Years on the 7s #1: 1977

NPR's Morning Edition noted on Aug. 4 that this is the 40th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Department of Energy and it sent my mind back to the first year of the Carter Administration, which in retrospect turns out to be when my adult life kicked into high gear.

The Buffalo News has just started Gusto, the weekend entertainment mag, and I finally have the job I wanted as a full-time feature writer and critic.

Monica, whom I met the summer before, has graduated from UB and decides to get a flat with her girlfriends and stay in town.

I stop thinking about moving to California. Despite the Blizzard of '77 that January, it can't be any sweeter than Buffalo.

I have a Porsche 356c, a Honda 450 motorcycle, an orange VW Thing with the top down all summer, two pussycats – Emily and Becky – and that funky attic apartment on Auburn Avenue. Who could ask for anything more?

And there is more.

A water bed.

Grapefruit trees that grew from seeds in a bag of grapefruits I brought back from Florida after a trip south in the Porsche with good friend Barbara Rose a year earlier. Four of those trees still reach for the ceiling from pots in the former Features Department, now the IT Department, at The Buffalo News.

A landscaped front lawn at 562 Auburn Ave. which I created two years earlier, a novelty in those days before Buffalo developed a garden fetish.  

A secret gig with 97 Rock (WGRZ-FM) as a concert reviewer, prerecorded on the morning show, under an assumed name. I'm Dempster Bucks. At least until around the end of July, when the radio-TV writer on the rival paper, the Courier-Express, outs me in his column right after I write a piece for The News about departing program director John McGhan. The News suspends me without pay for a week as punishment, but keeps me writing for Gusto.

All my records and concert tickets for free. It's a great year for music. Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" is album of the year. Steely Dan's "Aja" appears. So does "Saturday Night Fever." Punk-rock/New Wave hits the mainstream. The Sex Pistols, the Clash, Talking Heads and Elvis Costello debut. But Rich Stadium concerts? Not so great as previous summers. Blue Oyster Cult with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Ted Nugent. Yes backed up by Bob Seger and J. Geils.