...I'm older than dirt. (Since I'm gonna be fifty in less than two weeks, I guess so!)

"The Older Than Dirt" Quiz

How old are you? You may be older than dirt! Take this quiz to find out.
Count all the ones that you remember—not the ones you were told about! Ratings are at the bottom.

• Blackjack chewing gum...I can't say I remember this; I do remember Adams chewing gum...and when they had peppermint chewing gum, not just spearmint and "Doublemint"...the Beech-Nut spearmint gum wrapper was a rich dark green and to this day I think of that color as a "spearmint green"...

• Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water...Yep, they sold them at Joe's Spa and Tom's Superette at the top of the hill on Gansett Avenue (near the railroad bridge) and the candy store on the corner whose name I no longer remember, with the rest of the penny candy: Squirrel Nuts, mint juleps, Mary Janes, Bit O Honeys, little Tootsie Rolls, banana chews, candy buttons...

• Candy cigarettes...With the penny candy, too...didn't get them much...I liked Squirrel Nuts and mint juleps the best...and Hershey bars, which were a dime back then...

• Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles...Yep...mostly they were red machines, even if they didn't sell Coca Cola...I loved Warwick Club lemon-lime soda...it was the only soda I liked...we'd get it in bottles at Gus's at Oakland Beach when we went for doughboys...(Gus's is now Iggy's)...

• Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes...Yep...all the time...Dad would never give me money to play a song :-)...I think even the old Garden City bowling alley had these at one time...

• Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers...We never had to worry about the alarm clock not going off at 6 a.m. for my dad, because the rattle of the milk bottles on the porch and the sound of the wooden screen door closing woke us up...mmmm, Hood's milk...

• Party lines...Gosh, yes...when I was very small we had a four-party line...everyone had a different "ring" (a long and a short, two shorts and long, etc.) but I can't remember ours...then we went to two...I remember we were lucky because our other party almost never was on the phone...I knew people who weren't so lucky...

• Newsreels before the movie...no, not this, although my parents told me about them...I remember cartoons before the movie, and double features, too, though...the last movies I saw at the old RKO Albee in downtown Providence was a double bill of Smoky and Way, Way Out, a Jerry Lewis flick...

• P. F. Flyers...Oh, man, the sneakers to have, especially for boys...they advertised on Jonny Quest...we had a Keds factory down near Harris Avenue when I was a kid; we'd go to the factory outlet there...

• Butch wax...Nope, I didn't hear of it until later, but I know know that the boys I knew then used it (or Brylcreem..."a little dab'll do ya"...my dad used Alberto VO5 hair cream)...

• Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive -6933)...Sure! Ours was WIlliams 2...

• Peashooters..."Bad boys" had these...or worse, BB guns and broke windows...(Donna, remember the story about your dad and the BB gun?)...

• Howdy Doody...Yes, but my Dad wouldn't let me watch it...he was against me watching "stupid" shows...he wanted me to grow up to be smart and graduate high school and go to college like he didn't get to do...

• 45 RPM records (and record players!)...Sure, had at least two record players...my Grandpa used to play Italian records in his greenhouse and every so often would burn out the phonograph...they had tubes then, remember?...so my Dad would buy me a new one and give him mine...the last time it happened we already had a new stereo so I asked Dad if I couldn't have one of those new cassette tape recorders instead...I still have my old 45s...and my old 78s, too, just don't have anything to play the 78s on...they were kids' records, unbreakable...they're bright yellow (some were red)...one of them is Roy Rogers and Dale Evans singing "Happy Trails"...I used to watch Roy's show every Saturday morning...

• S&H Green Stamps...Yep, we shopped at Almacs to get them...Stop&Shop gave another kind of stamps; they were pink...I know we cashed in stamps from time to time...I think we got our old Skotch cooler from S&H...

• Hi-fi's...Oh, yes! My Uncle Ralph and Auntie Lisa had one of those big units: the hi-fi in with the television...we didn't get a "hi-fi" (really a stereo phonograph with an eight-track player) until my folks got one free from the bank for starting a long-term CD...

• Metal ice trays with lever...Which came in the fridge with the latch on the door which you had to be careful to take off if you discarded the refrigerator because kids used to get trapped in them and suffocate...we would hear stuff like this on the news all the time back then, especially in the summer...sad and scary...

• Mimeograph paper...Ah, the wonderful scent of fresh ditto paper!...I didn't smell it to get high, I just liked the smell!...

• Blue flashbulbs...On the Brownie camera...my folks had a Brownie...it was a square brown box and you looked in the viewfinder on the top to take the photo of what was in front of you...the film had to be put in very carefully...turn the uptake crank just far enough that the film stayed on the reel, but not too far that you got too much into the film...the flashgun clipped on...looked like those big silver trumpet ones on the old movies about newspaper reporters...the flashbulbs were blue so you could take natural color pictures inside (the lightbulbs otherwise gave everything a yellow cast)...there were blue flashcubes, too...remember flashcubes?...they went on the first Instamatics...no fooling with the film, just pop in the cartridge...

