Everyone over 50 should have a pretty easy time at this exam. If you are under 50 you can claim a handicap.
This is a History Exam for those who don't mind seeing how much they really remember about what went on in their life. [Remember! Googling is cheating!]
Get paper & pencil & number from 1 to 20. Write the letter of each answer & score at the end.
1. In the 1940s, where were automobile headlight dimmer switches located?
> a. On the floor shift knob.
> b. On the floor board, to the left of the clutch.
> c. Next to the horn.
2. The bottle top of a Royal Crown Cola bottle had holes in it. For what was it used?
> a. Capture lightning bugs.
> b. To sprinkle clothes before ironing.
> c. Large salt shaker.
3. Why was having milk delivered a problem in northern winters?
> a. Cows got cold and wouldn't produce milk.
> b. Ice on highways forced delivery by dog sled.
> c. Milkmen left deliveries outside of front doors and milk would freeze, expanding and pushing up the cardboard bottle top.
4. What was the popular chewing gum named for a game of
> chance?
> a. Blackjack
> b. Gin
> c. Craps
5. What method did women use to look as if they were wearing stockings when none were available due to rationing during WW II.
> a. Suntan
> b. Leg painting
> c. Wearing slacks
6. What postwar car turned automotive design on its ear when you couldn't tell whether it was coming or going?
> a. Studebaker
> b. Nash Metro
> c. Tucker
7. Which was a popular candy when you were a kid?
> a . Strips of dried peanut butter.
> b. Chocolate licorice bars.
> c. Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside.
8. How was Butch wax used?
> a. To stiffen a flat-top haircut so it stood up.
> b. To make floors shiny and prevent scuffing.
> c. On the wheels of roller skates to prevent rust.
9. Before inline skates, how did you keep your roller skates attached to your shoes?
> a. With clamps, tightened by a skate key.
> b. Woven straps that crossed the foot.
> c. Long pieces of twine.
10. As a kid, what was considered the best way to reach a decision?
> a. Consider all the facts.
> b. Ask Mom.
> c. Eeny-meeny-miney-MO.
11. What was the most dreaded disease in the 1940s and 1950s?
> a. Smallpox
> b. AIDS
> c. Polio
12. 'I'll be down to get you in a ________, Honey'
> a. SUV
> b. Taxi
> c. Streetcar
13. What was the name of Caroline Kennedy's pony?
> a. Old Blue
> b. Paint
> c. Macaroni
14. What was a Duck-and-Cover Drill?
> a. Part of the game of hide and seek.
> b. What you did when your Mom called you in to do chores.
> c. Hiding under your desk, and covering your head with your arms in an A-bomb drill.
15. What was the name of the Indian Princess on the Howdy Doody show?
> a. Princess Summerfallwinterspring
> b. Princess Sacajawea
> c. Princess Moonshadow
16. What did all the really savvy students do when mimeographed tests were handed out in school?
> a. Immediately sniffed the purple ink, as this was believed to get you high.
> b. Made paper airplanes to see who could sail theirs out the window.
> c. Wrote another pupil's name on the top, to avoid their failure.
17. Why did your Mom shop in stores that gave Green Stamps with purchases?
> a. To keep you out of mischief by licking the backs, which tasted like bubble gum.
> b. They could be put in special books and redeemed for various household items.
> c. They were given to the kids to be used as stick-on tattoos.
18. Praise the Lord, & pass the _________?
> a. Meatballs
> b. Dames
> c. Ammunition
19. What was the name of the singing group that made the song 'Cabdriver' a hit?
> a. The Ink Spots
> b. The Supremes
> c. The Esquires
20. Who left his heart in San Francisco ?
> a. Tony Bennett
> b. Xavier Cugat
> c. George Gershwin
------------------------------------------------------------
ANSWERS:
1. (b) On the floor, to the left of the clutch. Hand controls, popular in Europe, took till the late '60's to catch on.
2. (b) To sprinkle clothes before ironing. Who had a steam iron?
3. (c) Cold weather caused the milk to freeze and expand, popping the bottle top.
4. (a) Blackjack Gum.
5. (b) Special makeup was applied, followed by drawing a seam down the back of the leg with eyebrow pencil.
6. (a) 1946 Studebaker.
7. (c) Wax coke bottles containing super-sweet colored water.
8 (a) Wax for your flat top (butch) haircut.
9. (a) With clamps , tightened by a skate key, which you wore on a shoestring around your
neck.
10. (c) Eeny-meeny-miney-mo.
11. (c) Polio. In beginning of August, swimming pools were closed, movies and other public gathering places were closed to try to prevent spread of the disease.
12. (b) Taxi Better be ready by half-past eight!
13. (c) Macaroni.
14. (c) Hiding under your desk, and covering your head with your arms in an A-bomb drill.
