Happy 250th birthday to the USA with nostalgic Bicentennial Houston newspaper clippings

[Tory]

If the images aren't coming through in email, you can find this post here.

A little different-than-usual guest blog post from Oscar Slotboom. Happy milestone birthday, America! 🎂🎆🎇🎉

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While cleaning out my father's house a few years ago, I found some old newspapers including the July 4, 1976, Bicentennial editions of the Houston Post and Chronicle. I was a 9-year-old growing up in Sharpstown in 1976, and – from the perspective of a 9-year-old – the Bicentennial celebration was a very big deal. There were school events, community events (like the ubiqitous painted fire hydrants) and national events like the Freedom Train coming to Houston. I remember standing in a very long line at Union Station to walk through the Freedom Train, only to be disappointed. (Artifacts displayed were not targeted to kids.)

Recently I took a closer look at the newspapers and confirmed that the Bicentennial really was a very big deal at the time, with a vastly larger observance than USA 250. Old newspapers are always interesting time capsules, so on the occasion of USA250, I will take us on a flashback tour of Houston on July 4, 1976. This long post is intended to be sampled – scroll down and click any images of interest. Prices in today's money are shown (in parentheses) after 1976 values, adjusted by multiplying by 5.83.

In Houston there was a 60-boat flotilla from Kemah to Allen's Landing, which drew a large crowd downtown.

A large national event was the Bicentennnial Wagon Train, in which a pioneer-era horse-pulled wagon traveled from each state to meet at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania for a July 4 event featuring President Ford. According to the map in the publicity brochure, the Texas wagon departed Houston on January 4, 1976.

The newspapers had special features including a 64-page insert "Vignettes of American History" in the Chronicle featuring local business leaders each with a story from American history.

Appropriately, the vignette of the July 20, 1969, moon landing features Houston Astros president Sidney Schlenker and general manager Tal Smith, touting that the Astrodome was still the only indoor stadium in Major League Baseball.

This vignette features Mickey Gilley.

Six female business leaders appear in the feature, including none other than Candace Mossler! Apparently she was still a respected member of the business community even after the scandal in the 1960s. For those not familiar, Candace, married to wealthy Jacques Mossler and living in River Oaks, had an affair with her nephew Mel Powers. On discovering the affair, Jacques moved to Florida and was murdered in 1964. Candace and Mel Powers were accused and tried in a sensational 1966 trial with shockingly lurid testimony of their relationship. Both were acquitted, and both went on to become successful in business. However, Candace died of a drug overdose on October 26, 1976, just four months after appearing in this Bicentennial feature.

The Post included a 32-page insert "Japan Salutes America on its Bicentennial" featuring adverstisements of Japanese electronic companies and their latest products. A tidal wave of Japanese electronics was just starting to reach the United States.

Long Gone Attractions

Astroworld had a special Bicentennial celebration for 13 nights (each night featuring one of the 13 original colonies) from July 4 to 16, including a nightly parade, raising a huge flag 300 feet up the space needle and a "gigantic fireworks display" with "a spectacular finale three times larger then any Astroworld has ever displayed." Tickets were $7.50 ($43.73) for adults and $6.50 ($37.90) for children.

I remember visiting Sea Arama MarineWorld around this time. Tickets were $4.75 ($27.69) for adults and $3.50 ($20.41) for children.

Busch Gardens was gone by then end of 1972, but Busch Bird Park remained operational. To see a color video of yours truly visiting Busch Gardens in 1972, check out this YouTube video. (I'm the taller, slimmer kid, on the left in the train. The other kid is my brother.) At the end of the video I ride on the elephant! I actually had no recollection of riding an elephant until I found the 8mm film while cleaning my father's house.

Entertainment

Bad News Bears was a very big deal for kids in Houston in 1976 (and possibly older folks too). It was a rare movie filmed in Houston and featured a long climactic scene in the Astrodome, with filming also done at Bayland Park in Sharpstown, which was super-exciting for us kids who played Little League there. This movie section advertisement shows it was still playing in cinemas 13 weeks after its release in April.

The two views below are a double blast from the past: Ike and Tina Turner scheduled for cabaret-style shows at the Grand Ballroom of the Shamrock Hilton during their "Explosion" tour.

Their marriage was turbulent, and it's unclear if the concerts actually happened because on July 3, 1976, Tina fled from abusive Ike. She left the Statler Hotel in downtown Dallas while Ike was sleeping, fleeing on foot southward and crossing Interstate 30 to find refuge at the Ramada (now Lorenzo) just south of the freeway. She hid from Ike three days in an 11th-floor room which has been branded the "Escape" room. (1, 2)

This advertisement suggests the Shamrock Hotel still had plenty of activity in 1976, with the Theater Under the Stars having 8 weekly performances of Cabaret. This scan also includes an advertisment for Dunfey's Royal Coach Inn in Sharpstown, which was a large hotel with a traditional English facade resembling a castle. My main memory is that one of the kids on the block had a pool membership and I occasionally was his guest to use its large swimming pool. The hotel was demolished in the 1980s and is now Gilchrist Chevrolet.

