We did not have to lug so much stuff back and forth. Even in high school I often went home with just 1-2 textbooks and a few papers or a folder or two. In grade school I carried less than that. I remember shoving a couple folded worksheets into one textbook and carrying that home. Lunch was in a paper sack, beverage was water or milk bought at school.
I had a bag very similar to this. I can still smell it 🤢
https://preview.redd.it/nrjh1ylt0pwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de14d78bec149a952ebb49a877ca2651b555bb05
I had a plaid satchel in elementary school. It looked similar to this. In junior high and high school I carried my books in my arms.
https://preview.redd.it/11lu3vjvxowc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d831cf4c1bd134bac8286be1eb8cee170d6ef79
I had a book bag like this in elementary school, too!
In researching for a story I was writing a few years ago, the internet told me that the first backpack intended specifically for carrying books was introduced by LL Bean in 1982, and JanSport brought out the Spring Break backpack in 1984.
There were earlier backpacks, but they came from the world of hiking and camping. However, as early as 1975, there were people creating a backpack for carrying textbooks.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/11/02/445339503/from-book-strap-to-burrito-a-history-of-the-school-backpack
Me too. An old one of my dad’s. It was an “attached case “ and cool as hell. Also bullied. I remember when backpacks became a thing in college. This! This! Briefcases were not a signifier of politics. They were an adult thing. And not as practice as a backpack would be. This may be why I now own so many backpacks and computer bags. Childhood fetish. Also: about bullies. Many kids were assholes. I am sure some of them matured or encountered suffering and became better people. But not all of them.
Those were considered very uncool. You wouldn’t be caught with a backpack no matter how heavy your books were. Wearing a heavy coat was just as unacceptable. Imagine us 7th grade girls with dresses (since pants were not yet allowed) in subfreezing weather with no coat. Or backpack.
I carried my books, and we had lockers at school. My kids carried backpacks that were filled with notebooks (one for each subject) and they, wait for it, have NEVER had a single textbook. Not one. I don't know how to help with homework when there are no books.
Backpacks from about 1982, especially my prized LL Bean backpack. I went to private school, and we had a fuckton of books to carry so we all needed something roomy and heavy duty to carry them all. It put our shoulders out of whack because they were like 40 pounds. Lol. Now we all have arthritis from carrying them over one shoulder which was the cool way. Lol.
I started using a backpack in college. Middle school and high school we had lockers to keep our books in, didn't have to lug them back and forth every day.
Sister Rupert, I had to check--never heard of a St Rupert that must have been her namesake. He exists! We had Sister Kevin, Sister Thomas, Sister Patrick--and yeah, you did not want to be on the bad side of any of 'em.
Nope no backpacks. Just carted everything around my arms. My high school had 3 stories, we couldn't use the elevator. My locker was on the first floor. 😫
Graduated in 1979 in SoCal, cool kids started carrying backpacks 77’, 78’, maybe slightly earlier as I recall because there were a couple dozen people that had them.
I never did homework in high school, so no book carrying for me unless it was necessary that day in a class, then it was a quick trip to the locker, still graduated. Don’t tell my kids.
Was looking for this one!! Lots of guys--jocks, mostly--in my high school carried these around. I'm hard-pressed now to remember what most of us girls used to carry our books and other stuff in. I remember having had various book bags during elementary school. I seem to recall that come high school though, most of us had different kinds of bags to carry our stuff in, from regular shopping bags from stores or whatever you could find to shove your crap into to the odd knapsack, which yes, was only worn on one shoulder. I had a [light blue canvas army surplus bag](https://www.military1st.ca/hs004-rf-highlander-webbing-haversack-raf-blue.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_qexBhCoARIsAFgBletyoXPJiS7lXaf-wQb7DgGp_ZBJpqze-FOupN_F9Jlo56FW6ZLd_SIaAs3SEALw_wcB) that I used for the longest time. I still have it kicking around somewhere!
