older than dirt quiz

[Keith Westfall]

13, until someone mentioned candy cigarettes - then I remembered them!

Also learned (and never forgot) that no matter how long you sat at the table, or what you put on them, cooked turnips never tasted good, (and still don't!!)

[Bruce Page]

Also learned (and never forgot) that no matter how long you sat at the table, or what you put on them, cooked turnips never tasted good, (and still don't!!)

LOL, that's how I felt about Lima beans - and still do!

[Lori Kleinberg]

I got 12 and I am still under 60. I wonder what that means?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I can remember several houses we lived in as kids that had outhouses and the wells for water were outside too. Baths were taken a wash tub. Some homes we cooked on a wood stove.

When we lived in Kemmerer Wyoming we had an icebox for the summer and a window box for the winter. We controlled the temperature in the window box in the winter by opening and closing the window. We heated the 3 room apartment with coal. We had coal bin by the road that had 4' walls, a hinged top and a Dutch door. Open range was the law of the land there at the time. Though we lived in an area of former WWI officers apartments it was fenced and had a cattle guard. In the winter the horses, wild and domestic, turned loose on the open range, would jump the cattleguard and eat from the trash cans. One day my father came home to find me hiding in the coal bin, with top of the Dutch door open and rope noose laying over the top of the trash can. I never did figure out how he knew I was hiding in there holding the end of the rope and what my intentions were? I do remember him muttering something to the effect "You are going to get killed."....

One day I came home proudly displaying my math skills early. There are coal mines there that have been burning according to locals since the 1930's. One day I crawled underneath the one of the old mine shacks and found a wooden crate. I drug it out and correctly divided the 21 sticks of old dynamite (white crystals on the outside of the cloth IIRC covering) by 3. My 2 friends and I each carried home 7 sticks of dynamite to the questionable pleasure of our parents.....

3 years ago after waking up deaf, my wife and I visited there. The old apartments are gone, the old mining buildings are gone. We visited the JC Penny's first home there which is now a museum. The female host there said some the mines are still burning.

BTW.....I answered all 14 correctly......

[Phil Thien]

How about old-fashioned soda machines that dispensed soda in glass bottles?

Rotary telephones?

True 3/4" plywood?

Waiting for the TV or hifi or radio to "warm up."

Darning socks?

Full-service was the only type of gas station?

Home visits by doctors?

Two USPS mail deliveries a day?

[Larry Whitlow]

I got 13. Also remember candy cigarettes, but didn't recognize "sweet cigs" as the name. We had three "fast food" places when I was young. One was a drive-in named "The Comet". The second was an ice cream/burger place called Penguin. I can't remember the name of the third, but it was one of those old style drive-ins where they hung the tray on the car door. Later it became an A&W. When I was older we got a Foster's Freeze. If you watched Soupy Sales on the old Philco, then we are about the same age.

[Mel Fulks]

Cigarette ads with doctors recommending a brand than didnt cause "smoker's cough" .But said nothing about cancer.

[Biff Johnson]

Got a 5 but can't say I'm surprised, the thinning spot on my forehead has been a dead giveaway for some time.

[Paul R Miller]

All 14. Anyone else have water delivered to the house by the bucket a couple of times a week by horse and wagon ... and then the same team (different wagon ) on other days to haul away the "honey". I also collected the entire 200 piece set of car wheels from Hostess potato chips and Jello pudding boxes. Even sent away for the poker chip holder to keep them in. Oh yes and the airplane wheels too. ...... that makes me 64.

[Fred Perreault]

I remember and experienced all 14. I was the next youngest of 5 kids. It was a very rural outer Cape Cod in the late 40's-50's. We had the iceman deliver block ice for our ice box till I was 8 years old, then we got an electric frigidaire....used. We also had a kerosene over wood Glenwood kitchen stove. You've never had toast till you have buttered and mashed it with a pancake turner on the cast iron top af a well seasoned wood stove. The men went hunting for meat to eat, and mom put up canned food for the winters. It was very post war, and the patriotic themes of Victory Gardens, waste not and sacrifice was still prevalent. At that time on the Cape, there were no housing subdivisions, or condo communities. The area was still in the throes of a declining agrarian/seafaring/salt making community. When young folks got married, the usual choices for a "new" home were the old Capes and farmhouses that were still standing, and banking the foundations with salt hay and seaweed in the Fall was commonplace to keep the drafts at bay that would waft through the native stone foundations. We grew up in such a place, and by the early 1950's my dad had a fishing dragger out of Rock Harbor, an old Cletrac crawler dozer, 2 new Cat D-2 bulldozers and my mom operated and staffed the Gulf gasoline station we owned adjacent to the house, as well as the 3/4 acre vegetable garden and 5 fruit trees on the land. I don't believe that we grew up wanting for anything, but it was just the way it was. I imagine that many others have similar tales of simple living..... The pics show our "filling station" vintage 1930's, and then 2 images from c.1951 .........

[Chris Damm]

I'm positively ancient! I remember all 14. My kids have called me older than dirt for years now!

[Steve Baumgartner]

13 (We didn't have a wringer on the washing machine). My kids call me dirtier than old, however!

[Rod Sheridan]

Funny, I'm only 55 however I remember them all.

Jack, you left out the bread delivery man, just like the milk man except you didn't have to wash and place the empties outside with the change in them for new milk.

Regards, Rod.

P.S. It took a long time for my kids to believe that we only had two TV stations, CBC English and French, it was a big deal when we got a third station, a local english one.

[Jim Creech]

Like so many others I remember them all plus some. I recall hearing on the radio that if I go outside one particular night and watch the sky I would see Sputknik pass overhead. This I did and was amazed. Today I am a consultant for NASA and when I mention this to the younger crowd they just say "Man, that is ancient history".

[Lee Schierer]

Only my older sister is older than dirt, I scored 14.

I also remember:

little wax pop bottles containing flavored water,

drive ins where the car hop hooked a tray to your window,

little juke box players at your table with flip charts listing the tunes,

frosted mugs of root beer,

black cow sodas,

hula hoops,

bubble gum baseball cards,

using baseball cards and clothes pins to make you bike sound like a motor cycle,

seeing a B-36 fly over

.....and lots of other stuff.