Yes - I thought "Love American Style" was awesome for awhile - Great American Hero, yanno?
I think this was the same time I was into "Fantasy Island" and "Love Boat".
As for after school, though...two things stand out....that candy bar and coke we got EVERY afternoon after school for 50 cents each before going home. There was a whole lineup starting with Gilligan's Island, but I'm spacing on what the rest was...Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, maybe?.
I guess I really did homework in the afternoon and watched TV at night - I was a big fan of all the detective shows - Hawaii-5-0, Barney Miller, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, Columbo, Miami Vice. I still think Max Gail is one of the sexiest men ever!
My Mom made us watch Dallas - Fri pm's I think - I always tried to have something else planned.
Yeah, I loved "Love American Style" too. How did that song go? "Love American style, here for the red, white and blue-ue-uue. Love American Style, it's for me and you". Is that right?
We always congregated outdoors after dark and played "Kick the can". Sometimes there were 15 or 20 of us playing. Or we would play "Ghost in the Graveyard" which was exactly the opposite of "Hide and go Seek". In Ghost in the Graveyard, one person would hide and everyone would go looking for him or her. Then, at some point, the "ghost" would pop out of nowhere and chase everone back to the base. If you were tagged, you were the ghost. We always played it in the dark, and often over at my house because we had a lot of trees and hiding places.
"Dark Shadows" always came on just as I was arriving home from school. Mom would would be watching it. Good old Barnabas Collins! Even when I was 6 or 7, I thought he was sexy wearing his dark cloak and carrying that cane. Mom also watched "Star Trek".
I spent many daylight hours after school doing homework (Mom was a former elementary teacher; lucky me) and if I finished in time, I would often head over across the street and play with my friends David, Tyler and Brad. We spent a lot of time building with Lego, Lincoln Logs or playing with our Hot Wheels tracks!
In high school, beer can collecting was popular, and I had a rather large collection of them. Sometimes we would go down into the woods and look for "cone top" beer cans, which were actually very valuable. Bike riding and skate boarding always filled in the gaps between beer can hunts, hot wheel races and games of Kick the Can.