#year: 1974

[inter-gal-actic]

joyce walker in willie dynamite (1974)

[queenie435]

[motownfiction]

bullied

Will’s not sure if Lucy knows that some of the other kids are bullying her.

He doesn’t know what her kindergarten class in Connecticut was like, but it had to be different, fancier, and smarter than first grade at St. Catherine’s. Most kids at St. Catherine’s still don’t understand that Jesus wasn’t Catholic. There’s no way they know what to do with someone like Lucy, who’s read more things at age seven than most of these kids will read before junior high.

The worst part is that Lucy talks about the things she reads.

And she talks about them like everyone else understands what she’s talking about.

Will isn’t put off by it, of course. He thinks everything Lucy does is fascinating. He may only be seven years old himself, but he’s never met anyone like her. Before she and her family moved in next door to Will and his family, Will was normal. He never thought about the art on the walls. But then Lucy came into his life and taught him about Matisse. He hasn’t stopped being able to see the impressions since.

It’s just that this one might be a bridge too far.

The school year is winding down faster than anyone can really believe, and it’s almost fun to play at recess when the sun is shining down on everyone. Lucy’s been reading Pride and Prejudice again, and Will’s been listening when they play on the swings together. He likes hearing the stories about Lydia running off with that Mr. Wick-whoever, about how Darcy is apparently a boy’s name, and about how Elizabeth always says what she means, even when she shouldn’t. Will notices how Lucy’s eyes sparkle when she talks about the book, and he wonders how he can get a sparkle like that for himself.

Lucy’s eyes really sparkle when she tells Will that she thinks they should make a play out of Pride and Prejudice, just for the kids in their class. After all, they loved that little Johnny Appleseed play they all had to do for the spring open house. Wouldn’t Pride and Prejudice be better?

Will is only seven years old, but he knows that most seven-year-old children don’t want to pretend to be nineteenth-century English bachelors. He’ll do it, of course. He’ll do anything for his friends, especially Lucy. But he might be the only one.

But, of course, Lucy has a plan. She’s never done anything by half, so she already has little scripts written out to give to the other kids in Ms. Cunningham’s class. She wrote them all by hand in her bizarre printing style where she can’t stay in the lines, so everything ends up looking a little like a word tornado. The other kids have been making fun of her for it all year, but Will thinks it’s pretty cool. He trained himself to read Lucy’s writing. He didn’t want her to think no one could understand her.

She hands the little scripts to the other kids on their way back into the building. She tells Robby Blair he’d make an excellent Mr. Wick-whatever, and she tells Nick Crosby that he’d do well as the Bennets’ cousin, Mr. Collins. As she says it, the boys turn to each other and laugh like ghouls. Will’s stomach turns itself inside out, and his dignity’s not even the one on the line.

He could just kill anybody who makes Lucy feel bad.

Robby Blair mutters something about needing to memorize his lines. Will looks at Lucy to see if she believes him, and somehow, she does. Once he and Crosby are out of earshot, Will tugs on Lucy’s hand.

“They just bullied you!” Will says.

“No, they didn’t,” Lucy says. “I don’t get bullied.”

“They were really mean.”

“They just said they needed to learn their lines.”

“But they’re never coming back! No one wants to be in your play!”

In that very second, Lucy’s eyes lose just a little bit of their sparkle.

And Will’s heart loses just a little bit of its joy.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I wanna be in your play.”

Lucy smiles very slowly, and Will is too young to understand why she’d be looking at him like that at a time like this.

“Do you wanna be Darcy?” she asks.

“Uh-huh.” And that’s the story of how a seven-year-old boy learned the phrase most ardently.

(part of @nosebleedclub july challenge -- day xvi! yes, i am still valiantly trying on this one)

[angiebowiearchive]

GO (1974)

[if you’re interested in translating this, feel free to drop me a message!]

[nostalgiaplayroom]

children’s motrin

[koffinyshlogginn]

Black Sabbath 1974

[nikidontsurf]

GEORGE HARRISON and PAUL McCARTNEY signing The Beatles dissolution papers at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, December 19 1974.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Geneva ‘74 50 years on: Michelotti Lem. The Laboratorio Elettrico Mobile has started as an idea by engineering journalist Gianni Rogliatti who proposed an electric car with wheels in a rhomboidal layout. Michelotti built the prototype using bonded aluminium with the centrally placed rear wheel driven by 48 Volt batteries. It was displayed 50 years ago at the 44th Geneva Motor Show

[sawsher]

Ma there's a weird fucking cat in the attic.

