I've never much fancied Forrest Gump, but inside the Robert Zemeckis historical fantasy, there's a scene set in 1976 that I reckon reverberates with many people who retain vivid memories of that exhausted Bicentennial year.
Our Zelig-like hero Forrest, after having earned a Medal of Honor in Vietnam, encountered Abbie Hoffman at the march on the Pentagon, conducted ping-pong diplomacy in China, inspired John Lennon to write "Imagine," and tipped off the cops during Watergate, finally proposes to and beds his lifelong crush Jenny, only to wake up and find the mercurial hippie long gone. So, the Tom Hanks character does what so many people seemed to be doing in the mid-'70s, literally or metaphorically: He takes off running.
