8) The Rest Of The Seventies

Once I got back to Niagara Falls I got a job at Jenss, a large clothing store in what was then known as the Summit Park Mall. It involved general labor, vacuuming the carpet in the morning, unloading delivery trucks, polishing windows and mirrors and, taking out garbage. I worked there until I started at a local college, Niagara County Community College, In January, 1979.

I read quite a bit about England, since I could now relate to it by having been there. It is not really a big country, but I could see that the England I had been to was only a very tiny fraction of the whole country.

I plunged into weight lifting with a passion and also went with another trainee to join a karate school downtown. The thing that is so attractive about weight lifting is the time flexibility. If one joins something like a karate class, it is necessary to commit to being at that class at the appointed time. When one has a job and is attending school, that is often difficult. Weight lifting, in contrast, can be done anytime.

I bought the book "Inside Powerlifting" by Terry Todd and wondered how far I might be able to go with the weights. I read everything I could about different training routines and did all I could to improve mine. I lifted at home and at the college until the following summer, when I joined the YMCA downtown.

There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction in lifting a heavier weight than one has lifted previously. But I would absolutely never have anything to do with taking steroids.

I was going to study mainly photography in college. My father gave me an Olympus OM-1 camera to get me started. Rural Niagara County, outside of Niagara Falls, had a lot of old-fashioned barns and buildings from an earlier era. I would ride the bus to school, as I did not yet have my driver's license, but the ride was an opportunity to read or study.

The Love Canal dominated the news of Niagara Falls around this time. Entire blocks of nice homes, as well as a nearby housing project and a school, would have to be demolished because they were unsafe to live in. We did not live close enough to it to be in any way affected, but it was horrible. Many people who had lived in the area died prematurely.

There was bad news from England too. As I stated, the winter of 1978-79 became known as England's "Winter of Discontent". There were strikes all over the country over wages. Inflation was totally out of control. The Kinks made a song about it, "Superman".

Today, I am what one might term a Democrat or mild socialist in terms of politics. But I know very well the perils of leaning too far to the left and that is what happened in Britain with the Callaghan government. All it accomplished was to invite the Conservatives back into power. It happened in the U.S. as well, in 1979 inflation reached 13%.

There was more horrifying news toward the end of 1978. The name of Jim Jones is largely forgotten today. He was the leader of a cult called the People's Temple. In the jungle of Guyana, in northern South America, he set up a camp for his followers, who were mostly from the U.S.

It ended with more than nine hundred people drinking poison on Jones' command. It dominated the headlines of the news for days. If you really want to read more about it, you can do so online.

There was more music. A band named Boston really got my attention. Most notably with "Don't Look Back" and "Something About You".

When I got back to the U.S., I first heard about a band called The Cars. "Just What I Needed" always seemed to be on the radio. Their other songs include "My Best Friend's Girl", "Candy-O" and "Dangerous Type".

Blue Oyster Cult was back with "Godzilla".

There was "So Young, So Bad" by Starz.

Eric Clapton had a hit with "Watch Out For Lucy".

Then there was the disco classic of the autumn of 1978 "Do You Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart.

There were concerts, often in the Niagara Falls Convention Center or Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium but I was not a frequent concert-goer. The only concerts that I went to with widely-known bands were The Doobie Brothers and Styx. (I later learned that the Styx is the mythical river that one supposedly crosses to get into hell).

Suddenly, on the news, there was some of the most horrible scenes that the world has ever known. Cambodia, the small country just east of Vietnam, had been ruled for four years by a Communist faction known as the Khmer Rouge. They wanted to shut out all outside influences and make Cambodia, which they renamed Kampuchea, back into a primitive rice-growing society.

The Khmer Rouge forced the entire population out of urban areas and into camps in the countryside. The outside world know little of what was going on there. They simply killed anyone who would they thought would not fit in with this giant backward step. This included anyone was educated at all, anyone who spoke French (Cambodia's former colonial power) and, even anyone who wore eyeglasses.

The dead were dumped in areas that would later be known as "killing fields". There were many who were not killed by the Khmer Rouge but starved or died of disease. The final death toll has got to be at least a million people. It was like Jonestown multiplied by about a thousand.

The terrible ordeal ended only when the Khmer Rouge had a falling out with Vietnam. They began launching raids across the border and Vietnam responded with a military offensive that soon drove the Khmer Rouge from power, although they would wage a guerrilla war against the Vietnamese for some time.

Other news came from Iran. The country had been ruled for decades by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. His father ruled before him. This monarchy was referred to as the Peacock Throne and was supposedly the same monarchy as had ruled ancient Persia.

The Shah was an American ally and strove to modernize the country. But he was heavy-handed in ruling. He had a secret police force known as SAVAK. He outraged conservative Moslems, who detested him and the western influences that he allowed into the country.

The world would soon become very familiar with the title of Ayatollah, which is a Shiite religious leader in Iran. Back in the early Sixties, the Shah had jailed and then exiled one such troublesome leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He had spent years in exile in next-door Iraq, which also has a large Shiite Moslem population.

Khomeini became the defacto leader of the rebellion against the Shah from exile. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators swarmed the streets in the autumn of 1978. Many soldiers refused to fire on them. A theater that showed western movies was torched, killing many people.

The alarmed Shah pressured Iraq to force Khomeini out and he took up residence in a suburb of Paris, Neauphle-le-Chateau. Khomeini made extensive use of cassette tapes to record sermons, which were very popular in Iran.

