Saturday, May 29, 2021

1975

It was used to illustrate a little story on Page 1 about candy sales being down in the United States or something like that. I just think it's fun to think about candy and candy machines from 1975, and I thought you might find it fun, too. 

At the time, I'd've probably gone for the Baby Ruth or the Planters, but 2021 me really hopes 1975 me invests his 15 cents in a Bun, because I hadn't thought about a Bun in years!

Don't remember Big Shot.

52 comments:

  1. No surprise that the Wikipedia page on Bun Bars is fantastic.

    Turns out I can apparently buy a Bun at the Walmart in Hanson! I hope they have maple.

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    Replies
    1. My mother-in-law gave me a bunch of different candy for Christmas21, and I loved it all (I went especially crazy for Mallo Cups). But I still haven't had a Bun, and it's going straight to the top of my Christmas22 list!

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  2. The NBA draft is today, Thursday, May 29, 1975, and The Boston Globe has a little blurb on its agate page that readers can call 929-2860 after 2 p.m. to hear who took whom.

    Newspapers! Newspapers are the best!

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  3. The Atlanta Hawks have the first and third choices in the draft. The Globe says they are expected to take either David Thompson of North Carolina State or Marvin "The Human Eraser" Webster of Morgan State with the top pick. Indeed, the Hawks took Thompson. What a heartbreak it must've been for Hawks fans then when Thompson signed instead with the Denver Nuggets, who had selected him in the ABA draft.

    But, then, the Hawks got Webster, after all. With the second choice, the Los Angeles Lakers picked UCLA power forward David Meyers. Some people were saying that Meyers, in fact, was the most complete player in the draft (I heard Brett Musberger on those awful Bullets-Warriors games say some people were saying it); plus, Meyers was guy already known locally in Los Angeles at a time when the Lakers were struggling to draw fans. But, surely, the real reason the Lakers passed on Webster, a 7-foot-1 guy believed to be a rare defensive talent, had to be because Los Angeles already had it worked out to trade Meyers and three other guys in a couple of weeks to the Milwaukee Bucks for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, right? So, even though they're going to lose Thompson to the other league, at least Atlanta fans can take solace in knowing the Hawks are going to end up getting Webster, their reported-second-favorite pick, too.

    Except then Webster also signed with the ABA's Nuggets. Webster (and Thompson) helped Denver to the 1976-77 Midwest Division title in the Nuggets' first NBA season, and then he led the Seattle SuperSonics to the 1978-79 NBA championship. It was the Sonics' only championship in their team history, and it was Webster's only season in Seattle. The Sonics traded him to the New York Knicks, where he played parts of six seasons (but only parts because of hepatitis, which also had limited his rookie season in Denver).

    Rest in peace, Marvin "The Human Eraser" Webster, a native of Baltimore who, after making a particular mark on NBA history, lived in Metuchen, New Jersey, and died (apparently of coronary-artery disease) in 2009 in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hotel room at age 56.

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  4. With the last pick of the first round, the Bullets selected the University of Kentucky's second-all-time-leading scorer (at the time), Kevin Grevey. The 6-foot-5 native of Hamilton, Ohio, was a three-time, first-team All-Southeastern Conference forward who scored 34 in his last collegiate game, a loss to UCLA in the national final. With the Bullets, he's going to be particularly valuable at off guard--in 1977-78, Grevey is going to move into Phil Chenier's spot after a season-ending injury for the Bullet All-Star and average 15.5 points a game for the NBA champs.

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  5. With the next pick in the draft--the first of the second round--the Hawks took Bill Willoughby, a 6-foot-7 forward from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey. That one really hurts the Joe B. Hall and the Wildcats, as Willoughby had signed a national letter-of-intent to play at UK.

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  6. Those were two of the top sports stories in the Paducah Sun-Democrat of Friday, May 30, 1975. The other was an AP report of the automobile-accident death of Steve Prefontaine of Coos Bay, Oregon. It was only hours after he had run the second-fastest 5,000 meters in American history, at an NCAA Championships-preparation meet.

