Older than dirt, part 1

The following quiz is making the rounds, and it rang enough bells with me that I thought it would be fun to write about.

Older Than Dirt Quiz
How many of the following items can you remember? (From your own firsthand experience, that is. Things you remember being told about don’t count.)
1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 78 rpm records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fis
17. Metal ice trays with levers
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Washtub wringers
If you remembered 0-5 = You’re still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don’t tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You’re older than dirt!

So what were my answers? Let’s start with a list of the things I don’t remember:
Blackjack chewing gum. I’ve never heard of this before.
Tableside jukeboxes. Except in TV shows and movies, and some of the new retro-by-design restaurants.
Newsreels. TV had killed these off by the time I was born.
Butch wax. Never heard of it.
Phone numbers with word prefixes. No, I can still remember the phone number of the house I lived in when I was six, and it was just a string of seven digits.
Peashooters. I’m not even sure what these are.
Howdy Doody. No, that show ended when I was a baby.
78 rpm records. When I was a kid, all the record players we had could be set to play at 78, but my family didn’t own any of those records.
Hi-fis. Those came before stereo sets, right?
Mimeograph paper. I almost said yes to this, because when I was a public-school student, the schools used what everyone called mimeograph machines to duplicate handouts and test papers. But I’ve since learned that these were actually spirit duplicators. Mimeograph was an even older technology that I’ve never encountered firsthand.
Packards and Studebakers. I’m sure I’ve seen them on the roads, but I don’t think I ever rode in either one. Packard stopped making cars before I was born; Studebaker did likewise when I was in first grade.
Washtub wringers. No, just clothes washers with spin-dry cycles. I don’t remember washboards either.
So what do I remember? That will have to wait for part 2.

4 thoughts on “Older than dirt, part 1

  1. I’ll have to own up to remembering all but the first one. I’ve never heard of blackjack gum, although maybe it existed during my lifetime but had another name. As for butch wax, that is the wax or stiffener that guys used to make their flat-top haircuts stand up. And my parents owned a Studebaker! So obviously I am older than dirt, but you didn’t need a quiz to prove that. Thanks for the quiz, though. It was fun, and I’m eager to find out how many you remember.