Born in 1974

If you were born in 1974, the story of your birth year ended with a president resigning from office on live television for the first time in history. Nixon's farewell—the raised arms, the helicopter lifting from the White House lawn—was one of those images that lodges in the national memory permanently. Gerald Ford's "Our long national nightmare is over" provided relief and also a kind of quiet melancholy.

Gas prices were still high, inflation was at twelve percent, and the economy was stagflating in ways that the textbooks said weren't possible. But the diners were still open, the radio was still playing, and Stevie Wonder's *Fulfillingness' First Finale* and Joni Mitchell's *Court and Spark* were albums that made the year worth inhabiting. "The Streak" by Ray Stevens was somehow the biggest pop hit of the year, which perhaps tells you something about the mood.

Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket and failed magnificently—the whole country watched. The Universal Product Code—the barcode—was used for the first time on a pack of Wrigley's gum in a Troy, Ohio supermarket. Mood rings hit the stores.

The citizens band radio craze was building, truckers giving each other handles and talking back and forth about Smokeys on the highway with a freedom that felt like a small democracy of the road.