When the Seventies turned to the Eighties, I was living at what my family calls the House on the Hill in Jenks, a suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma. At that location, hints at what the 80s would bring had already begun to manifest. Atari was appearing in neighbors’ homes, Reagan was knocking on the White House, Tom Brokaw was delivering the news, and The Empire Strikes Back was about to hit the theaters. The biggest takeaway to me was that elements of the 80s were already showing up in the last year of the 70s.
1979. The last year of the Seventies. The grime was beginning to be washed off by sleeker style: tight synthesizer music, fashion shifts, and the rise of the personal computer. Hair was still feathered. CHiPs, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels, Love Boat - all still going strong. Nike sneakers were starting to show up in force. To a child like me, the big change was the calendar year.
I felt a fascination with the fact that the third digit of the year was no longer going to be a 7 but instead, now an 8.
That was a marker. Life was changing in one small way but also a larger way. That 8 was big. That 8 was ushering in newness. It was now “the Eighties”. A new decade and, with it, a radically different world.
I like to think that the 80s manifested instantaneously and with fanfare, as if we knew how different (and amazing) the decade would be, but it was a hazy gradation from the old decade to the new. To me, the transition was a blur, at least in my memory. My recollection is more of oh yeah, that memory was from 1980. The eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s was the biggest news story as well as the Iran hostage crisis. For me, the 80s were largely experienced in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania and North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, but their mystic roots were in Jenks, Oklahoma. There was no midnight moment that ushered in the 80’s. And, for a child, how could it have been any different?