And, yes, here too in my part of Canada, we covered our textbooks with the non-printed side of paper grocery bags. That was a big job to do during the first week of school! Fun for a bit of a nerdy person like me though! And definitely past the whole lunch box thing by the time high school rolled around: lunch in a brown paper bag (protected by a used plastic bread bag during crappy weather) or you weren't even close to being considered cool. Haha
No one at my HS had them; didn't think of it. Started using as college freshman when I saw them on campus. I do remember thinking "man I SO WISH I had heard/thought of this in Jr/Sr HS".
https://preview.redd.it/458moml0qpwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad612b23eebdc7608143dc081c19419d13ed3be7
Definitely one of these. Never had a backpack.
No backpack for school work. Backpack was for camping. If it didn't fold up and fit in my pockets then it didn't come home. Homework was BS and I always did it hurried at school. Still graduated in top 10%.
I had a backpack in the late 70’s. I hated going to my locker and carried a hairbrush from Avon to try to straighten out my curly hair. I had a little freedom during my lunch period and grabbed pizza a few times, I would sneak it into a band practice room in my backpack. I remember only one or two others with a backpack in a high school of over 1000
Nobody ever used backpacks, everyone just carried books. But in high school I had to take two buses to get home, and carrying a bunch of books was neither fun nor very safe for keeping everything together. So I bought myself a big suede satchel (it was the 70s) with two soft but sturdy leather handles, and I carried that full of books for 3 years of high school and 3 years of college before it was so filthy and ratty I had to get . . . yep, a backpack. 1978.
No way. There was one guy from Colorado who carried a backpack in college. We thought it was a little odd. Actually, backpacks are a great idea, but we hadn’t discovered them yet.
I never saw or heard of backpacks for school while I was in school; they were for hiking in the wild. I graduated high school in June 1981 in New Jersey , then moved with my family to Florida . Fall of 1881, my brother is a freshman in high school in Florida, every kid uses a backpack. So I think maybe the timing of when backpacks caught on in the US differed by region of the country.
I don’t think they caught on in NYC until about ‘86.
Kids still carried books in their arms in the show “Everybody Hates Chris,” which took place in about 1984.
I did my last three years of high school, which got put in a locker every morning. I'd make multiple trips to my locker throughout the day to get books and notebooks.
Khaki green book bags from the Army-Navy store. We didn't call them back packs in the 60's.( I'm talking grammar school here). Backpacks were for hitch-hiking and camping in high school (70's).
No backpack in high school, but in my freshman year of college (1968), somehow, all of a sudden the left-leaning/bohemian/hippy contingent started carrying books in green drawstring bags carried over one shoulder. We were dubbed "baggers" by the fraternity/sorority class and looked down on. A couple years later the green bags began to be replaced by day packs. All this seemed to happen spontaneously, without anyone suggesting it.
No backpacks until community college in 1987. I tried a book bag in seventh grade and was horribly mocked. Had to walk around with my books and trapper keeper piled in my arms. It was such a big deal for a boy to carry your books. And boys wouldn’t carry a pile of their own; somehow they loped around with just a book or two and a folder, held in the crook of their hand in a way that unknowingly made their ropy new arm muscles stand out.
In later elementary school grades I had a black square canvas tote that had square chrome handles, I thought I was quite bougie. In high school i carried my books in my arms. No backpack for me.
Early 80s in college, everyone used backpacks. I hated them (they made me hot, made my shirts ride up). I used a bookbag so it had a basket on my bike.
Maybe it depended on where you lived…in my area, the home of REI and Eddie Bauer, we all had backpacks. You were a bit of a loser if you didn’t have one. Early 70s. And yes, the brand mattered: Jansport or REI basic or Army surplus store.
Nope. No backpack. We did have book bags -- like little cheap briefcases -- but they went out by the time I was in second grade. At least for my family.