• Packards...No.

• Roller skate keys...Yes...I couldn't have roller skates...Dad was afraid I'd hurt myself (it was a pain being an only child!)...but the other kids had them...I think Maria Angelone did, and some of my cousins...

• Cork popguns...No...only saw pics of them in the "Little Rascals" shorts...

• Drive-ins...Cranston Drive-In, on Route 5...where the Marshalls is now...across from Warwick Shoppers World (which became Zayres which became Ames which is now a Building  19)...gosh, they had swings...and the popcorn from the stand tasted sooooo good...we saw Cheyenne Autumn there, and Lonely Are the Brave (I cried over the horse being shot for at least a week) and Billie...

• Studebakers...No, heard a lot about 'em, though...

• Wash tub wringers...I swear one of the relatives still had a wringer washer...Donna, was it Grandma?...maybe they didn't use it, but they still had it in the cellar or something...I used to turn the crank...

• Bazooka chewing gum...And those terrible puns in the "Bazooka Joe" comics...how hard it was on cold days...you nearly broke a tooth trying to start it...

• Television broadcasts ending at night and not coming on until late morning...Yes! Sometimes I was up that early, too, waiting for a rerun of Lassie or something good like that...

• Television test patterns...You always wanted to catch the one with the Indian chief's head on it...he was sooooo cool...the color test patterns were boring...just vertical colored lines...

• The Amos and Andy show (radio or TV!)...I must confess I liked the Amos and Andy television show...I didn't know anyone who was black...heck, I hardly knew anyone who wasn't Italian...I would have liked to know all of them...I thought they were nice folks even if the Kingfish was crooked...he wasn't any different from the local white politicians!...

• The television day beginning and ending with "The Star Spangled Banner"...Yep, before Captain Kangaroo or the early local shows that the new announcers got stuck with, like Hank Bouchard...

If you remembered 0-8 you're still young (ish)
If you remembered 9-15, you're getting older
If you remembered 16-22, don't tell your age
If you remembered 22-30, you're older than dirt!

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:11:00 PM

Comments:

Me too - I'm about 9 months younger than you are. Some of this stuff is US specific - I don't think they sold Blackjack gum up here in the Great White, but I remember a lot of them (my uncle Harry owned three or four Studebakers - nice car) and some of them - like Black Jack and Beemans gum - have made occassional comebacks.

About the 78s. Check EBay for an old Garrard changer - the type 40B is the one I have but there are others available. It may take a little work or persuasion to make it operate because the grease they use for the changer mechanism got down right sticky (in my case I used persuasion and the changer mechanism no longer works but I can play the Edisons I picked up at a charity sale last February with no problem).

# posted by  Brent McKee : 1:23:00 PM

 

Oh, I can get a phonograph that plays 78s...they have retro phonos all over the place here; I'm in love with the Crosley they're selling at Linens'n'Things...I just have to fork over $100 to do so!

# posted by  Linda : 3:50:00 PM

 

Hi Linda: I don't remember if Grandma had a wringer, but I do remember that she had a "daybed" in the kitchen, and there was a metal pieplate of chocolates underneath it. Funny thing - I was reading an article the other day, and this woman was saying that she has a large kitchen, and she has placed a couch in it - and it is a wonderful thing to have. (It certainly was.)

# posted by  Anonymous : 7:48:00 PM

 

I was born February 1955!! I could be your big sis! I stopped reading because I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. I find many people were born in 1948. I don't meet many born in 1955. Oh if I could go back for a few days. How about the groovy early seventies? Swinging times indeed.

# posted by  fiftyfifty : 8:08:00 PM

 

I remember ALL of it and I'm older than you.

Do you remember a children's TV show that came on in the mornings before 'Romper Room' called 'Beth Collier's Storytime'? I'm pretty sure she was local. Channel 12 showed it, I think.

And also, before Hank Bouchard became Salty Brine's sidekick on 'Salty Brine's Shack', there was 'Ollie' - sort of a tough guy in a striped shirt. When Ollie suddenly left the show, it was rumored that he got fired for saying something 'dirty' on-air. I won't tell you what he supposedly said..... and I never actually heard him say it....

Oh, and also.... both my and my Sister's school pictures were on Salty's Shipmate Wheel. Do you remember that?

And Bonomo's Turkish Taffy?

And the 'Tea Room' behind Shepards in downtown Providence?

And 'Big Al's' record store on the Westminster Mall?

# posted by  Anonymous : 12:45:00 AM

 

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