The Shah finally made the decision to go into exile in Egypt, which was led by his friend Anwar Sadat. Khomeini returned to Tehran on an Air France jet to a grand welcome.

The Shah had left his prime minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, running the government. But Khomeini made it clear that no one running the country in the name of the Shah would be acceptable. Bakhtiar went into exile in France.

In other news Idi Amin, the well-known dictator of Uganda, was overthrown. The former country of Rhodesia became the new nation of Zimbabwe. Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party in Britain won the election for prime minister by promising to end the country's "Winter of Discontent". The Yugo, a car made in what was then Yugoslavia, became quite popular.

The United States first heard of a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island. There had been a dangerous meltdown and release of radiation there. Although it was minor in comparison with what would happen seven years later at Chernobyl.

I finally got my driver's license. There were places to go on a weekend night. There was a bar playing mostly disco dance music across the street from Niagara Falls Airport called The Aladdin. Sometimes, there was a band there. One that I liked was called Narrow Sparrow.

In a city near Niagara Falls called North Tonawanda, there was a street called Oliver Street. There were many, many bars on Oliver Street. The one I remember best from this era was The Bowery. Legend had it that there were so many bars on Oliver Street that no one had ever gone from one end of the street to the other, had a drink in every bar, and made it to the other end of the street.

Whether this legend is really true or whether it was invented by bar owners to drum up business, I don't know.

There was another bar, Daddy's, in downtown Niagara Falls. It would be so jam packed with people on weekends that it was virtually impossible to move. It was a large bar with only one single-file door and I don't know why the fire inspector didn't order it to be reconfigured or shut down, but it was very popular while it lasted.

There was soon more music. Sister Sledge sang "We Are Family".

Cheap Trick had "I Want You To Want Me".

There was "Living It Up (Friday Night)" by Bell And James.

"Ain't Love A Bitch" by Rod Stewart

"Superman" by Herbie Mann

"Good Timing" by the old Sixties band, The Beach Boys

A band called Peaches & Herb did "Shake Your Groove Thing" and "Reunited".

As always, I would periodically develop a fondness for older songs. Around this time, it was "I Saw Her Again Last Night" by the Mamas And Papas and that old favorite of mine, "The Rain, The Park And, Other Things" by The Cowsills.

Being able to drive meant expanding my horizons in our local area. I knew that there was a city to the east called Lockport and one day I drove there from the college just to see what it was like. Either driving or with others, I also saw the Southern Tier of western New York State for the first time, went along for a ride up into the Adirondack Mountains in the eastern part of the state and to an amusement park to the east, Darien Lake.

I had not gone to my own high school prom, but went the following year to the prom of the other high school in Niagara Falls.

After the spring semester of college ended, I got a job at a now-defunct department store known as King's. It was once a chain of stores across the eastern U.S. and was located where the Prime Outlets Mall is now. The store was being remodeled and much of the work was moving things around.

There was still more music. The summer of 1979 was the summer of Supertramp and their album "Breakfast In America". It included hits like "The Logical Song" and "Good-bye Stranger". I had joined the YMCA downtown and these songs always remind me of weight lifting.

Other songs that I liked were "Highway Song" by Blackfoot

"My Sharona" by The Knack

"Does Your Mother Know?" by ABBA

"Rebel, Rebel" by David Bowie

"Suspicions" by Eddie Rabbit was always on the radio

The Charlie Daniels Band sang "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". The following year the band would have another hit with "The Legend Of Wooley Swamp". And later, "Still In Saigon", a song about a Vietnam War veteran.

There was "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer

This was still the era of disco and Chic did a song called "Good Times".

In the autumn of 1979, I began a job at a restaurant in the Summit Park Mall called York Steak House. It was next to Jenss, where I had worked the year before. It was the first restaurant that I had worked in and I was not accustomed to the work at that time.

On November 4, 1979, news arrived that was unexpected to most people. A mob of Iranian students had overrun and seized the American embassy in Tehran and had taken the staff as hostages. They accused the embassy staff of spying and began referring to America as "The Great Satan". Mobs chanting "Death To America" and American flags burning became a staple of the evening news.

The embassy had been seized when the former Shah of Iran had arrived in New York City for cancer treatment. The militants wanted the Shah back to stand trial in Iran for abuses during his rule and stated that the hostages would be released when he was returned. It would drag on for 444 days and the Shah would die in exile long before it was over.

Around the same time that this was going on, the Sacred Mosque in Mecca was also seized by militants. This apparently had no connection to events in Iran at all. This event seems to have been largely forgotten today, but it went on for two weeks with many people held in the mosque against their will.

As always, there was more music. The autumn of 1979 had "Since You Been Gone" by Rainbow

"Are Friends Electric?" by Gary Numan

"Dream Police" by Cheap Trick

"The Pina Colada Song" By Rupert Holmes (also known as "Escape") was always on the radio

"Message In A Bottle" By The Police

"Rust Never Sleeps" by Neil Young

I also often listened to that old Sixties song "The Cheater" by Bob Kuban And The In-Men.

Just as the decade was about to end, some news arrived. This news set off a chain of events in the world that has not finished yet. On Christmas Eve, classes had finished at the college but it was open for a little bit of extra time to allow students to finish up assignments. I was in an art class. There was a radio playing.

Suddenly, the music was interrupted with a special announcement. The Soviet Union had launched an unexpected invasion of Afghanistan.