was everywhere. T-shirts, posters, stickers. I still call people "man" if I'm not careful. We thought "Chuck you, Farley" was an incredibly witty insult, but that was probably local.
I was a teen back then in Amarillo. Second that though of watching Easy Rider. We didn't change that much. Also don't forget the tribbles of Texanized Spanish we use.
Slang has temporal, regional, and (sub)cultural components to it. So all those variables need to be addressed, when trying to use it as a set dressing in a story.
That said, I was reading my 1972 dairy the other night, and I did use the f-word to myself in its pages. But very rarely.
The term "to Bogart" had to do with how Humphrey Bogart smoked his cigarettes in his films--- or didn't. He'd just let them hang there. Oh, and "narc" was short for "narcotics agent" and was pronounced with a hard K on the end--- Nark. It kills me how it's become an abbreviation for narcissist. Is that pronounced "narss"? By 1974, in college, we definitely knew about cocaine. It was "coke" or "snow." I invited some of the girls on my wing into my room one evening to pass a joint or two around. We were mellowing out when one of them started snorting what she called snow. She shared it and others followed suit. "Try it, come on!" they urged me. Nope, nope, nope. Not in my nose, not in my room. I threw them all out. Found out later it was only powdered sugar, and they'd wanted to see what I'd do. I have no regrets.
I'd check out reruns of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In on YouTube. It's full of slang and pop culture references that became slang in the early '70s. As for Texas slang . . . my mom and stepfather moved the family to Houston in late May 1971, the end of my junior year. I returned north to finish high school in my midwestern city. By the time I made my duty visit to Houston the summer of '72, my younger brother had picked up some Texas terms. One of these was "Will ya pump mi?"--- pronounced about like that. It meant "Will you let me ride on your bike's handlebars?" I couldn't stand being there and thought it was one of the dumbest things ever. It may have been a Houston/SE Texas thing only. I don't know. Don't forget jokes about President Nixon, aka Tricky Dick. Watergate wasn't until June of '72, but even before that we had graffitti scrawled on the backs of our HS play scenery saying "Dick Nixon before he dicks you." Vietnam was still looming over us. When a guy in our class turned 18, we'd say, "Happy birthday, draft bait!"
Local where? It was common in my Midwestern city school. As for "Keep on Truckin'," we'd say, "Gotta truck now," as in, "Bye, I have to leave" all the time. A lot depended on how much of a Dead Head you were.
I have not thought of that expression in donkey's years, and yes, I heard it growing up in Texas. Which did you find objectionable: the phrase or the concept of riding on handlebars?
The fact it was Texan and my Missouri-raised brother had picked it up. I couldn't stand our stepfather and resented the fact he'd convinced my mom to move the family there. We had more fights over whether it was now my home or not. Though the pronunciation did nothing for me, either. Sorry. No intention to insult your childhood home.
No offense taken at all. I'm actually quite sympathetic. When we were uprooted and moved to California to follow my dad's job, I felt the same way about all things Californian.
The full(ish) story of "Keep on Truckin'" can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_On_Truckin%27_(comics) Since the comic was drawn in 1968, one assumes that the expression only became popular with the advent of all the rip-off merchandise. It was used at first as a marker, to identify one member of the freek subculture to another, but when all that merchandise hit the market, it became more of a marker of a wannabe in that culture. I was a member of that subculture at the time, and can attest to its metamorphosis.
Yeah, the movie Foul Play put the final nail in far out's coffin. Not my bag was still current, I think.
Reminds me of not so long ago when merchandise featuring a million variations of "Keep Calm and Carry on" flooded the market. I wanted one that said "Keep Calm and Stop Making New 'Keep Calm' Signs. It hasn't been clever for five years now!"
@Rzero mentioned a setting of a small town in Texas, so the phrases of "drugstore cowboy" and "rexall ranger" were being used at that time, along with "cowboy cadillac".
"Cowboy Cadillac" was used right up to the 1980s. (For those who don't know, it's a reference to station-wagon-based trucks like the Ford Ranchero or the Chevrolet El Camino. They were essentially station wagons with the rear section replaced by a truck bed. Because they were built on a beefed-up sedan platform, they drove like cars rather than trucks.)
"Rexall" being a popular drugstore chain. Their logo was the RX prescription symbol. RX-all. Are they still in business?
@Catrin Lewis, as a chain of drug stores in the US, no. Basically that ended in 1977 or so. There is a chain in Canada that sold out to McKesson a decade or so ago, and is still in business; this started as a separate business for Canada from the original US company. The name "Rexall" is used as a vitamin/supplement manufacturer but has no real relationship to the original concept.
Consider social strata. 'Posh' people would have their own terms.' Working class different of course. Hey man! Oh Boy! Don't be stupid! Yeh man! Be interested what you've come up with so far.
