When Clint Eastwood was King and Punks were Just Punks

My mother took us to movies whenever she had a chance. While my Dad tended the customers for a few hours, we caught a movie in downtown New Westminster, which in the seventies, featured a few theatres showing the latest movies. Nearby, we ate at Woolworths, a now defunct store, which featured a variety of discount items as well as a counter restaurant which offered light meals.
Clint Eastwood, then, was featured in a new movie called Magnum Force and despite the violence, we enjoyed Eastwood's charisma, and especially how he dealt with criminals, occasionally calling them "punk."
Clint was "The Man" back then, and often we would laugh at his witty dealings with the bad guys, squinting at them and joking about whether they just got out of San Quentin prison.
As I was young then, perhaps, ten or twelve, me and my other sister were accompanied by my mother who often used her hands to shield us from a naked scene or some violent moment.
Although I enjoyed the latest Disney movies, somehow watching an Eastwood movie was both exhilarating and fun at the same time. It was a few hours where we could escape from a world that was not always so nice.
My mother recalls that she was just gassing up her car with my sister when some lone male yelled out a racial slur. She proceeded to berate the man, occasionally using "punk" and asking to his bewilderment, what he has done for his country. "Has he ever fought in the war? There are so many young men who have died, and you're standing there being an ignorant bum." Of course, her words were much more liberal and colorful than mine, but due to brevity, I can only write down the general gist of her diatribes.
There were dozens of incidents like that during the space of my years growing up, from the late sixties to seventies where I recall my Mom telling off the "punks" with all her vocal might.
Still, despite her efforts and mine, too, me and my sisters encountered our share of young people hurling out racial names as though it was something that was part of their extracurricular activity.
We did our best to stake our case, sometimes throwing out a bit of their own medicine, using "honky" and some other negative name that befit their Caucasian background.
I never used the word "punk" myself to defend myself, but looking back, it seems being hurled the word "punk" hit its mark: like throwing a rotten egg on their window.
Clearly, my Mom acted like the female equivalent of Clint Eastwood. Although she carried no magnum gun in her purse, her words shook the air and thundered, and punks froze in their shoes, never expecting that that this slight woman, wearing a conservative mid-length skirt could rise up like a phoenix and bite back with such force.
My mother also said to hit it in the bud, meaning that punks deserved to be treated with their own medicine now, rather than the next life.