Photo Friday: I Want to Be Like Cliff Edition (1970's)

Good morning!

Have I got a whale of a Flickr find for you all this Photo Friday! As usual, I was trawling Flickriver for keywords like "dad 1976" and "birthday 1970" when this family album set on Flickr, and wow. Just wow. Spanning from the turn of the century to this year in various states of comprehensiveness, the Baron family makes me want to just live inside all their family snaps. Starting with the mother's Mary Pickford sausage curls as a pre-teen in the forties', flipping through pictures of family gatherings in vibrant Kodachrome in the fifties', watching toddlers grow into little men in the sixties'...yet I have to say, the best was yet to come when I clicked on the album laveled "seventies'". Please know that any comments I make regarding the awesomeness of this family are completely sincere-- I keep thinking, what wonderful, madcap little adventures they got into for the WHOLE OF THAT DECADE. To be young and sassy in the seventies'!

Don't believe me? Meet the three boys of the Baron family:

Let's talk about how an indie band of the present day would do well to look as carefully nonchalant as (L to R) Cliff, Craig, and Gary. Stick a guitar, a microphone, and a bass in each of their respective hands and you'd have a sensation on the dance floor at the Five Spot. The fact that the middle child, Cliff, is wearing both a double-breasted blazer and a look of contempt on his fair little face is particularly great, but tall Craig's striped pants with that two-button blazer is ALSO something to write home about. Aren't the colors in Craig's blazer and Gary's pants-and-tie such particularly seventies' colors? I wonder if someone will look back on 2013 some day and say "Oh, light lavender? Really, Mom? That color is so twenty-teens." Did you spy with your little eye the barkcloth drapes?

Now, this was a surprise. Speaking of indie bands, here's your album cover. From what I could piece together, it looks like the whole family participated in competitive roller skating in the seventies'. You heard me right. Not roller disco, or Boogie Wonderland kind of a thing, but as ice skating has its "ice dancing" iteration, so do these dedicated four-wheelers have both singles and pairs roller skating routines. I wish I knew what songs they did these elaborate, costumed performances to, or a video of the self same! There's picture after picture of each of the boys, and even the mom and dad, participating in various competitions, but it looks like Cliff is the star of the family when it comes to rink-prowess. There must be a dozen or so photos of him with similarly tween-aged girls as well as by himself, skating his heart out. I've never even heard of competitive roller skating outside of a disco setting, but isn't it neat to see!! 

If Cliff easily becomes to the star of the seventies' Baron boys album, it's not just because he can roller skate or stare sullenly in formal wear at the ever present snapping camera of family get togethers. But no! Cliff can also ride a unicycle, a feat I think I've only known one person in my life as being able to duplicate. Can you imagine the same parents who are being asked for special skate costumes and skate lessons coming up with a unicycle for a birthday present? These are supportive parents, no joke! The weirdest item like this Susan and I had when we were growing up that was a bright neon pink and green pogo stick neither of us could ever get the hang of (though by Godfrey, we tried enough times that we should have attained mastery level skills in the pogo department instead of just banged up elbows and knees for our troubles). Go, Cliff, go!

This living room set up looks so insistently seventies' that it's hard for me not to have a twinge of nostalgia for my grandparents' house, which boasted a similar, time-capsule look to some late seventies' redecoration that stayed well into the millennium. The crazy pattern curtains, wood paneling, the naugahyde barkalounger, the green couch with hand-made throw pillows...whatever the dad in the picture is wearing...but the point of this is that besides fashion, skating, and unicycling, Cliff can also play trumpet! Later, you see him in the uniform of the marching band. Incidentally, trumpet had to the be the best thing other than bass drum to play in marching band-- you get all the good parts! I was a five year floutist in a stationery, non-marching band setting, and all the trills and spills of the melody were consistently drowned out by awesome brass-section parts of the arrangements. Maybe most full-band arrangements for middle and high school are written by brass players, I don't know, but it hardly seemed fair!

Easily the coolest thing you could get for Christmas when you're like thirteen? A FREAKING MOTORCYCLE. I don't know if this is a motor bike, moped, whatever other two-wheeled beasts are out there on the open asphalt it could be, but what an impact! Doesn't Cliff look, just by dint of sitting on the non-moving motor machine's chassis, like a complete rock and roller? It seems you could become The Wild One era Brando, in one accessorizing move!

Last but not least, a parting glimpse of the handsome, male American Apparel model Cliff became at the end of the seventies'-- still on his motorcycle, clad in a Jaws t-shirt and looking like he rolled off the cover of a magazine! Aaaah!

If you like what I've highlighted of Cliff's place in the family album, check out ALL the albums on this user's Flickr page. I'm telling you, whoever the family photographer was had a streak of Avendon in him/her. Or maybe all the family members are just photogenic. Things got less handsome in the eighties', but good Lord, it was a hard decade for anyone. Understandable. And if this is your family, as always, thanks for letting me borrow some members of it for the weekly showcase!

So! What do you think? Have you heard of competitive roller skating? Have any family member who is outrageously multi-talented and good looking at the same time? Have any pictures of your family in the seventies' that just make you go "Was everything just cooler then? Or am I crazy?" Let's talk!

That's all for this week, but I'll see you right back here on Monday for more vintage mayhem. Have a great weekend, get lots of deals at the estate sales, and I'll see you on the other side! Til then.