The Bicentennial celebration begins in earnest with the Steelers beating "America's Team" 21-17 in Superbowl X. Unfortunately it is also a presidential campaign year. The Pitt Panthers are elected #1 in college football.
My teacher traded in her Miss Levine moniker for Mrs. Walker. Politics isn't part of Mrs. Walker's lesson plan. I am frustrated because the kids in the 8th grade get to follow the presidential race, complete with campaigning. Some make signs that say "You'll be bored if you vote for Ford" and "You'll be smarter if you vote for Carter." It would be a couple of years before we find out how wrong they were.
It's a banner year in the world of computing. Seymour Cray builds his first supercomputer, the Cray-1, operating at an unheard of 138 million operations per second. Two days after my 8th birthday some dweebs named Jobs and Wozniak start a company named for a fruit. IBM releases its first laser printer. A white shirt is ruined by a toner spill the following week.
New York Nets defeat Denver Nuggets 4 games to 2 to take the American Basketball Association championship. The ABA is then absorbed by the National Basketball Association taking professional basketball one step closer to professional rassling status. My Cyclones also approach similar absurdity with a school history worst mens basketball record of 3-24.
Disco is polluting popular music. A new low is reached when a southern disc jockey records a joke of a song called "Disco Duck" and it becomes a hit. Also very popular is trucker music with C.W. McCall's "Convoy" hitting #1 for a week. Of course, we remember him better as the narrator of the Old Home Bread commercials. Everybody I know has a citizen's band radio installed in their vehicle and has adopted some ridiculous "handle." I am Little Blue, good buddy.
The first space shuttle is renamed Enterprise due to a lot of us vocal, nerdy kids demanding it. It is rolled out for the first time and makes a few test glides but never makes it into space. I am entranced. I am certain that I will be in space by the magical year of 2001.
Rick Monday, an outfielder for the Cubs, saves a U.S. flag from being burned by two a-holes at a baseball game at Dodger Stadium. Neither the Cubs nor the Dodgers make it to the world series (won by the Reds in a sweep over the Skankees).
Prime time television is still dominated by police and detective dramas and music variety shows. The best movie of the year was about a not too bright boxer whose most memorable line is "Adrian." When people (including my favorite hygienist) ask why I don't like dentists I always respond "is it safe?" - it's my way too subtle tribute to "Marathon Man."
In the fall I started third grade at the Modale campus. Our teacher was Mrs. Carrier who was frequently preoccupied by her husband's illness. She still strengthened my love of math by teaching us multiplication and division and also read to our class most of the Boxcar Children series of books.
1976 was a pretty benign year for me.
This post's title is a lyric from Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" which reached #9 on the Billboard charts in 1976.
Be safe.
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