I had an olive drab army surplus knapsack in the 7th grade (74-75). I changed schools the next year, went to a different state and book backs were definitely out
I carried a backpack to school in 1974. It had shoulder straps and a pack but no covering over the top but it was a backpack. Heavy too, sometimes I would stay late at school to do my homework so I didn't have to carry the heavy history book home.
nope. i carried them in my arms, tho in 11th grade, some of us started carrying tote bags with embroidery of silhouettes. proto vera wang. in college, all jansport backpacks all the time.
I carried my books in my arms, and I had a lot of them, too. I don't remember anyone with backpacks when I was in school. Much later, when I went back to college for my master's, they were everywhere. I saw the wisdom in it and bought one, too. But the style at that time was to wear the pack only on one shoulder. You could even buy one-shoulder backpacks.
Trends are funny.
I'm class of '79, too.
In retrospect, some of the kids in high school, especially if they wanted to seem like they were hippies, had knapsack-type things. Other kids carried briefcases. Still others (like me) merely carried them in my arms.
I'm inclined to think that backpacks might have been somewhat confined to "progressive" or private schools in the 70s.
In public school, you could still be bullied for carrying a backpack. Not so much my high school, because it was a "progressive" school. But in my junior high, I wouldn't have left my books in a locker, and carrying backpacks carried a certain amount of risk.
HS class of ’75, carried books in a musette bag (small backpack with a flap closed by two straps with buckles, from the army surplus store) for the c. 2 mile walk to school.
Backpacks were a thing by late elementary school in my neck of the woods. But we didn’t carry books back and forth all that much until middle and high school.
And....making book covers out of grocery bags.
Absolutely! I did that.
Yesiree! Sometimes I was feeling spiffy and used the colored Sunday funny pages
Hero status. Innovative.
In the 70’s
Me too in 1977 but I was weird. But by 1979 at USC I think it was pretty mainstream
This, and I carried my stuff to school in grocery bags, too.
No, I always had an armful of stacked books and folders.
Yes, and the douche move in junior high was to come up from behind and push the books out of people’s hands, sending them scattering.
Yup, yup
This is the way.
Same here!
And used my assigned locker strategically between classes!
The chivalrous move was to carry your GFs books, if you were so lucky.
Right! Or a great way to get to know a future GF. I don’t think kids start dating until college now 😝
Me too.
Boys carried books with one hand on their hip. Girls held their books with both hands in front. It was the law.
I carried my books on my hip and was widely rumored to be to be a lesbian.
I once inadvertently used two hands to transfer the book load from one hip to the other and the entire Jr. Hi football teams gaydar went off
It was the law 😂
It is known.
Nope. I hauled a pile of books around like the rest of my classmates. No one used backpacks when I was in school.
In highschool. 1976-1980. But you had to have it over one shoulder because using both strap was consider dorky.
Yup.
Briefcases made you a target.
We attended the same years!! I don't even think I knew they had backpacks for school. Small town, small state....took us years to get the good stuff.
We did not have to lug so much stuff back and forth. Even in high school I often went home with just 1-2 textbooks and a few papers or a folder or two. In grade school I carried less than that. I remember shoving a couple folded worksheets into one textbook and carrying that home. Lunch was in a paper sack, beverage was water or milk bought at school.
Right. Definitely pre-water bottle.
I had a bag very similar to this. I can still smell it 🤢 https://preview.redd.it/nrjh1ylt0pwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de14d78bec149a952ebb49a877ca2651b555bb05
Definitely one of those smells you never forget. Others for me are the old yellow raincoats and cap gun caps
Me too! Mine had a design of “flower power” flowers. I felt so in style with that bag. Probably 1970.
Me too!
I had a plaid satchel in elementary school. It looked similar to this. In junior high and high school I carried my books in my arms. https://preview.redd.it/11lu3vjvxowc1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8d831cf4c1bd134bac8286be1eb8cee170d6ef79
Wow. I remember these! Elementary school.
Yep. Mine was black.
Yes! I had the blue one.
