Ah, Valentine’s Day, when the scent of love, perfume, and chocolate are all in the air.
So it ever was, even in the dimly-remembered days of the 1970s, when a man could wear plaid bell-bottomed pants in public.
In 1974, on Feb 12 and 13, the pages of The Herald News bloomed with Valentine’s Day ads.
Let’s take a look.
Up on Pleasant Street, long a great neighborhood for love, Pleasant Drug offered a complete array of stuffed animals and chocolate and, if your valentine was trying to drop a size, you could buy him/her a box of “Barton’s Dietetic Chocolates.”
The word “dietetic,” meaning food suitable for people trying to lose weight, has almost vanished from the language, but it was a very lively word in the 1960s and 1970s. It generally meant “no sugar.”
Pleasant Drug was serious about romance, too. For just $1, they’d gift wrap anything you bought.
Adams Drug may also have been offering the dietetic food of love, but it wasn’t in their ad.
Adams Drug had locations in Fall River, Tiverton and Somerset. They sold all the classic Valentine’s Day items, from the ornately wrapped box of chocolates to the simple cardboard box of “Conversation Hearts.”
But…
Adams Drug offered a plush toy known as the “Hot Pants Droopy Dog,” which was, as the name says, a plush dog in hot pants.
Like “dietetic,” “hot pants” isn’t something people say anymore, but “hot pants” was alive in the 1970s. They were shorts, is what they were.
Or, you might have taken your special one out for a couple drinks, maybe some music. The Five Satins were playing Jason’s on Rt. 6 in Westport. Meanwhile, the Spi-Dells were playing the Cabaret, likewise on Route 6 in Westport. Either place would have been a good place to wear hot pants in 1974.
It wasn’t a very romantic time for movies, unless you wanted to take your lover to “Magnum Force,” “Walking Tall” or “Serpico,” a bouquet of death for the holiday.
When all else fails, remember that food is the food of love.
Bradford House, a restaurant in the Harbour Mall offered a different all-you-can-eat menu item every night of the week. On Valentine’s Day 1974, it was “Italiano Spaghetti,” $1.59 for all you wanted. You and your date could have done a Lady and the Tramp with the spaghetti.
Fortunately, Valentine’s Day didn’t fall on Monday that year when the special was all-you-can-eat liver.
Like “dietetic” and hot pants, the idea of liver as an entrée has taken a big hit in the last couple decades, but it was a staple food for a long time, even if few places considered it an all-you-can-eat sort of item.
Perhaps you’d have been better off at the York Steak House on Route 6 in Dartmouth, which promised the “Royal Flaming Desert” for just half-a-buck, no ingredients specified in the ad. The ad in The Herald News did assure you that the desert was, “Served in a most spectacular fashion.”
via GIPHY