when I was fourteen years old

I've seen two movies, both true stories, set in the early 1970's.
The first was "Battle Of The Sexes", based on the true tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The beginning of the hoopla was in early 1972, when I was only fourteen years old. By the time of the actual game, on September 20, 1973, I was fifteen and starting the tenth grade. I was familiar with the events, of course: this match between the woman and man was to validate equal rights and equal pay for women and men, not only in sports, but in all walks of life.
Not a lot changed, though. Women doing the same work as men are still paid far less.
The feminist movement, first begun in 1837, didn't take a foothold in this country until after 1910.
Yes, I said 1910. That was more than a century after it sprouted in France and the Netherlands. When I watched "Professor Marston and The Wonder Women" - which I've seen twice in as many weeks - I had not realized that feminism had already been in play for thirty years when the namesake comic came onto the scene. I had not known of Wonder Woman until Gloria Steinem brought it back into focus in 1971. The television show was popular with me and Mama, who was - and still is - my Wonder Woman.
I could talk more about that superhero, but I already did. Starting with February's post, one in March, then another, followed by a third that month, and then once more in December. What a year!
Back to the topic at hand, shall we?
The second biopic came this afternoon. "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House" followed the tale of the FBI man who took on the President to solve the Watergate scandal. He was the source cited by the press as 'Deep Throat'. That began in the summer of 1972, the summer that I turned 14, and continued through the end of that year and several months into the 1973.
As politics did not appeal to me at all, I paid it scant attention. My summer days were filled with watching my three younger brothers, trips to Waycross to visit my grandparents, trips to Tallahassee to my Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob's new house, complete with swimming pool(!), perhaps even a trip to Monticello to visit Great-Uncle Sam at his pecan orchard in Monticello. (That would be the one in south Georgia, not Jefferson's estate in Virginia.)
When school started back after Labor Day of 1972, was I concerned about the upcoming Presidential election? Not hardly. My days were filled with ninth-grade activities at school, bike rides with my best friend Mary Powell, and watching my three younger brothers, of course. That included walking my youngest brother, Tony, to the pre-kindergarten class at Bible Baptist on my way to Myers Middle School, then picking him back up in the afternoon on my walk home. Honestly, why would I have bothered with any thoughts about grown-up politics?
So, I was glad to have had these two movies, to fill in gaps in my knowledge, to remind me of how life had been in those "good old days", to reveal both how much and how little progress has been made since that time more than four decades ago.
Let's hope equality for all may actually become real one day.