Spirit of 77! and remembering the Walton Gang

This blog series is meant to commemorate and/or celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Portland Trail Blazers NBA Championship and in a smaller way, my high school graduation. For me they are forever connected. I’m using my latest painting, unveiled piece by piece, to help tell a story that played out exactly forty years ago this month. I used image transfer/collage technique to help go back to 1977. Have fun interpreting. 

#TBT Part one of five:  

“And time doesn’t wait for me, it keeps on rollin.” – Boston

I’m forever a Bend Lava Bear and 1977 is my high school graduation year. It may be remembered most as the year of Star Wars, but many other things happened in 1977. Elvis died. So did Bing, Groucho and Charlie Chaplin. Jimmy Carter was sworn in as our 39^th president and Alex Haley’s Roots became TV’s first blockbuster miniseries. Happy Days was the top rated TV show in America and the last episode of Mary Tyler Moore aired that spring. 1977 was also the year of the world’s worst airline disaster ever and Apple Computer incorporated. Over 76,000 saw Led Zeppelin in the Silverdome and alternative music’s The Clash and Sex Pistols released debut albums. Hit films Annie Hall, Good Bye Girl, Close Encounters, The Spy Who Loved Me, Smokey and the Bandit and Saturday Night Fever were released too, Mr. George Lucas!

    

“We all face a scarlet conclusion but we spend our life in a dream.” – Steve Miller Band

1977 is also the year the Portland Trail Blazers won the NBA Championship. Their unlikely journey paralleled my high school graduation experience which is why I consider it my personal graduation gift.

“Thunder always happens when it’s raining.” – Fleetwood Mac

My first memory of the Trailblazers were the player photos (Geoff Petrie, Sidney Wicks etc.) in the locker room at Pilot Butte Junior High.   Huddling by the AM radio listening to Bill Schonely was a nightly experience in the seventies, as few Blazer games were on TV and NEVER home games. Like all Blazer fans of a certain age, I grew up hearing “Rip City,” “Bingo, bango, bongo,” and “Lickety brindle.”  What does “Lickety brindle” even mean?  Rip City, Bingo Bango Bongo, Lickety Brindle

  

“Johnny come lately the new kid in town, everybody loves you - so don’t let them down.” – Eagles

The Trail Blazers were an expansion team (est. 1970) that finished last in the Western Conference their first four seasons.  There was no lottery in the seventies – they just flipped a coin (with the East’s last place team) and the loser picked second. Wicks, picked second in 1971 became rookie of the year. Portland picked LaRue Martin ahead of Bob McAdoo in 1972 and he became an immediate punchline. NBA Biggest Draft Busts       Embarrassed or frightened by the Martin fiasco, Portland traded their pick in 1973. In 1974 however, the Blazers won the toss to pick the greatest college star of the decade, Bill Walton. Walton made history when he scored a record 44 points for UCLA in the NCAA title game on 20-21 shooting!  He was billed as the next Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who had taken an expansion team to the NBA Championship in just his second season! After two seasons in Portland, Walton had played in less than 90 games and the Blazers were still losers.

 

Part two next Thursday.