    In this report, the AP calls Prefontaine “America’s best distance running hope for the 1975 Olympics and one of this country’s most controversial amateur athletes.” Prefontaine ran for Team USA at Munich 1972, but he had grown increasingly vocal in his criticism of the U.S. system for amateur athletics. “To hell with love of country, I compete for myself,” the AP quoted Prefontaine of having said. “… People say I should be running for a gold medal and for the old red, white and blue and all that bull, but it’s not going to be that way. I’m the one who hade all the sacriices. Those are my American records, not the country’s.”

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    Replies
    1. Another of the top sports stories in the May 30 Sun-Democrat is what I meant to say, not "the other."

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  7. I've hardly been more enthralled with a movie in the theater than I was one about Steve Prefontaine, but I can honestly not remember it was 1997's Prefontaine starring Jared Leto or 1998's Without Limits starring Billy Crudup. I think it was the Leto version, but I've seen (and enjoyed) them both.

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  8. The lead sports story of the May 30 Sun-Democrat is local: Russ Cochran, a 16-year-old junior from Saint Mary’s High, won the KHSAA boys’ golf tournament Thursday. Cochran had to go to a sudden-death playoff against boys from Madisonville, Marion County and LaRue County highs and prevailed on the first hole by sinking a two-foot birdie putt at Anderson Golf Course in Fort Knox.

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  9. Cincinnati, Dayton, Georgia Tech, Memphis State, Saint Louis and South Carolina are in conversation to start a new college-basketball conference.

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  10. Updating a previous report ... Bun21: None--that I could locate, anyway, at the Hanson or Central City Walmarts, as of Monday.

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  11. Replies
    1. My favorite moment in any Password is when Allen Ludden senses that one team is just about to steal a point from a team that just missed. His words acquire a quicker staccato as he pivots with a sturdy point to the team with the new opportunity. He really had a sense for the game-show moment.

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    2. OK, these four really are Password all-stars. I don't know how this competition is going to come out, but here's how I would rank the contestants through two-thirds of the show:

      4. Hal Linden
      3. Bill Bixby
      2. Betty White
      1. Richard Dawson

      And Hal Linden is great. But these people are all just phenomenal, and Richard Dawson is next level.

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    3. OK, indeed, they have been accumulating points all week through this “grand master tournament,” and here are the current standings:

      1. Richard Dawson 143 points
      2. Bill Bixby 94
      3. Betty White 67
      4. Hal Linden 56

      I don’t know how they get points.

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  12. Brilliant. Hal Linden, a big-band singer and musical-theater star before Barney Miller, sings the clue "carriage" to the tune of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." And, of course, Richard Dawson jams home the alley-oop pass on "chariot." These people are all terrific. Terrific!

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  13. Betty White, never flustered, massages "census" out of Bill Bixby within 20 seconds.

    White: "Population ..."

    Bixby: "Go ahead ..."

    White: "Counting ..."

    Bixby: "Uh ..."

    White: "People ..."

    Bixby: "I know the word!"

    White: "Con- ..."

    Bixby: "CENSUS!"

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  14. And that's time! That Betty White/Bill Bixby exchange tightened things considerably, but, at the buzzer, it's still Richard Dawson for the win! Fantastic. Just fantastic. Gosh, I love television so much.

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  15. Ludden presents him with a decorative platter. Dawson wins $25,000 for the West Valley Center for Educational Therapy in the Canoga Park area of Los Angeles. He is crying and calls this his greatest moment other than the births of his two sons.

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  16. This episode aired Feb. 21, 1975. These are hard times for Password, per super Wikipedia:

    Beginning on July 15, 1974, several gimmicks were tried to boost ratings. ...

    On November 18 (after one final week of unknown content) the show ran an all-celebrity format called Password All-Stars. Although Goodson-Todman had success with celebrity-driven formats such as Match Game (which debuted in 1973) and Tattletales (which began earlier in the year) through the late 1970s, the lack of civilian contestants and significantly altered rules on Password drove more viewers away.

    On February 24, 1975, Goodson-Todman abandoned the format (but changed the contestant configuration in order to avoid another set redesign) in a last-ditch effort to save the program. Although Password was given another eighteen weeks, ABC had all but given up on the show. Aside from a week in which Betty White hosted while her husband played (March 24–28), no more gimmicks were attempted for the rest of the run.

