It was the year of the good, the bad and the ugly. No, not Clint
Eastwood — Richard Nixon. Nixon
visited China a nation the U.S. pretended didn’t exist. Nixon ordered the
bombing of North Vietnam in 1972. And
then there was Watergate. Eleven Israeli
athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics. Alabama Governor George Wallace was shot. British
soldiers fired on Catholics in Londonderry, killing 13. Supreme Court called the
death penalty ‘cruel and unusual.” Prozac was born. Queen
Elizabeth sent her first email.
Atari introduced Pong, Wilt
Chamberlain scored his 30,000th point Arthur
Godfrey ended his 27 years in radio, John
and Yoko were issued deportation orders. The Oakland As won the World Series.
“Sanford & Son” debuted. So did MS magazine.
Democrats nominated George McGovern.
Henreich Böll
received the Nobel Prize for literature. Wallace
Stegner was awarded the Pulitzer for Angle
of Repose. The Day of The Jackal earned Frederick
Forsyth the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. While Richard Bach’s Jonathan
Living Seagull was the runaway best seller, it was the year Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins was published. We
were also reading The Winds of War by
Herman Wouk, The Word by Irving Wallace
and August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Academy
Award for Best Film went to The French
Connection. We watched The Godfather,
Cabaret, Deliverance and Last Tango in
Paris. In music, we loved “The First
Time I Ever Saw Your Face” by Roberta
Flack, “American Pie” by Don McLean,
“Without You” by Nillson, “Candyman,”
by Sammy Davis Jr. and “Lean On Me”
by Bill Withers. Gwyneth Paltrow, Shaquille O’Neal and Brad
Paisley were born. Many departed — Harry
S. Truman, J Edgar Hoover, Gil Hodges, Walter Winchell, Brian
Donlevy, George Sanders, Dan Blocker, Margaret Rutherford, Leo G.
Carroll, William Boyd (Hopalong
Cassidy), Oscar Levant, Jackie Robinson and Maurice Chevalier. If you were around, what were you doing
during this year of the water rat?
1 comment:
Gotta admit that I didn't love "The First Time Ever." I did love "American Pie," though.
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