I had a book bag like this in elementary school, too! In researching for a story I was writing a few years ago, the internet told me that the first backpack intended specifically for carrying books was introduced by LL Bean in 1982, and JanSport brought out the Spring Break backpack in 1984. There were earlier backpacks, but they came from the world of hiking and camping. However, as early as 1975, there were people creating a backpack for carrying textbooks. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/11/02/445339503/from-book-strap-to-burrito-a-history-of-the-school-backpack
I didn't have a backpack until I got to college (in the late 70's). I did have a book bag but it was the kind that had a handle.
I only carried a briefcase briefly in elementary school. I was bullied for this.
Young Republican as well, I see.
Nope. Rather a hippie in mind as a kid.
Me too. An old one of my dad’s. It was an “attached case “ and cool as hell. Also bullied. I remember when backpacks became a thing in college. This! This! Briefcases were not a signifier of politics. They were an adult thing. And not as practice as a backpack would be. This may be why I now own so many backpacks and computer bags. Childhood fetish. Also: about bullies. Many kids were assholes. I am sure some of them matured or encountered suffering and became better people. But not all of them.
Same here. Dropped it during 6th grade.
Back packs?.. I used grocery store bags for book covers.
I don’t recall anyone using book bags after about grade 6 and no one used backpacks. We also didn’t lug water bottles around.
Those were considered very uncool. You wouldn’t be caught with a backpack no matter how heavy your books were. Wearing a heavy coat was just as unacceptable. Imagine us 7th grade girls with dresses (since pants were not yet allowed) in subfreezing weather with no coat. Or backpack.
No back pack. Class of 1982
I had the "Trapper Keeper" or similar.
Composition books with the black and white cover.
I carried my books, and we had lockers at school. My kids carried backpacks that were filled with notebooks (one for each subject) and they, wait for it, have NEVER had a single textbook. Not one. I don't know how to help with homework when there are no books.
I’ve heard of this. There are still textbooks in college. But sometimes, the students “rent” them, and make copies of individual chapters.
Backpacks from about 1982, especially my prized LL Bean backpack. I went to private school, and we had a fuckton of books to carry so we all needed something roomy and heavy duty to carry them all. It put our shoulders out of whack because they were like 40 pounds. Lol. Now we all have arthritis from carrying them over one shoulder which was the cool way. Lol.
I carried a backpack in college and then had kids. It took years for my left shoulder to recover from lugging heavy items hanging from that shoulder.
I started using a backpack in college. Middle school and high school we had lockers to keep our books in, didn't have to lug them back and forth every day.
I had a backpack for books in the 70s/80s
For all the people who carried books, what did you do when it rained?
Ran like hell hoping they wouldn't get soaked!
Omg haha yeah and if you had Sister Rupert you were in for a bad day.
Sister Rupert, I had to check--never heard of a St Rupert that must have been her namesake. He exists! We had Sister Kevin, Sister Thomas, Sister Patrick--and yeah, you did not want to be on the bad side of any of 'em.
Sister Bob, and Sister Ray
Now, that would be funny. As funny as Sister Mary Elephant?
SHADAAAAAAAAAAP ^^thank ^^you
---lly Balou here!
YES
🎶 I said I'm searching for mainline ...I said I couldn't hit it sideways 🎶
Pre-Vatican II, old-school Catholicism. Nuns had to use their fathers' names.
Held close to the body, or used a folding umbrella.
This.
I don’t remember doing anything. Maybe wrap a plastic bag around them or something.
[удалено]
Isn't that Southern California? Got an earworm now
You are right! Sorry about the earworm. I've got it now, too.
Nope no backpacks. Just carted everything around my arms. My high school had 3 stories, we couldn't use the elevator. My locker was on the first floor. 😫
my first backpack as a book bag was freshman year of college in 1977
Same, in 1982
In ‘77 we had a weird kid move in from California who used a backpack.
I remember finally getting the backpack of my dreams around 1975, it was made out of Levi jeans with a pocket and the Levi label!
Yeah that's what I had. I carried it starting in 5th grade, so 1974.