    On June 27, 1975, four members of the show's staff played a "mock game" which filled some time after the final Lightning Round.[6] Mark Goodson then appeared to declare Ludden "Mr. Password" and mentioned that numerous elementary schoolteachers in the U.S. used the various editions of the Milton Bradley-packaged home game as a tool to teach their pupils English. Ludden and White then gave an emotional farewell. Password was replaced with Showoffs, which lasted six months.

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  17. At 7 on Channel 3 tonight in 1975, Richie wins the opportunity to escort Hollywood-starlet Cindy Shea to the Jefferson High victory dance. Then, at 7:30, HEATWAVE!

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  18. TV movies from this era tend to be terrific to work to, but here's the thing: I have to commit to the first five or 10 minutes. If I actually pay attention for that first, then I know the characters and the setup, and I can sort of let the murmur nurse me through two hours of corporate-comms death. If I don't lay that firm foundation, however, it's an annoying distraction.

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  19. So here's the deal: We're in some city, and it's really hot. A young couple is waking up sweaty in their apartment, as their window-unit air conditioner has gone on the fritz overnight. They are cranky after a poor night of rest.

    One issue I see right off the bat here is that they need better blinds on that big window to their bedroom--way, way, way too much morning light to wake up to. That'd drive me batty, as it is driving this guy batty.

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  20. Oh, my goodness, I couldn't watch this movie at all. My big nightmare all through the 1970's was that something would happen to the air conditioning.

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  21. This is a thoroughly modern couple--automatic razor, instant coffee, multiple telephones.

    Frank works at a brokerage. He drives a carpool of colleagues in his Volkswagen Beetle. He's being set up as a jerk--all wrapped up in his own discomfort, beaten down by pressures and forthcoming child and too prideful to appreciate graciousness of his wife, Laura, and her parents. Laura is, of course, great--strong, loyal and balanced.

    At just about 10 minutes of this video, we get a scene in a grocery store. And, as previously reported, I love TV and movie scenes in groceries. I'm going to enjoy this, and then I'm going to go quiet and dig into a project. Will advise as events warrant.

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  22. The Taylors' goldfish is dead!

    On a happier note, I got to see Banquet frozen dinners and Papercraft wrapping supplies in the grocery scene.

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  23. Well, the Taylors escaped the city for Laura's parents' mountain retreat. The baby came early, and Frank and a patchwork of acquaintances had to come together to contribute their gifts and talents to successfully construct a generator-powered incubator that saved the infant's life. The baby is thriving; the Taylors appear to be more thankful for each other than ever, and now it's raining! The heat wave (and HEATWAVE!) is over.

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  24. Our air conditioning was probably out for a total of something like eight days in the 1970's, and I think about those eight days all the time. In my mind, the average temperate in Paducah in the 1970's from June through August was about 96 degrees.

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  25. Turning to baseball, the Angels beat the Yankees last night, 5-3, and both Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor got a kick out of it.

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  26. Ralph Emery doesn't seem like such a bad guy. I wonder what Don Imus's deal with him was.

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  27. Ralph Emery relays Roger Miller's assessment of Faron Young: "He has a heart as big as his mouth."

    One learns a lot listening to The Ralph Emery Show.

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  28. Here are some of the listings for Tuesday, June 17, from The Sun-Democrat's Channel Selector for this week in 1975:

    -- At 7:30 on Channel 3, there's ABC's Tuesday Movie of the Week. In Hit Lady, "a woman's job as a professional artist is a cover for the murderous occupation she is forced to continue."

    -- At the same time, Channel 6 has a movie, The Dead Don't Die, in which "a man tries to prove his brother was wrongfully executed for murder."

    -- Hawaii Five-O and Barnaby Jones are up at 8 and 9 on Channel 12. "McGarrett dgis into a 33-year-old mystery when he links a Honolulu murder to a missing anthropologically valuable human fossil that disappeared in China shortly before Pearl Harbor." And, "A country-music singing star returns home to effect a reconciliation with her former husband but instead finds herself involved in a murder cover-up plot."

    Junk, junk, junk ... so much rage and hand-wringing over sex in American popular media so far in my life and basically none over our absolute fixation with murder ... I don't believe I will ever get that.

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