BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 12:05 PM

I don't geeze as much as I used to

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:08 AM

Kicked him in the side once a day, faithfully . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST,B-Western Fan
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:06 AM

"Ok, so my memory is fading. Maybe it wasn't the Cisco Kid. Then who was Chito, Jose' Gonzales, Bustamante Rafferty?"

Chico Jose Gonzales Bustamante Rafferty was Tim Holt's sidekick.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jan 08 - 10:21 AM

"It's Howdy Doody time,
It's Howdy Doody time,
It's time to start the show,
So kids let's go."

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 10:41 PM

On the quiz that led off this thread, I scored a 17 (took it a few years back). I missed Princess Summerfall Winterspring because I never saw the Howdy Doody Show, except once or twice by accident. I was in college when it first appeared on television (!!).

Never heard about the purple ink thing. And I only vaguely remembered the Cabdriver song and couldn't recall who had done it.

The family car was a Packard (we had five of them over time, from boxy in 1935 to pretty sleek in 1954) before they sold out to Studebaker. That was back in the days when you could tell what make a car was just by looking at it from a distance. Great cars.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: DonD
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 10:35 PM

I don't believe that Blackjack gum was named after a game of chance (which we called '21'). I think it originated sometime around WWI and honored General John J. Pershing who was known as 'Blackjack', and the gum itself was black and licorice flavored.

My fond memory as a ten- or eleven-year-old in The Bronx (always capitalize the T in The!) was when the 'gang' could each save up a quarter each, and on a Saturday, we'd take the subway to Times Square to wander around. A nickel each way for the train, a dime for a hot dog (with a free root beer) and a nickel to spend 'foolishly'. A favorite pastime was to hang around the burlesque joints ogling the pictures of the strippers outside until the doorman/barker would rasp, "Hey, you kids, come back in ten years!"

I'll just hum 'The Bard of Armagh' and toddle off to bed.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Becca72
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 05:29 PM

The test is rigged. I got 18 correct and I'll be 36 on Monday...

My first job was at a grocery store for $4.25/hour and I remember gas at $.99/gallon. I don't know WTF the rest of you are talking about which just proves the test is more trivia than memory. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 03:15 PM

My first real job was also grocering for $1.25, including making milkshakes and serving cones at the icecream counter; followed by gas-station handy boy at the same rate. Learned to fix tires, change oil, pump gas and clean windshields. I got my first letter of recommendation from that jobm citing me as a "fast man at the island", something that has served me well exactly nowhere. The gas station owner loved to talk about his male parts. I was distinctly uininterested in them (perhaps because I was enthralled by my own at that age).

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 01:57 PM

I got 19, since I didn't even guess at the "Cabdriver" question. Now I see that the answer to that one has become a matter of controversy anyway; that is, the quiz-writer may not have gotten it right, either.

I'm younger than some of y'all: by the time I was old enough to work legally and officially for the Federal minimum wage, it was all the way up to $1.25. I bagged groceries. Only girls were allowed to run the cash registers; boys worked as baggers and occasionally ran out to the parking lot to collect shopping carts.

I remember the price of gas staying at around thirty-some-odd cents for years, both before and (briefly) after I began to drive myself.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 08 - 09:33 AM

re: question #19.
Didn't the Mills Brothers sing "Cab Driver"?
          Not The Ink Spots

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 12:10 PM

100 and thank you me lords

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 12:10 PM

99

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 12:09 PM

98

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST,Kathy B Marion OH
Date: 27 Jan 05 - 12:05 PM

The Mills Brothers did the song "Cabdriver" on question #19, Not the Ink Spots. Whoever made up this test must be under 65.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: annamill
Date: 09 Nov 03 - 12:14 AM

Shut up!! I don't wanna talk about it!

BTW, is there an off-chance that anyone remembers Uncle Fred who played Farmer Grey(brown) cartoons with the stick mice and cats?

The cats would drive Farmer Grey(Brown) nutso until he threw them into a bag and throw them into a river and they would come back thru the faucet on his sink.

Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons kinda remind me of them.

I knew almost all the answers, Amos. I didn't know 1,6,8,19.

Annamill

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Joybell
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 04:40 PM

Oh Miken, Thank you! Geezerette sounds great.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Miken
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 02:08 AM

Joybell, you do indeed! I can't imagine it. You are hereby a full geezerette, with all honors .
Mike

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 11:31 PM

I'm glad to say I did not get a perfect score. Didn't have a clue what Howdy's princess' name was. So there. I think that missing one puts me in contention for non-geezerhood. After all, at my age I will be forgetting the answers to the other questions very soon won't I.