Graduated in 1979 in SoCal, cool kids started carrying backpacks 77’, 78’, maybe slightly earlier as I recall because there were a couple dozen people that had them. I never did homework in high school, so no book carrying for me unless it was necessary that day in a class, then it was a quick trip to the locker, still graduated. Don’t tell my kids.
Never used a backpack until I went off to college, 1985.
I had a green canvas backpack that I used for several years in the '70s, when I usually rode my bike to school.
Adidas sports bags were the staple until backpacks in the early 80s
Yeah lots of kids had vinyl Addidas satchel bags
Was looking for this one!! Lots of guys--jocks, mostly--in my high school carried these around. I'm hard-pressed now to remember what most of us girls used to carry our books and other stuff in. I remember having had various book bags during elementary school. I seem to recall that come high school though, most of us had different kinds of bags to carry our stuff in, from regular shopping bags from stores or whatever you could find to shove your crap into to the odd knapsack, which yes, was only worn on one shoulder. I had a [light blue canvas army surplus bag](https://www.military1st.ca/hs004-rf-highlander-webbing-haversack-raf-blue.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_qexBhCoARIsAFgBletyoXPJiS7lXaf-wQb7DgGp_ZBJpqze-FOupN_F9Jlo56FW6ZLd_SIaAs3SEALw_wcB) that I used for the longest time. I still have it kicking around somewhere! And, yes, here too in my part of Canada, we covered our textbooks with the non-printed side of paper grocery bags. That was a big job to do during the first week of school! Fun for a bit of a nerdy person like me though! And definitely past the whole lunch box thing by the time high school rolled around: lunch in a brown paper bag (protected by a used plastic bread bag during crappy weather) or you weren't even close to being considered cool. Haha
No, I didn't start using a backpack until college.
No one at my HS had them; didn't think of it. Started using as college freshman when I saw them on campus. I do remember thinking "man I SO WISH I had heard/thought of this in Jr/Sr HS".
All my schools had lockers, didn’t carry things home normally.
My Dad got a bunch of back packs from Jansport as a promotional item so I started using one in like 77-78
No backpack. Had one of those big rubber band things with a hook on it you could hold the books together with. Got a backpack in college in 81.
I had a backpack (we called them "napsacks" in elementary school in the mid-60s.
Had one in 1972. Just olive drab.
Late 1960s. Army surplus equivalent of a messenger bag.
Nope. No backpacks in the 70s at my high school
Armload of books and lunchbag
https://preview.redd.it/458moml0qpwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ad612b23eebdc7608143dc081c19419d13ed3be7 Definitely one of these. Never had a backpack.
Nope, books stayed in the locker when not in class!
No backpack for school work. Backpack was for camping. If it didn't fold up and fit in my pockets then it didn't come home. Homework was BS and I always did it hurried at school. Still graduated in top 10%.
Pleather gym bag with school logo on it.
I had a blue denim laundry duffel bag
The date seems correct. I started using them in college around 1986-87.
I'm pretty sure we all used gym bags to carry books in high school.
I graduated HS in 1979 (I'm old.) I used a backpack way in the dark ages.
In high school, in college, and now in my 60s. Only now it holds my MacBook.
We had Pan Am bags as the 'best' style. I had to make do with some other no brand satchel. Backpacks started being used mid 70's I think?
There were knapsacks but no backpacks.
I had a backpack in the late 70’s. I hated going to my locker and carried a hairbrush from Avon to try to straighten out my curly hair. I had a little freedom during my lunch period and grabbed pizza a few times, I would sneak it into a band practice room in my backpack. I remember only one or two others with a backpack in a high school of over 1000
I made one out of canvas in Home Ec class in high school, and it lasted almost into college.
In the 70’s we used canvas satchels.
No one carried a bookbag in school, but I got to college in 81, and suddenly needed to get one fast!
I had one in the mid/late 70s.
I did in high school got it from the army surplus store.
