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Group Writing: Winds from the ’70s
At our house, it seems that we’re throwing out the ’70s at the same time as I’m getting back some of my connections to the early ’70s.
A few days ago I had to admit (in “Iconic Men: Where Have We Gone Wrong“) that I once owned a pair of bell-bottom trousers. I occasionally wore them, even in public. One of the photos posted in the comments reminded me (though I didn’t say so at the time) that I had once owned an orange-plaid sports coat as well. It wasn’t one of those jackets with super-wide pointy lapels; just a sports jacket that I always wore with a tie, but still not something in which to appear in public outside the ’70s.
The bell-bottoms existed around the time our oldest was born, and maybe a year or two thereafter. Much of what happened in those days seems lost to me, to the point where I have wondered if those were wasted years in my life (except for our daughter’s birth, which was a major life-changing event for the good). But the memory of the bell-bottoms has brought some of it back.
My wife and I have also been cleaning stuff out. A couple of years ago I had a spell with my lower back which made me realize that in that state I wouldn’t be able to do the work necessary to keep up the rural farmhouse where we’ve lived the past 40 years, to say nothing of the outbuildings, lawn, etc. With the help of a little physical therapy, the immediate problem went away, but someday it may be necessary to move out, so ever since that episode we’ve been cleaning stuff out. A lot has accumulated since we moved in during the closing days of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, to say nothing of the stuff we had already accumulated during the previous decade. Some of it has gone to Habitat for Humanity or the Salvation Army, but there is a lot that just goes in the trash. Our life is now organized around Tuesdays when the trash needs to be put out by the road.
While planning this week’s trash strategy, with the bell-bottoms still on my mind, I peeked in the trash barrel in the garage and saw that Mrs. R had tossed a couple of LP albums. We had already gotten rid of most of those at a church rummage sale, but here in the barrel was Kids of the Kingdom in a worn-out cover. Later I went back and sneaked it out of the trash. (Not quite true, but I’ll explain later.) We don’t have an LP turntable, but I found the music on YouTube where I’ve been listening to some of the songs for the sake of memories of the early ’70s.
I’m not sure just how we used that album back then; whether we played it mostly for our daughter, or whether we used it in connection with church/school activities. My wife and I were both teachers in a Lutheran elementary school, so I’m sure that had something to do with it.
Wikipedia says that Annie Herring, the writer of most of the songs in that album, “is one of the pioneers of the Jesus music genre, later to be called Contemporary Christian music.”
That is a very serious accusation, and it may even be true. Just the same, I am willing to admit that we own(ed) the album, played the music and that it has some nostalgic value for me.
And besides, even though it and the “contemporary” genre are rather shallow, you can’t have deep water unless you have shallow water to go with it.
If that isn’t a ’70s type of saying, I don’t know what is. (And don’t get technical on me by bringing up bodies of deep water like the Ogallala Aquifer.)
That’s all I have to say.
Oh, wait! This is supposed to be about wind. Well, OK, there is also another album that I at first confused with this one, which gave me the idea that I had something to write about for this month’s topic. When I first poked my head in the trash I thought I saw Joy is Like the Rain, and that is what I thought I went back to rescue. In my mind, both albums are associated with the early ’70s because that’s when I encountered them, even though Joy first came out in the mid-60s. Kids of the Kingdom is music for young children, while Joy is Like the Rain is more in the folk genre, and IMO has a lot more staying power. And where there is folk music there are going to be songs about wind.
Yup, there is a wind blowing in the album, starting with the cover song that has, “…I saw Christ in wind and thunder; joy is tried by storm. Christ asleep within my boat, whipped by wind yet still afloat…”
The author, Sister Miriam Therese Winter, explained the backstory to those words in this YouTube video from 2013.
Speak to Me, Wind has perhaps the best harmonies and most puzzling theology, though maybe not so puzzling if you consider that Sister Miriam Therese Winter’s c.v. lists gigs as “Hartford Seminary Professor of Liturgy, Worship, Spirituality (from 1980) and Feminist Studies (from 1993).” Oh, wait. I forgot that she’s Catholic. Maybe it’s a reference to the Mother of Jesus. Whatever she meant, it’s good music.
And there is the chorus to Spirit of God: “Fill the earth, bring it to birth and blow where you will. Blow, blow, blow till I be, but the breath of the Spirit blowing in me.”
There is also A Long Road to Freedom, which does not have anything about wind, but which reminds me of the other item in the bottom of our trash barrel. Mrs. R finally threw out the LP that was made from the Lutheran Walther League convention in Squaw Valley, California, in 1965. “Walther League” is what most of the young people’s groups in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) used to be called. (You can google Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther, and see if his portrait isn’t a fitting symbol of American youth of the 1960s.) Busloads of young people from all over the U.S. made the trip to that convention, perhaps the most controversial such gatherings ever held because it had invited Pete Seeger to sing, as well as other people of questionable character and theology whose names I can’t remember. Seeger had been a communist, which among some of us had the sort of stigma that would be attached to you now if you had ever been in the presence of a white supremacist. There are a few pages on the internet about this gathering and its role in the controversies that roiled our denomination over the next several years. My family was among those not in favor. But when it turned out that I was going to marry a young woman who had actually been at that infamous event; maybe the closest thing the LCMS ever had to a Woodstock, though minus the drugs and sex if you don’t count the fact that a few people met their marriage partners at these events–they never seemed to hold it against her in the least.
Our marriage took place in the ’70s, too. We celebrated our 50th-anniversary last summer. Maybe I haven’t forgotten so much of the early ’70s as it had seemed.
Published in Group Writing
A lovely post. Happy anniversary, Reti. A great story.
I once owned this album too. It’s long gone now. I had forgotten about most of the songs except for A Long Road to Freedom, which came to mind during drives from Pittsburgh into Beaver County, passing through the town of Freedom.
This blast from the past is part of our Group Writing Series under the March 2021 theme: “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Stop by and sign up today!
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
I looked it up and don’t think we’ve ever been there, even though we have friends who live in Butler County. But in that hilly country it seems to us flatlanders that all roads are long roads.
I should not have said there is nothing about wind in that song, though. The chorus has, “…when you walk in love, with the wind on your wing…”
Lovely and sweet. Thanks.
50!!! Congratulations to you and Mrs Reticulator. That’s quite an achievement.
And I’m glad you rescued a few old LPs from the trash. I wasn’t so lucky. A few years ago my old catcher’s mitt, unknown to me, went out in the trash. That still stings. Ok…to be fair … it was stiff and dried out and a bit moldy, but still, I’d have liked the opportunity to say goodbye.
That is unfortunate. We try to be careful about throwing out each other’s things. I suppose it helps that there is only so much room in the trash each week. Last fall Mrs R found my baseball glove from high school days and asked whether I wanted to keep it. It’s now in the garage with some of my tools, though it in some future round of cleaning it will have to go. I last used it in the mid 90s but wasn’t able to find it 15 years ago when there was a post-doc from Japan at my workplace, which was the last time when there was any after-hours baseball or softball. I went out and took a few swings and also hit them some fly balls for fielding practice. They asked if I had a glove so I could join them. I would have been the oldest one out there, but I hadn’t seen my glove for a long time and didn’t think that at my age I should buy a new one.
My son and I used to play catch all the time. We painted marks 60’ 6” apart out on street in front of our house. He learned the basics of pitching out there. Those were good times. He lives on the opposite coast now, so we don’t often get the chance any more. Though I still keep two gloves and a ball out in the garage so that when he visits we can go outside and have a catch. And we do.