[punchhazard]

IT'S CHRISTMAS !!!!

[johnlennonyaoi]

this actually happened

[motownfiction]

gingham

Lucy is in love with her blue gingham dress.

She got it last year, in kindergarten, as an Easter present. The perfect spring dress that made her look just like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, which has been her favorite movie since she was two. Her parents bought her the dress because they knew she’d love it. They also bought it for her to break the news that they were moving away from Connecticut and into Michigan. In just four months, the Callaghans would leave home and make it somewhere else.

Lucy wasn’t sure how to feel. She didn’t have any friends at school, not really, so it wasn’t like she’d be leaving any of them behind. But at least she’d had a year of being in school with the same group of kids who didn’t like her. To think that in first grade, she’d have to start over with a whole new group of kids who won’t like her … she wasn’t thrilled about that. Besides, she was very attached to her room in Hartford. It had a seat in the window, perfect for reading, perfect for wondering what life would be like if she was Dorothy.

But four months later, she packed up that room and got in the moving van, bound for Detroit. Her parents swore up and down she’d love it there. Something about good music, square pizza, and better potato chips. Better something potato chips. Mom and Dad tried them when they were there for their campus visit, and they hadn’t been able to stop talking about them. Lucy didn’t listen much. She held her hands in the lap of her blue gingham dress and thought about how she’d survive a new place.

New place, she thought. Same weird Lucy.

She’s lived in Detroit for about three months now. The air is beginning to cool down, and people are starting to talk a little too much about Christmas. But Lucy’s feeling fine. As it turns out, she’s still weird, but there are some good kids in her class who are willing to overlook that. They’re a little weird, too.

They go to a Catholic school and wear uniforms, so no one really knows what anyone’s ordinary wardrobe looks like. Even when they have casual days, most kids end up wearing school shirts. Walking billboards, as Dad calls them when he drops Lucy off at school on casual mornings.

On the last casual dress day of the school year, Lucy decides to bend the word casual, just a little bit. She spots her blue gingham dress in the closet and wonders how long it’s been since she last wore it. Too long, probably. So, she puts it on and tells Mom she’s ready to go to school. Mom asks if she’s sure she wants to wear that. Lucy doesn’t know what that means, so she’s all too happy to say yes.

And then she gets to school.

And the kids start to make fun of her.

“Hey, Dorothy!” Kim Campbell taunts her from across the room. “Why don’t you go back to Kansas and stop bothering the rest of us?”

“Yeah, Dorothy,” Robby Blair adds. “Where’s Toto?”

Lucy swallows hard, not sure if she wants to cry or start punching people left and right. Before she can make a decision, Sadie – in all her seven-year-old glory – stands up and takes Lucy’s hand.

“I’m right here,” she says. “And we will go back to Kansas. To get away from you.”

At that moment, Lucy decides she’ll never have a better friend than Sadie. She squeezes her hand tightly and smiles, delicate as it may be.

“I probably shouldn’t have worn my hair in these braids,” she says. “I look like it’s Halloween.”

Sadie gently pulls on one of the braids and grins.

“I like ‘em,” she says. “Pretty.”

The bell rings, and everyone in class pretends like they’ve never been mean, never said a bad word about anyone’s clothes. Lucy smiles as she runs her hands down the front of her blue gingham dress.

It is pretty.

(part of @nosebleedclub july challenge -- day xxix. i’m getting there, and soon -- in september -- i’ll be finished with what i started)

[angiebowiearchive]

Birmingham Evening Mail (1974)

[christiangeistdorfer]

MICHÈLE MOUTON and her ALPINE-RENAULT A110, 1975

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Happy New Year! - Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve (1974)

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Geneva '74 50 years on: Ford Coins Concept by Ghia. Half a century ago the motor industry was ramping up to the 44th Geneva Motor Show. The Coins was designed by Tom Tjaarda as a projection of what a Ford Capri of 1994 might look like. Features included a central drivering position with seating for 3 and a single rear door.

"It cannot go into production," said a Ford spokesman ''but the Coins is a useful exercise to try out a number of advanced ideas and assess public reaction to them."