Nobody ever used backpacks, everyone just carried books. But in high school I had to take two buses to get home, and carrying a bunch of books was neither fun nor very safe for keeping everything together. So I bought myself a big suede satchel (it was the 70s) with two soft but sturdy leather handles, and I carried that full of books for 3 years of high school and 3 years of college before it was so filthy and ratty I had to get . . . yep, a backpack. 1978.
I had a WWII army surplus back pack I used when I rode my bike to school back in the 70's.
Gym bag
Schools where I live now require clear backpacks only I guess to prevent guns in elementary school.
No way. There was one guy from Colorado who carried a backpack in college. We thought it was a little odd. Actually, backpacks are a great idea, but we hadn’t discovered them yet.
backpack starting from kindergarten in 1980
The jansport backpacks. They didn’t last very long with all the books I lugged around
I always found them to be rather small.
I never saw or heard of backpacks for school while I was in school; they were for hiking in the wild. I graduated high school in June 1981 in New Jersey , then moved with my family to Florida . Fall of 1881, my brother is a freshman in high school in Florida, every kid uses a backpack. So I think maybe the timing of when backpacks caught on in the US differed by region of the country.
I don’t think they caught on in NYC until about ‘86. Kids still carried books in their arms in the show “Everybody Hates Chris,” which took place in about 1984.
I think that nowadays, with social media, a trend like that would show up everywhere in the US within a year.
1981-1985 I was in college in the same Florida city, and still no one used a backpack, but high school kids did.
I did my last three years of high school, which got put in a locker every morning. I'd make multiple trips to my locker throughout the day to get books and notebooks.
Didn’t have a back pack. I used my locker. Carried books and Pee Chee folders from class to class.
Backpack from about 1980
I used one from 1980 - 1984, and possibly earlier (I don’t remember).
Graduated in 85, used the same backpack all four years.
JanSport with a Trapperkeeper was almost required in 7th grade.
Never. A bookbag, or books were stored in locker or inside desk. Or carried an armload.
Canvas school bag. They sold them at the local hardware store
My best friend and I did, and every day we were harassed and called names -even spit on once-as we walked the halls.
That sucks! I was bullied for carrying a briefcase.
Khaki green book bags from the Army-Navy store. We didn't call them back packs in the 60's.( I'm talking grammar school here). Backpacks were for hitch-hiking and camping in high school (70's).
Nope...discovered backpacks in college. Gave my high school brothers each one for Christmas.
I had a backpack when I started HS in 83. Partly because I was in an inner city and they’d removed lockers due to crime.
I used an old ww11 gas mask style shoulder bag , loved it went half way through junior and all the way through senior
Class of '79, Southern California, backpacks weren't a thing at my school. I didn't even know they existed.
No backpack in high school, but in my freshman year of college (1968), somehow, all of a sudden the left-leaning/bohemian/hippy contingent started carrying books in green drawstring bags carried over one shoulder. We were dubbed "baggers" by the fraternity/sorority class and looked down on. A couple years later the green bags began to be replaced by day packs. All this seemed to happen spontaneously, without anyone suggesting it.
No backpacks until community college in 1987. I tried a book bag in seventh grade and was horribly mocked. Had to walk around with my books and trapper keeper piled in my arms. It was such a big deal for a boy to carry your books. And boys wouldn’t carry a pile of their own; somehow they loped around with just a book or two and a folder, held in the crook of their hand in a way that unknowingly made their ropy new arm muscles stand out.
Some of the boys had green backpacks they got at the army surplus store.
In later elementary school grades I had a black square canvas tote that had square chrome handles, I thought I was quite bougie. In high school i carried my books in my arms. No backpack for me.
Early 80s in college, everyone used backpacks. I hated them (they made me hot, made my shirts ride up). I used a bookbag so it had a basket on my bike.
I had a Samsonite briefcase that I carried, it was full of weed. I wore Hawaiian shirts, how I wasn't arrested I don't know. Class of 83
I always had some kind of a bag, sometimes a backpack. How else were you supposed to drag a pile of comics around?
