Penthouse magazine
August 1976
It's August, 1976, and the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Let's take a look at the latest issue of Penthouse magazine.
At this time, the CB craze was in full swing, so along with the usual advertisements for cigarettes, we have ads for CB radios (including a 'pocket CB' that seems more than a little contrived), along with a feature profiling available brands of radios. The article also informed readers of the lingo of the CB culture, if you didn't already know from C. W. McCall's 1975 hit 'Convoy'.
(I don't know how many Americans under 60 years of age realize this, but in 1974, the federal government implemented the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which mandated a maximum speed of 55 mph on interstate highways. A major factor in the advent of the CB radio era was its ability to allow truckers to communicate information about highway speed traps set up by state police.) A portfolio features 20 year-old Colleen Carney, who has a fetching streak of gray hair in her tousled mane.An article about Ed Hanna, the mayor of Utica, New York, celebrates his maverick approach to politics. Sadly, contemporary Utica is a Rust Belt wasteland. So it all was for naught, back in '76.The Interview in this issue is with Princeton physicist Gerald K. O'Neill, who was well-known as an advocate for installing space stations at the 'L5' position in the combined orbits of the Earth and Moon. O'Neill's interview is a perfect example of how the most impractical ideas could be communicated with a Messianic fervor.A short story by one D. G. Bredes features a brilliant illustration, but the artist is uncredited.Terry Pastor is credited, for this great illustration for an article by 'Maggie M'.The Pet of the Month is a lithe redhead named Victoria Lynn Johnson, who had a role in the 1976 B-movie Grizzly.Only in the 70s could you not only sell Penthouse and Viva tee shirts in kids sizes, you could include kids in an advertisement for said tee shirts ! The 'erotic' pictorial in this issue eschews the usual lesbian theme in favor of heterosexuality. Perhaps it originally was intended for Viva.....?!And there you have it, a trip back into an era of simpler times, when a CB radio was the height of consumer electronics and the federal government's National Maximum Speed Law dictated a maximum of 55 mph on interstate highways (the Law was repealed in 1995).