15. (a) Princess Summerfallwinterspring. She was another puppet.
16. (a) Immediately sniffed the purple ink to get a high.
17. (b) Put in a special stamp book, they could be traded for household items at the Green Stamp store.
18. (c) Ammunition, and we'll all be free.
19. (a) The widely famous 50's group: The Inkspots.
20. (a) Tony Bennett, and he sounds just as good today.
SCORING:
17- 20 correct: You are older than dirt, and obviously gifted with mental abilities Now if you could only find your glasses. Definitely someone who should share your wisdom!
12 -16 correct: Not quite dirt yet, but you're getting there.
0 -11 correct: You are not old enough to share the wisdom of your experiences.
Then before you pass this test on, put your score in the subject line. Send to friends so everyone can HAVE FUN!!!!
Or POST IT ON YOUR BLOG!!!
Surprise, surprise! I scored a perfect 20.
From a friend in Texas, who gave me the title for the post.
13 here. I'm still under 50-=-- for a few more years. ;-)
ReplyDeleteIT
17. Gee, Abuelita, I thought you may have answered "c" to number 9!
ReplyDeleteducks and runs away!
IT, choose your handicap. That's quite good for a youngster.
ReplyDeleteEl Padre, despite the fact that we were poor, I had my very own skates and skate key.
You did quite well for your mental age of late adolescence.
My turn to run!
I only got 17, but I'm still older than dirt.
ReplyDeleteRenz, the choice is yours.
ReplyDeleteMy friend, who is my age plus one month, scored 17. I suppose it's because her parents never let her chew bubblegum. BTW, Fleers brand was the best.
I already know I'm older than dirt, because my grandnieces tell me so. BUT, I got a 19! I messed up on the Highbeam thing.
ReplyDeletethanks for the quiz Mimi!
The quiz is good even for the youngsters, if only to pass on a bit of cultural knowledge that may be lacking. Everyone needs to know that the dimmer switch for headlights (or should I say headlamps?) was once on the floor board, to the left of the clutch.
ReplyDeleteI got 15. My father still has a rocking chair my parents bought with green stamps.
ReplyDeleteI got 18, all but the last two.
ReplyDeleteI got a 20 - and am older than dirt.
ReplyDeleteOMG I'm 75!
ReplyDeleteQuite fun, actually!
ReplyDeleteErp, I probably still have things purchased with S&H Green Stamps, but I can't think of any at the moment. I had enough stamps for a 5-piece set of luggage one year, which we really needed for a family trip of 5 people, but we wore them out.
ReplyDeleteOrmonde, did you listen only to church music and Cajun music even way back then?
That's my brother-in-law up there with the other perfect score.
DP and Göran, what were your scores?
I only got 9 but do not think that is a lack of age just that I grew up before TV when American culture did not pervade so I had not the faintest idea of many questions.
ReplyDeleteBrian, I think we have to give folks from other countries a break. The cultural references are about growing up in the US.
ReplyDeleteGrandpère scored a miserable 15. His excuse is that he grew up in the country on a farm.
18. Older than dirt, a tad younger than Mimi. I can't remember the song 'Cabdriver', and I have no recollection of a product called 'Butch wax', perhaps because I never had a Butch haircut (or a brother). But many of the other questions brought back vivid memories of childhood, including our beloved Studebaker.
ReplyDeleteFleer's was okay, but I preferred Dubble Bubble.
The worst thing was when the skate clamps came loose, the skate flew off your shoe and you crashed to the pavement. Skinned elbows and knees, asphalt stains on clothes, tears.
For three years as a college student I typed and mimeographed exam papers and course syllabi for the English department. Despite the fact that the mimeo machine was in a cramped, unventilated closet I never managed to get high. I never could get the hang of inhaling (missed out on cigarettes and pot, too). (sigh)
I attended Camp Sacajawea in the summers. Yea!
I still keep a sprinkling bottle just in case I take a notion to dampen my ironing.
Yes, these are extremely specific USA cultural references. Not all of them traveled across the border to Canada (where I lived in my teens).
18. Missed the ones on cars -- have reached my older than dirt state never having learned to drive! So clutches and Studebakers were no scoreres for me. (I do remember other models of Studebaker, but not the PushmePullyou....
ReplyDeleteHugs, from the wilds of Putnam County...
T
Mary Clara, you liked Dubble Bubble best, did you? That was my second best. Some of the bubblegum brands were awful.
ReplyDeleteAaah...the smell of mimeograph, although I never did purple ink in a closet, MC. I missed out on cigarettes and pot, too, although I had my share of booze in high school and college years. Yes, that's right, high school. There were no laws on the books regarding the legal age to drink in New Orleans.
Tobias, aren't you supposed to be meditating? You're on retreat, and here you are taking silly quizzes.
Hugs back from the wilds of alligator country.