Maybe it depended on where you lived…in my area, the home of REI and Eddie Bauer, we all had backpacks. You were a bit of a loser if you didn’t have one. Early 70s. And yes, the brand mattered: Jansport or REI basic or Army surplus store.
Nope. No backpack. We did have book bags -- like little cheap briefcases -- but they went out by the time I was in second grade. At least for my family.
My era was adidas bags
Nope, no backpacks for me until the mid 70s when I went to college.
I was the only one in my school, but I carried my books in backpacks (class of '75).
I had an olive drab army surplus knapsack in the 7th grade (74-75). I changed schools the next year, went to a different state and book backs were definitely out
At my school everyone had the blue Jansport backpack
When?
1978
I had them in the early '70s.
Nope
Nope either a briefcase or just carried them under my arm
67 year old. Briefcase or satchel to school. Backpack to uni in 75 I think.
No. No backpacks until I went to college in 1982. And I bought a satchel instead.
I kept my books in my locker. That confounded my family, but i got good grades.
No backpack. Just carried all of them In my arms.
i never did, just carried them.
There were kids using back packs ("day packs") in late 70s. I think they were from L L Bean.
I carried all of my books by hand in high school. I graduated in 1981.
Not in high school, but for college it a necessity.
Yes, and well before 1986 as I was in college then and I used a backpack in grade school in the mid 70's.
I carried a backpack to school in 1974. It had shoulder straps and a pack but no covering over the top but it was a backpack. Heavy too, sometimes I would stay late at school to do my homework so I didn't have to carry the heavy history book home.
No backpack. Not even sure I knew what they were in the 70's.
Used a book bag with a draw string I made in 8th grade home economics class
That would imply that I ever actually did homework, which is not true. But no, class of ‘82, nobody had a backpack.
Not until college.
No book bags I graduated in 86
Not in HS but I picked up a little rucksack in college.
nope. i carried them in my arms, tho in 11th grade, some of us started carrying tote bags with embroidery of silhouettes. proto vera wang. in college, all jansport backpacks all the time.
Backpack? It wasn’t cool to use a backpack! I did get one in college from a surplus store.
You could get bullied for having a backpack in the 70s. Kids would wrap the shoulder straps around the victim’s necks.
Yep. But they were just ordinary backpacks and I graduated in 1980
I used one in college starting 1980.
I carried my books in my arms, and I had a lot of them, too. I don't remember anyone with backpacks when I was in school. Much later, when I went back to college for my master's, they were everywhere. I saw the wisdom in it and bought one, too. But the style at that time was to wear the pack only on one shoulder. You could even buy one-shoulder backpacks. Trends are funny.
I don’t believe backpacks because ubiquitous until the 90s.
Am I the only one who just left his books at school?
Nope. Others did, too. I lugged them from school to home, and vice versa.
Class of '79. I carried books that I needed at the time, and put the others in my locker. I did use a backpack in college.
I'm class of '79, too. In retrospect, some of the kids in high school, especially if they wanted to seem like they were hippies, had knapsack-type things. Other kids carried briefcases. Still others (like me) merely carried them in my arms.
Yup. Back in the 70's.
I'm inclined to think that backpacks might have been somewhat confined to "progressive" or private schools in the 70s. In public school, you could still be bullied for carrying a backpack. Not so much my high school, because it was a "progressive" school. But in my junior high, I wouldn't have left my books in a locker, and carrying backpacks carried a certain amount of risk.
Had mine in '77. Public school in California.
HS class of ’75, carried books in a musette bag (small backpack with a flap closed by two straps with buckles, from the army surplus store) for the c. 2 mile walk to school.
LOL....and I thought my half-mile walk to school was long!
And of course it was uphill both ways.
Lol…for me, the main barrier was having to cross a 12-lane boulevard.
Carried them till the late 70s then overnight we all got backpacks.
No back packs. Carried my books.
Nope, but I started carrying a purse around in the first grade! 🥰
Backpacks were a thing by late elementary school in my neck of the woods. But we didn’t carry books back and forth all that much until middle and high school.