Really Wierd

This is a separate blog site from HUMOR ME and it is about The Seventies, particularly my experience in the Seventies and how things have/have not changed.

The blog has its origin in a phone call with a high school buddy who I haven’t seen in at least 28 years. He was talking about our high school experience and he used a phrase that all of us Wheeler High School people use when describing something outside the norm: It was really weird.

The 70’s were a really weird time. Everything that happened in the 60’s seemed to bottomed out in the 70’s and we just had to deal with it.

On top of that, Wheeler High School experienced an explosion of growth because of ‘Yankees’ moving into the east part of Cobb County. So there we were, a bunch of Southerners having to deal with all of these Northerners whose parents all seemed like they made a lot more money than ours did.

This population explosion caused Wheeler to be on split sessions: the upper classmen went in the morning and the under classmen went in the afternoon. It was really weird.

I’m going to be commenting on everything I can remember about that time: music,movies,sports,and of course, growing up. It's not going to be a weekly blog, at least, I'm not planning on it to be. Just when the mood strikes me. But believe me, I will keep on truckin.

Now about the name: I was looking at one of my old yearbooks and noticed that the word "weird" was misspelled by several classmates ("Alan, although you're ugly and wierd, you're a nice guy and I hope I never see you again, but if I do, I hope you have that money you owe me. P.S: You smell"). Then I noticed on our alumni website some of the alumni would misspell "weird" in their postings. ("It has been really wierd being the only member of the class of '78 that has great-great grandchildren, but I can explain..."). I came to this conclusion: Wheeler High School students of the 70's cannot spell "weird".

While I’m at it, let’s review some other words and phrases from Wheeler circa ’76.

“Gah”: This is the way we swore back then. “Gah” could became a seven syllable word when spoken correctly. Many times it was “Oh Ge-ah”. It took me years to realize we were saying “God”. [One time me and some church friends of mine were playing softball with Dr. Ralph Swearngin, the current head of the Georgia High School Association. Ralph hit a huge drive into right field. My brother was playing right field and watched the ball sail over his head. My brother said, “Gah”. It was a word that always seemed to be appropriate}

“All get Out”: When something was fun, it was as fun as “all get out”. I don’t know where “get out” was, but it must have been fun.

“Rip Off”: This is a familiar term to everyone. I remember the first time I ever heard the term. I heard this kid say, “Man, what a rip off” and from that day in 1972, I heard “rip off” for years. Sometimes we’d shorted it to say, “Man what a rip”. It meant getting gypped or cheated.

“Home made Sin”: If a young lady of the opposite sex did not appeal to you, you said she was as “ugly as home made Sin” because everyone knows store bought sin looks much better. You didn’t hear much of this after the Northern Invasion except when a few of us natives were sitting around (of course, we were no prizes either, but that’s another story).

“Cool”: We used this word everyday. It is one of the few that has made it.

“Turkey”: If someone was acting stupid, we called that person a “turkey”. If we wanted to sound “cool” we called that person a “Jive Turkey” because a skinny black kid on TV said it.


I’m sure there will be some other phrases or terms I’ll have to stop and explain, but I hope you will enjoy my thoughts on the decade that saw me go from elementary school to college.