In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):
That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.
Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.
If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !
It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.
And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:
Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !
