older than dirt quiz

[John Pratt]

I remember 11 of 14 and I'm only 49. I think maybe some of these things may be regional and based on where you grew up. I definitely remember helping do the laundry in the washtub and cranking the wringer till I thought my arms would fall off. The dryer was the clothes line behind the house.

1. What is a coffee shop with a juke box? sounds like the precursor to starbucks. Growing up I don't know anyone who had time to sit around a coffee shop when there was work to do. I do remember the local diner where people would sometimes congregate and tell stories and everyone knew everyone.

2. I'm not old enough to remember news reels before movies, but then I didn't get to the theater much as a kid.

3. I don't remember home delivery of milk either because getting milk meant going to the barn and getting the milk from the source.

[David Weaver]

I've got 7 of them with personal experience. A lot of them I wouldn't have seen at my age if my parents and grandparents had any tolerance at all for throwing things out (they don't like to throw things away, though they're not hoarders and don't have lots of junk, they just don't buy much and don't turn much over).

Most people who had any kind of money in their family had a console hi-fi when I was a kid. Now you don't see them much. And most grandparents still had a wringer washer stowed somewhere to wash things they didn't want to put in their "good" washer.

[Jason Roehl]

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!!)

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

My brothers--turnips and lima beans---blech! There are many things I didn't care for as a kid that my parents made me eat. Most of them I now eat and even enjoy, but there are a few that are just not fit for human consumption.

I'm (only?!) 39, and I got six. I'm aware of more on the list, but don't know that I've ever seen or experienced them firsthand. As a kid, we did have a alternative to sitting at the table until we liked the food--we could be excused, but then anything left on our plate went in the fridge and we got it for breakfast the next day.

[Kevin Bourque]

I can remember going to see the Phillies back when all the men wore ties and hats to the game. Nobody would ever think of leaving their trash on the ground like fans do today.

[Joe Bradshaw]

I got thirteen out of the fourteen. I was raised on a farm and we had our own milkcow.

[David Helm]

Got all fourteen. When talking about records you forgot about 78 rpm. Was ten yo when we got TV, and the screen was round like an oscilloscope. Turnips are definitely an adult taste. My mother would try to fool us by cutting them the same size, boiling them with potatoes and serve them together . . . didn't work! My favorite vegetable as a kid was Lima Beans (mature but still green, boiled, salted and buttered). Still love them today but can't get them. The growing season in the Maritime Northwest is too short. As a teenager I actually worked as a milkman (helper). Don't think I'm old yet, but I can see old from where I stand.

[Christopher Collins]

I'm only 33, but I grew up in rural Vermont (there really is no urban Vermont), which is like it's own little world, even today. There are parts of Vermont where you can still get milk delivered if the farm is pretty close (usually a service only provided to old-timers who've been customers and neighbors their whole lives, but it's apparently making a comeback), where people still plough fields with draft horses etc... And they aren't Amish or anything, and not doing it to impress tourists (tresspassers beware!), just old fashioned, and a few hippies who decided to let the modern world pass them by. Ironically, I also just read that Vermont also has the most high speed internet of any state in the nation.

When I was a kid I think our phone number was 5 digits for local calls. Probably one of the last telephone exchanges in the country still using that system.
I absolutely remember candy cigarettes and "Big League Chew", but I also remember when it was outlawed due to parental outrage.

[Roger Newby]

78 rpm records
giving the operator the number you wanted to call.........ours was 1908J and the neighbor was 1908W
I dated the daughter of the guy that invented dirt!

[Larry Heflin]

13 of 14 - never saw news reels. But along with delivery of milk and bread we also had the dry cleaners man pick up and deliver once or twice a week. Maybe a local thing but we also had the Charle's Chips truck drive by a couple times a week. You had to stop him if you wanted chips or pretzels.

[Jim Rimmer]

13 1/2 - Home delivery of milk but in cardboard cartons. We saved the opening tab for use as "money" at a toy auction held on Saturdays.

I remember the newsreels along with a cartoon. Saturday afternoon there was a serial of some kind. And we weren't concerned about when the movie started; you just went in and started watching. When it was over you waited for it to start again and watched to the point at which you had come in. Some of the movies that were real mysteries would advertise that no one would be seated after the movie started.

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

[glenn bradley]

Uh-oh, I got 'em all . . . .

Newsreels, a cartoon and the movie-house manager picking the other half of your ticket stub out of a bowl so you won a prize . . . then the movie (or two). As to glass milk bottles with cardboard stoppers . .. don't forget the bakery truck. We kids would come running when we heard the bakery truck whistle . . . mmmm warm donuts; is there anything they can't cure when you're a kid?

[Dave Anderson NH]

Got all 14. Not a surprise really. Went to 1st grade in a 2 story brick 4 room school house. Our first TV was a DuMont bought when I was in 1st grade. I remember helping bale and stack hay at the dairy farm across the street owned by Grover Gerlock for $.15 per hour at 12 years old and coming home sweaty and itching everywhere during the second haying in August. I remember when Mr. Gerlock got his first milking machine and how we all thought it was an amazing thing and so much faster than milking by hand. I remember being whacked by teachers or having a blackboard eraser thrown at my head if I was less than attentive, polite, and doing what I was supposed to do. I remember the big Penfield (NY) Halloween crisis of 1964 when we had to go to the next county to steal an outhouse to put under the traffic light in the center of town (a town tradition since time immemorial). We had gone by this time (1966) from a sleepy farm community of 2000 spread out over a 10 x 10 mile are to 18000 people of whom 70% were under 18 years old. Suburbia had arrived.

I also remember my girlfriends mother picking a combination of rock salt and birdshot out of my back one Halloween night as I lay face down on their formica topped kitchen table. I was a little slow running away and had tripped over a wire garden fence after her brother, a couple friends, and I had been throwing apples at a farmer's barn and disturbing the cattle and horses.

[Eric DeSilva]

I'm 48 and went 14 for 14. Heck, my sister in Ithaca, NY still gets milk delivered in bottles from the dairy.

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

Along with all the other things listed, you can add watching mother or grandmother using their pedal sewing machine; watching father or grandfather crank the truck to get it started; having parents or grandparents tell you to go pour this (toxic) stuff into the hole in the ground or the ditch; wearing homemade clothes instead of store-bought clothes; and going to the little mom & pop grocery store to buy a bag of candy with a nickel and coming home with change!

[Rick Christopherson]

I'm wondering how many people are not misremembering seeing newsreels because they later saw them on TV? They started disappearing in the late 50's and early 60's when TVs became more common, and were stopped altogether by 1967. It's the only thing on the list I don't actually remember seeing first-hand. I knew about them when I was a kid, but never actually saw one in a theater.

The wringer/washer would have been next, except I do recall that my aunt still used one, even though my grandparents already had a modern washer dryer by then.

I grew up in the suburbs, so party lines were nonexistent by then. One day I picked up the phone at my grandparent's house and heard someone talking, When I started asking questions about why they were on my grandparent's phone, that's when I got an education of what a party line was. They were not amused.