History Test Time!!

[Fr. Wayne]

Take test honestly and post your score, not your age. No cheating.

History Exam... 
 
Everyone over 40 should have a pretty easy time at this exam. If you are under 40 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. Get paper and pencil and number from 1 to 20.
Write the letter of each answer and score at the end.  Then, best of all, before you pass this test on, put your score in the subject line!
 
1. In the 1940's, 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 W.W.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 1940's?
       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 pet 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, and 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, sw imming 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.

[Swift]

16 out of 20
Missed 2, 6, 12, and 15. Born in '58, so some of them are a little early, even for me.

[JohnW]

13, about five of which were guesses. I didn't grow up in the US, so some of these were incomprehensible.

[eugenek]

I got 12 correct and since I'm 39 until next Monday I'll claim my handicap now, thankyou.

Most of these questions I don't know from my own life experiences. I only knew the leg painting from hearing my grandmother talking about it. I know polio because my uncle was struck by it. I do remember mimeographed handouts in school but I didn't sniff because I thought I'd get high. I sniffed because I liked the smell. I don't know if I even knew what "getting high" meant at that age.

[ToSeek]

Just barely there with 12. Missed all of Swift's plus 4, 8, 13, 15.

I remember Green Stamps and skates but not Howdy Doody or Blackjack gum.

[Doodler]

Yikes, I was looking like a deer in headlights for all of them... Most of those questions were old when my parents were kids.

[The Supreme Canuck]

9.

But then I'm only 18 years old.

[Disinfo Agent]

12 (2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20). I'm below 40, and I'm not American. In many cases, it's not difficult to guess the right answer, given the choices.

[Parrothead]

16/20

[Candy]

15 (missed 1, 6, 12, 13, & 20)

[Gillianren]

Remembering I'm 29, everybody?

17. Granted, I guessed at a couple--but most of the ones I guessed, I guessed right. So, there! (I missed 1, 12, and 19.)

[Fr. Wayne]

How come 12 is so hard?

[N C More]

Yikes! I got all except #6 and #18. In my defense, I know some of them because my parents told me about them. *Sigh* I'm still old though (54).

[Gillianren]

12 I missed because I had no idea what you were talking about. Also, I assumed "taxi" was too obvious. (Give me some credit, though--I knew it wasn't SUV!)

[Metricyard]

19 out of 20. Wasn't sure about question 19.

[Maksutov]

20 out of 20. Being born in the 1940s sometimes has its advantages.

Now where'd I put my glasses?

[Candy]

20 out of 20. Being born in the 1940s sometimes has its advantages.

Now where'd I put my glasses?

My mother was born in 1944, and I guarantee she would not know as much.

[Enzp]

18, missing 6 and 12.

I remember the Nash Metro with its rear leaning back window as looking backwards, so I picked it.

And i don't recall the song, but we used to take the streetcar downtown all the time. AT least in Washington DC, the streetcar was very popular way to get around.

I was afraid Gillian would beat me, she seems to recall my childhood better than I do.

By the way, it is a common mistake to confuse Mimeograph machines. People routinely misuse the term. Mimeograph stencils were sheets of special paper that you typed on (with the ribbon kept out of the weay) and it actually poked through the surface of the paper making a stencil. Then this was mounted on a drum full of ink, and the ink seeped through the stencil and was printed onto the paper.

The purple ink ones were called "Ditto Machines" after a popular brand. Generically they were "spirit duplicators." On these you typed on a special two layer original which had a very rich carbin-paper-like sheet. This left a purple negative in the transferred ink. The machine wiped a solvent solution over the thing and the purple "carbon" was transfered to the paper a page at a time until it ran out of purple image.

It was the Ditto copies that had the smell of volatile hydrocarbons. Mimeograph copies were black and smelled like India ink. But everyone called the Ditto copies Mimeographs anyway. Ditto was good for small runs, like something to pass out to one or two classes. Mimeo stencils lasted a lot longer and were better suited to larger runs like newsletters to send home with the whole school full of students or something. A school usually had both.

As a big fan of Howdy Doody, I can assure you that the lovely Princess Summerfall Winterspring was not a puppet but a live lovely young woman.

ANd everyone wore their skate key around their neck. If you had no style you wore it on a piece of string, but back them evryone was into "gimp." Gimp was this long very narrow strip of vinyl plastic - came in all colors - and you wove or braided it into various things like key fobs, wallet borders, or lanyards for your skate key. I think gimp is still around, but I suspect they call it something else as the word has since acquired a connotation that it didn't then have.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Wow, I got 15. Do I lead the non-American league?

I had to quess much, but there were few questions where the answer could be deduced with some level of confidence based on given options (3, 9, 14, 16, 17 and perhaps even 2).

I missed questions 4, 6, 8, 12 and 20

How come 12 is so hard?

For me "streetcar" felt oldest of the options.

[Candy]

Hello, "A Streetcar Named Desire" is in our heads.

[Maksutov]

Wow, I got 15. Do I lead the non-American league?

I had to quess much, but there were few questions where the answer could be deduced with some level of confidence based on given options (3, 9, 14, 16, 17 and perhaps even 2).

I missed questions 4, 6, 8, 12 and 20

Originally Posted by Fr. Wayne
How come 12 is so hard?

For me "streetcar" felt oldest of the options.