This ad shows the concert lineup for a venue called the Million Dollar City Dump at 300 Westheimer. I had not heard of this 500-seat concert hall, which according to the news report had just begun a new program to present "big name rock music talent". I immediately noticed that Journey was scheduled, which in the article is described as a "jazz-rock band". Tickets where $6.25 ($36.44),

In October 1977 lead singer Steve Perry joined the band, transitioning it to a more commercial sound that propelled it to huge success. In 1981 Journey reached its peak popularity with the Escape album. In November 1981 the Escape tour came to the Summit. One of the shows was filmed for MTV and the excellent video is available on YouTube. The Escape concert was the first concert I attended.

James Taylor performed at the Summit on July 4 with tickets costing $6.50 ($37.90) and $7.50 ($43.73).

This scan from the Chronicle shows four Country & Western themed clubs. Gilley's, Fools Gold and The Winchester all featured a "BEER BUST" on certain nights. I had never heard that term, so it had fallen into disuse by the time I paid attention to beer in the late 1980s.

Advertisements

1976 was probably the peak year for leisure suits. What says style better than a $14.88 ($86.75) leisure suit purchased at K-mart?

If you really wanted to impress, you could buy the $29.95 ($175) Haband leisure suit featured in the Parade magazine of the Houston Post.

The 1975 song Convoy by C.W. McCall was hugely popular with kids in Sharpstown. Citizen band (CB) radios were part of the convoy culture. This advertisement shows a CB radio on sale at K-mart for $128.88 ($751).

I remember many Continental Airlines advertising campaigns of the 1980s, including "If you could see us now, we'd like to take a bow" (to the music of "If My Friends Could See Me Now") and (in the 1980s) "I love New York" to promote the Newark hub. But I don't remember the 1976 slogan "We really move our tail for you". (LOL!)

The $9.53 ($57.32) nightly hotel price is super low by modern Hawaii standards, but the airfares $432.66, $397.71 ($2522, $2319) are high by today's standards, as United shows fares from $946 to $1092 for July (as of June 11).

With televisions being incredibly cheap these days (as low as $100 for a 40"), many people may not realize how expensive televisions were in the 1970s. A 19" Zenith color television promoted as a "Great Value Big Screen" cost $378.88, a shocking $2,209 in today's money.

Calculators were a rapidly expanding product in the mid-1970s. They were very expensive by today's standards, with a scientific calculator costing $49.95 ($291). I don't remember the Commodore brand of calculators. Commodore shifted focus to computers in January 1977 with the introduction of the PET computer, and Texas Instruments dominated the calculator market afterward. I remember a few kids in the neighborhood had calculators around this time – the kids with free-spending parents.

In the 1970s I remember that steel-belted radial tires was new technology which was heavily promoted, both in print and television. Radial tires were developed by Michelin in the 1960s and the introduction to the United States was very disruptive to the industry. Radials dramatically increased tire life, reducing demand for tires. Reduced demand combined with slow adoption by American manufacturers turned the American tire industry into wreckage, with only Goodyear remaining independent by 1988. Radials were more expensive than "polyesters", with a 78-14 steel-belted radial costing $36.88 ($215) and a 78-14 polyester costing $20.88 ($122). The Globe advertisement for $34.50 per tire ($201) spotlighted "Double Belted".

Personality and Politics

Richard Minns was well known in Houston for his success in the health club industry with Presidents-First Lady Spa. He was a publicity hound, and this Post article describes a stunt planned for September 1976, a "face off in a death battle with a Great White Shark" in American Samoa.

Six months after this article was published he met Barbra Piotrowski on an Aspen ski slope, and a 1994 article reports, "Back in the ‘70s, the millionaire and his young girlfriend were a glamorous presence on the Houston social scene." But the relationship became very turbulent and on October 20, 1980, there was a murder attempt on Piotrowski at a donut shop in Sharpstown at the corner of Beechnut and Gessner, close to my childhood home. Piotrowski accused Minns of orchestrating the murder attempt, but Minns was never charged. Minns fled the United States in 1981 and was arrested at LAX airport in 1994 on other charges.

The article reports Minn's office was at 7255 Clarewood. The building has been abandoned and dilapidated for years.

