Mom and the Wiener Man
The story opens with the narrator recalling the day his actual mother who doubled as his scout troop den mother arranged for the troupe to meet the Wiener Man and get a tour inside the Frankmobile, a cut-rate knockoff of the more famous Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Things go pretty much as planned except for one particularly unimaginable left turn:
“The Wiener Man stuck out his little arms as he approached her. He hugged my mother right there in the parking lot. A can of tomato sauce spilled out of the bag and rolled toward Grand Avenue. I wanted to chase it, but my legs wouldn't move. My mother reached around with one hand and clutched a fistful of the wiener suit. I felt like everyone at the mini-mall was staring straight at me, demanding an explanation.”
Those 70’s Shows
When it comes to real life incidents and activities, there was a TV show airing either in first-run or syndication during the 1970’s to meet every need for a reference. No matter what you were doing, there was something on television at the time to which it could be compared. Even sex, thanks to the loosening of censorship a little and in comparison to 1950s TV, a lot. Even a partly thrilling, partly terrifying not-quite-near-death experience in a car could be instantly summed up in imagery which led inexorably to pop culture allusion, usually of five word or less:
“Cockroach freaked out again and locked up the brakes. We spun out on the slick pavement, sliding sideways for the length of three houses. All four of us screamed at once as the force of the skid pitched us sideways in our seats, then forward, then back again, and we slammed, with an emphatic thunk, into a bank of curbside snow. It was a thrilling Starsky and Hutch maneuver.”
Cars
Actually, the cars don’t even require a reference to TV. References are made to a number of specific models of cars that are singularly associated with the decade in a way that their pervasive presence an example of irony unto it. The cars that define the decade for a certain age group are limited only to the cool: no Pintos, Novas, Gremlins or Pacers allowed. Instead, the imagery of automobile ownership gradually connects together to create a subliminal associated portraying the narrator and his friends as the essence of cool thanks to references to such iconic power players in the world of 1970’s cars as the Monte Carlo, the Firebird (red, no less!), the Plymouth Duster, a Lincoln Continental driven by a dumpy man in a suit, a Chevy Impala and a Pontiac GTO.
Prom: 1970’s Style
For fifty years, the suits worn by teenage guys to formal dance events barely registered a change. The tuxedos were black, the ties were bows and maybe—maybe, for the daring—you might risk wearing tails. The 1960’s allowed for the option of a white dinner jack, but that basically just simple cosmetics with no genuine evolution. And then came the 1970’s and, almost overnight, the entire process of picking out a tux for the prom actually required decision-making abilities and became an aesthetic statement that almost every teenage boy would come to regret profoundly:
“Dave Horvath and I went to Towne & Country Tuxedo to get ourselves outfitted for the senior prom. On his girlfriend's instructions, Dave chose a powder blue tuxedo to match his eyes. I selected a tan tux with lighter beige piping on the cuffs and lapels. The cummerbund, bow tie, and pointy shoes came in a color called eggshell.”