I guess most folks these days don't recall a song called The Darktown Strutter's Ball.

I also recall the Indian princess being a real person. She might have been a puppet first, but the real thing was a rather sexy-looking gal. Judy Tyler met with a tragic end. BTW, I can remember listening to Buffalo Bob et al on the radio before we had a TV.

A neighbor had one of those Studebakers. Even back then it was a very odd looking car.

Since I grew up in a town next to Danbury, CT, the "Hat City", skate keys were kept on lanyards made of braided leather. The strips for making them were all over the place, a result of the trimming operation that was part of the hat making process. Of course you first had to have a pair of skates. My sister had skates, and therefore the key on braided leather, but our family was poor so the kid brother didn't have skates. But there were other uses for those leather braids.

Used to use "Butch" wax for the crewcut (just on the front), drank the super-sweet stuff out of those wax bottles, chewed Blackjack, got a polio shot with a needle (not an oral dose), and used to practice "duck and cover" every month as a part of our Civil Defense training.

[Tog]

19 of 20, most were guesses. I mised 15. But then there footprints on the moon before I was born, one maybe two sets.

[snarkophilus]

11/20, but I'm only 24 years old. Not being American didn't affect me.

I got number 12 right, though, even though that seemed to be very difficult! Ella Fitzgerald sang that song (though I'm sure it predates her).

Enzp: I didn't know that gimp was that old! I used to make stuff out of it as a kid, so it was around as recently as 1990, anyway. It was called gimp, it was still flexible vinyl, and it came in nice fluorescent colours, too. I still have some sitting around, because it's occasionally useful.

[N C More]

Used to use "Butch" wax for the crewcut (just on the front), drank the super-sweet stuff out of those wax bottles, chewed Blackjack, got a polio shot with a needle (not an oral dose), and used to practice "duck and cover" every month as a part of our Civil Defense training.

Yep, I remember it all (never used the Butch wax, though). I remember having to line up for those polio shots...tough little boy ahead of me cried like a baby, got called a "sissy". I resolved not to cry even if it killed me! Gee, I sorta miss that Blackjack gum, haven't thought about it in years. As for the old "duck and cover", my Dad was a scientist, told me it was nonsense, but to do it anyway.

Oh, BTW skates back then weren't "in line", and they clamped onto your shoes, both of my knees are ruined (covered in scars) as a result of this activity. To this very day people ask me about what happened....I was a "hot dog" skater back in the day!

[Gruesome]

17/20. Missed 2, 8 and 15.

[Swift]

Gee, I sorta miss that Blackjack gum, haven't thought about it in years. As for the old "duck and cover", my Dad was a scientist, told me it was nonsense, but to do it anyway.

You can get Blackjack on line. I don't know if it is as good as it was, since I never liked it . I remember trying "Dots" as an adult and thinking, yuk! , why did I like them.

As for Duck and Cover (yep, I did it too, it used to scare me as a kid), you'll have to just hide under your own desk.

[ToSeek]

A neighbor had one of those Studebakers. Even back then it was a very odd looking car.

I forget which kind of car it was, but my mother can recall the neighborhood kids shouting after somebody, "You're driving your bathtub upside-down!" Apparently some of the neighborhood kids would also throw rocks at the extension - whatever you want to call it - that connected the trolley car to the power wires overhead. If that got knocked off, the trolley lost power and went gliding back down the hill until the driver could stop the car and put the connection back in place.

[eugenek]

As for the old "duck and cover", my Dad was a scientist, told me it was nonsense, but to do it anyway.

I never had to do duck-and-cover in school. I only remember the duck-and-cover jingle and video of kids diving for the underside of their desks from a movie I watched in High School in the early 80's. I think it was "Atomic Cafe". They'd play the duck-and-cover jingle and then show a nuke going off, jingle, buildings being obliterated, jingle, a continuing wave of destruction radiating outward, jingle, pictures of Hiroshima.

I think this is the same movie which had what I thought was some humor. It discussed three aspects of the nuke, the light, heat and blast. The movie suggested not looking at the light or perhaps painting windows to prevent the light from getting in. It also suggests protection from the heat. As for the blast, it showed the continuing wave of destruction radiating outward...

[Gillianren]

Believe it or not, we had an air raid drill when I was in seventh grade. Duck and cover in the hallway. This would have been . . . (pause while Gillian does math) the '89/'90 school year. Which, in practice, meant that all of us knew it was bogus, especially given how close my junior high was to both JPL and downtown LA. The expression "the survivors will envy the dead" popped up in several of the conversations in that hallway.

And I made lanyards at camp one year using those violently-coloured strips of vinyl. Don't remember what they called it, but the word "gimp" does ring a distant bell. Then again, in very bad weather, "gimpy" becomes my nickname around here.

[Walrus]

ToSeek: are you thinking of the 1949-51 Nash Airflyte, the famous "Tub Nash"? These cars had curvaceous styling that resembled a large, inverted bathtub.

Also, I'm currently writing my honors thesis about civil defense during the Cold War. I was rather shocked to find out where the idea of "duck and cover" came from. I had grown up thinking it was someone's idea of a sick joke, but I found out that they got the idea from interviews with Hiroshima survivors conducted in the 1940s. I have a book published by RAND in 1951 that explains the rationale for teaching schoolchildren to "Duck and Cover."