In 1976 the Republican Party was in a dire situation after the fallout from the Watergate scandal. This news section front-page Post article reports that Republicans held only 38 of 100 Senate seats and 145 of 435 House seats. It appears reporters were already liberally biased in 1976, as the article talks about a possible "death knell for the Grand Old Party, relegating it to the scrap heap of history", and that the 1980 reapportionment "could doom the GOP, should it survive that long, to perpetual minority status." Of course we all know what happened just four years later. In response to the malaise of the Jimmy Carter presidency and rampant inflation, voters delivered a massive victory to Ronald Reagan with 489 Electoral College votes to Carter's 49 and 50.7% of the popular vote to Carter's 41.0%, ushering in 28 years of conservative presidents (counting Clinton as a conservative).

Housing Developments in Houston

Many signature neighborhoods of suburban Houston were in the homebuilding phase in 1976, including the Woodlands, Kingwood and many in the FM 1960 corridor. Below is a collection of photos of full-page advertisments for these communities. If you apply the CPI inflation factor of 5.83 to these home prices, they are amazingly affordable. For example starter homes were in the range of $30,000 ($175,000) to $35,000 ($204,000), and larger homes in prestigious neighborhoods like Kingwood were priced in the range from $50,000 ($292,000) to $60,000 ($350,000). But mortgage interest rates were high by modern standards, 8.93% in July 1976.

The Woodlands had a huge Bicentennial celebration to bring potential homebuyers to the neighborhood. Bicentennial events included Revolutionary War themed events, a Smithsonian exhibit, the play "Star Spangled Girl", a "beautiful baby contest" and of course fireworks.

Perry Homes offered homes between $49,800 ($290,000) and $57,600 ($336,000) in Kingwood, making the dubious claim of a "location close to downtown".

The FM 1960 corridor was the most popular area for home construction. Images below show Ponderosa Forest (featuring recently deceased homebuilder Vincent Kickerillo), Lakewood Forest, Prestonwood Forest, Wimbledon Estates and the most expensive neighborhood Greenwood Forest (maybe because it is closer to Houston?)

Back in 1976 the roads serving the FM 1960 communities were very primitive. Beltway 8 (Sam Houston Tollway) did not exist, FM 149 (now the SH 249 Freeway) was a two-lane country road, and FM 1960 was a four-lane undivided (and 50 years later remains a nightmare to drive). The Wimbledon Estates ad claims "23 minutes to downtown Houston". LOL! - maybe on Sunday Morning!

The Houston Post included a 1971 map (5 years out of date) with new home communities identified and future freeways indicated by dashed lines. The map shows the precursor of the Fort Bend Parkway labeled as the Bay City Freeway.

The images below show advertisements for starter homes, starting as low as $27,750 ($162,000) but mostly in the $30,000 to $35,000 range, which is very affordable by today's standards. As the Wood Bros. Homes ad says, "prices young families can afford".

Job Listings

If you are wondering what jobs paid in 1976, expand the following screenshots from the job listing section of the Houston Chronicle. It shows that professional jobs for experienced candidates made between $18,000 ($105,000) and $30,000 ($175,000) per year. Mechanics at Don McMillian Ford (10333 Katy Freeway) were paid $8 ($46.64) per hour.

In the 1970s I remember stories about people working offshore energy industry jobs to receive very lucrative salaries. This advertisement for Alaska Overseas Inc. says that top-paying blue-collar jobs paid between $45,000 ($262,000) and $65,000 ($379,000). Yes, very lucrative!

Predictions

The Post included a special section with predictions for year 2076. Long-term predictions are often laughably wrong, but halfway to 2076, predictions by two local professors were surprisingly priescient.

Electrical Engineering professor Thomas Rabson at Rice University predicted that energy sources will be slow to transition from oil and gas, and fusion still will not be practical in 2076, which is true today and will probably be true in 50 years. There are many fusion startups but most (or all) are pushing back timelines (as usual for fusion) or switching to other business opportunities. This article also talks about solar energy, hydrogen and superconductors.

Professor Jib Fowles at the University of Houston Clear Lake accurately predicted the decline of marriage, the Silicon Valley work ethic and the rise of artificial intelligence. He predicts a utopia-like distant future where machines do most work, leaving humans with plenty of time for leisure and eventually infinite longevity for humans. While he did not predict social networking and social media, he said people would become less dependent on traditional human company. He was an optimist about technology improving people's lives, like Elon Musk is today.

Architect Robert Rasbach predicted a future of decentralized and electronically connected communities. Some of this happened after Covid. Another architect predicted "prefabricated units are the answer to high cost housing", as if the cost of housing was high in the 1970s!

In 1976, the technologies which would transform many aspects society in the next 50 years were nascent, or still laboratory curiosities. The internet, cell phones, fiber optic communication, personal computers, Moore's Law for semiconductors and digital media were all poised to define the next 50 years. For Houston, horizontal drilling and fracking were the most influential technologies. Younger readers of this blog can expect to live long enough to see the Tricentennial in 2076. There's sure to be plenty of excitement and surprises between now and 2076!