Mimi == got all twenty but guessed on the Studebaker. I think the 50 year thing is a bit off. That would take us back to 1959 -- a bit after some of the questions. Even at the time I wondered why I was supposed to like the dumb coke/wax things.
ReplyDelete16.
ReplyDeleteShould have gotten the dimmer one---misread it. Guessed on the Butch wax one: oh, the irony! ;-D
Didn't know about mimeograph: geez, I spent my school-years needlessly sober!
Didn't know about the Studebaker.
Didn't know about the Howdy-Doody princess.
[Recently heard the Caroline Kennedy pony one---otherwise, probably wouldn't have known it]
I got eight. I will be fifty in March. Several of those questions required knowledge of the 40s, meaning a good fifteen years older than I am.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember Howdy Doody--was it on in the sixties?--but I do remember Mr. Greenjeans. And our neck of the woods didn't have Royal Crown Cola, as far as I can remember. We never did duck and cover drills--that's something I learned about as an adult. The milk question is fairly obvious, but my mother always bought milk at the grocery; I never saw a milkman.
It would be interesting to find out people's first memory of the news. Mine is a Life magazine photo of a student standing in Harvard Yard in the aftermath of a student protest--that would be in '68. My mother says I watched the entire funeral of JFK on TV, and then went in the bathroom and vomited. That was when I was four: I have no recollection of it.
(My mother and paternal grandfather once met JFK on his first campaign for Congress; as a joke/goodwill stunt, he traded ties with my grandfather, but the tie apparently disappeared long long ago.)
I got 19. Missed the one about The Inkspots --- and not suprisingly since I grew up on opera (which I actually loved, of course). Nevertheless, I distinctly remember the day I self-righteously reproached my parents for having let me down because my ignorance of popular music had handicapped me with my peers. I was dead serious and they were both trying hard to take me seriously all the while really struggling not to laugh!
ReplyDelete(As I recall, they humbly apologized!)
18, and I feel older than dirt. Was conflicted about the streetcar: Nana used to take us downtown in one and then home (because she was tired) in a taxi. I guess I never was too interested in princesses, either, but ditto paper and cranking out all those copies on the machine, oh, yeah.
ReplyDeleteAnd remember those plastic Zippy skates? Sprained my wrist falling down a small incline on those. Couldn't get them off, so had to push them to the sides of my feet and stumble home. Gave Mom a thrill.
Wonderfulness.
"DP and Göran, what were your scores?"
ReplyDeleteDidn't keep count, so don't remember, but I think I managed most (some were too "Murcan" ;=)
Susankay, another perfect score, and Ellie, the deprived child, missed one. Little did your folks know how dramatically the deprivation would affect your life well into the future.
ReplyDeleteSheila, I never had the plastic skates. I skated so much that I wore holes in the wheels of more than one pair. The metal skates were neat in that they could be lengthened as the feet grew.
The quizzes are silly and often not logical, but they are fun, and for those of us older than dirt, a nostalgic trip down memory name.
My first memory of a news event was FDR's death. We argued about whether he would go to heaven, because he was a Protestant. I hardly knew any Protestants until I went to high school.
ReplyDelete20 out of 20 here, Mimi, but I remember this..."unlike the other puppets, Princess Summerfall Winterspring became a real-life girl in 1951. Her live-action persona was played first by Judy Tyler (who died in a car accident at the untimely age of 23), then by Linda Marsh."
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get a TV until I was 7. That would be 1952, so I don't remember the puppet.
And I thought the Mills Brothers made the big hit out of "Cabdriver." The first line was,,,,,,"Cabdriver, once more round the block,"
I'm older than you, and the few times I actually watched Howdy Doody, the princess was a puppet. I never cared much for the show.
ReplyDeleteSusan, that came across as curt, but I didn't mean it that way. Plus, I didn't acknowledge your perfect score. My grandmother bought a TV when I was in high school, a monster with a tiny screen. She lived downstairs from us in a duplex, so we watched whenever we wanted. In the beginning, there was only one channel.
ReplyDeleteThat's okay Mimi. We all get cranky sometimes! ;o). By the time we had one there were 3 networks, but I think we only got 2. We had a big one with a monster screen....20 inches, I think.
ReplyDeleteI'm grouchy about so many folks without health insurance, and with further job losses to come, the numbers will grow. However, I needn't take it out on you, need I?
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite Inkspots tune. I love the lead singers falsetto! I could not believe the high note in the middle!
ReplyDelete18
ReplyDeleteNot bad for someone who's only approaching "dirt" :D
Susan, the high note is quite a triumph. I love the Inkspots - and their clever name.
ReplyDeleteDavid, for a youngster, that is excellent.
So start chweing bubblegum now!
ReplyDeleteIt would be a real kick if you came over and GUMpeted in, and maybe even won, The BUBBLEGUM WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!