Bowling Alley America: a Fond Memoir of the 1970s

Last updated on: July 11, 2011 at 2:34 pm by Matt Talbot

Bowling Alley America: a Fond Memoir of the 1970s 2011-07-11T14:34:31-05:00 Matt Talbot

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It has become almost reflexive in our society to use the 1970s as a sort of nadir of tasteless tackiness. You know the tropes; orange shag carpet, bell bottoms, velour upholstery, etc.

Here’s the thing, though.

The 1970s were the last decade where tastes were decided by the folks in the (then) broad middle of the income scale – because that was also the last decade when the middle class was big, rich, and healthy enough to have the lion’s share of the buying power.

It was the last great heyday of what I think of as Bowling-Alley (remember those?) America.

Bowling alleys.

Remember the scenery? Garish polyester shirts, bright orange plastic chairs, swoopy Jetsons architecture, carpet the color of bubblegum, glittery bowling balls, loud shoes, elaborate victory dances, Pepsi in plastic cups – all of it.

It was glorious.

The people pitching balls down the lanes were a big, wide swath of the American economic spectrum – maybe not the yachts-and-polo-ponies set, but everyone else was represented there on a Saturday night. Car mechanics, dentists, realtors, production line workers, landscape maintenance people, linemen for the power company, even the occasional university professor – all mixed together and laughing. Letting their hair down. At home with one another.

I also remember that anyone who gave the slightest indication that he might be putting on airs was swiftly informed in a million little ways that he just needed to get over himself.

The parking lot was full of American cars – big, garish, exuberant American cars in every metal-flaked color it was possible to make. Made by well-paid American labor.

The interiors of people’s houses could be, I admit, a touch…exuberant, let’s say.

But are today’s interiors really any better?

In certain respects, I would argue they are a good deal worse – suffocatingly conformist, mannered, hard surfaced, clinical and kind of sterile.

Go to any “high-end” housing development built in the last 20 years or so, and I bet you a million dollars that the kitchen will have a stainless-steel refrigerator, granite counters and a stove that, if it is not an actual Viking Range, is doing its very best to look “professional grade.”

The conceit being expressed there is that all that hardware is “necessary” because of all the Grand Entertaining that the owners are Important enough to need to put on.

Lighting throughout the house will be in the form of recessed cans and will look very “designed” and kind of theatrical – as if the house is a stage set. Sort of Potemkin Affluence.

The furniture will be in muted colors and completely and utterly non-challenging to any convention of “taste.”

All that cold granite, clinical stainless, and “artful” muted lighting makes these places remind me, frankly, of tombs – places where the homeowners buried their individuality out of fear of stepping even one degree away from what people in the Hamptons (their Betters, don’t you know) might approve of.

I remember when the aesthetic regime changed, early in the Reagan administration. Out went color and self-expression in our wardrobes, and in came Preppy conformity. (Think about that word, “Preppy”. The reference is to Preparatory School, and particularly the old eastern boarding high schools, where some of the most elite people on planet earth go. The library at Phillips Andover Academy is larger than many college libraries, and the yearly tuition is $41,300 – again, these are insanely elite people we’re talking about here.)

As the money flowed to the top due to the plutocrat-friendly tax and regulatory regime established by Reagan, so the taste-making began to be dominated by these few privileged folks also – the lion’s share of the buying power gains having been had by them ever since.

Bowling-alley America also had its flaws, for sure – plenty of them – absolutely everybody smoked, brawls were a regular feature at the local dive bar (and as I recall, more bars were dive-ish back in those days), those American cars were too often poorly made and gulped gas at an appalling rate, and much else.

But given a choice between exuberant, colorful self-expression and frigid, icy stainless “taste”? Give me orange shag, avocado green fridges and macrame any day – and give me back a broad and solid middle class that liked those things.

Matt Talbot

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