Nice test, Amos

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Joybell
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 06:06 PM

No fair! I always wanted to be a Geezer but not only am I a woman I'm an Australian woman! Please may I have an Australian translation? I worked for almost nothing as a student nurse in 1962, 6 days a week, AND I had to wear a long white apron, thick grey stockings and lace-up shoes. I reckon I qualify for Geezer status for the outfit alone.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 05:26 PM

Hey, I found my 1959 Ground Observer Corps certificate and a badly corroded set of wings. (I've been sorting through important documents stored in my late father's files.) We used to live near a naval air station, so we always had plenty of patrol bombers to report. I think our record was 24 in one day. But, you know, not a single Russian bomber got through!

What we'd do when we were on duty was fill in the blanks with regard to any airplane we saw, and then phone in the information to air command headquarters, which in our case was Bangor. After a while we set the whole routine to the tune of "The Old Oaken Bucket" and it went something like this:

Aircraft flash, one bi-motor bomber,
Overhead, no delay,
Foxtrot Papa, 1-4 Black,
Flying southeast, very high.

No one else seemed amused.

Some idea of our status, from the perspective of the military, may be inferred from our retirement ceremony where we got our certificates and wings. The officer who presided had his leg in a cast; we assumed that he couldn't vacate the room as fast as the other potential volunteers, or had injured himself in the process.

Anyway, I'm real happy to have rediscovered my wings.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Amos
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 09:52 PM

Jeeze! I got a buck an hour for jerking sodas and making cones in my first job. Part I loved best was using the blender!! Whirrrrrrrr!!! (Easily Amused Department).   :>)

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST,Nancy King at work
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 08:46 PM

Yeah, Bill, nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

The lowest wage I ever got (other than 35 cents per hour for babysitting the minister's kids) was in 1962 or thereabouts, when I got $10 per week for waitressing at an inn in Maine. The idea was that tips would make up the difference. Of course, the inn had virtually no guests at the time, so there were no tips. Then the owner decided that the waitresses should be making themselves useful, and put two of us up on ladders, outdoors, with buckets of ammonia water to clean the windows. At that point I quit.

Cheers, Nancy

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 07:34 PM

somehow lost track of this thread...but, Amos...*grin*..unless they changed it at some point, I KNOW my version of the Buster Brown opening is right....the "wroof, wroof" is what alerted you!

green plastic on the TV screen.."Winky-Dink & You"

who remembers green TV screen? Hoffman!
singing
"I like Hoffman, yes I do,
My whole fam'ly likes it too.
That's because I realize,
It protects my children's precious eyes"

yes, I kneaded the margarine, put my feet in the fluoroscope, had an easy phone #--329J in New Orleans.. ("number, please!" "get me 329J, operator"), and ran both the ditto machine and the mimeograph.

Wow, I long for the days before all this nostalgia!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Ebbie
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 03:39 PM

I remember coffee and a piece of pie for a quarter and a gallon of gas for 17 cents. During a 'gas war', I believe it went even lower but 17 was the least I paid regularly.

I once switched to Raleigh cigarettes in order to get their stamps.

The lowest wage I ever got: In Virginia, $7.00 per a 5-day week for helping in a woman's house up the road- and the money went to my parents. The woman was outraged when I used the 'colored' man's hand towel.

I remember a pack of gum for 5 cents. I was totally nonplussed when it increased in price. It never had, in my memory.

I don't remember Smilin' Ed, but I do remember Smilin' Jack, in Dick Tracy. He was so good looking they never showed his face.

Ya didn't color lard- that was oleomargarine. I understand it was the dairy industry that won legislation that forbade ready-mixed, butter-colored spread.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: LindaG
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 08:45 AM

Ah, I also meant to say that when xerox machines came out, the copies were white on black. I kept copying a diagram of the skeleton and bringing it home, but I could never learn the bones because wherever I put that paper my cat would find it and chew it to bits--it smelled like dead fish. "--But my cat ate my homework!!"

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: LindaG
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 08:30 AM

The school I worked in in 1980 was still using both the stencil and the ditto machine (maybe still is--who knows?). I remember when the milk man would let us kids ride down the street in the truck with him.

Nancy King reminded me of two favorite '50's things of mine that abruptly disapeared. They were looking at my feet in the x-ray machine in the shoestore, and a tv program where you sent away for a green transparent piece of plastic that you stuck on to the tv screen and drew pictures on, along with the tv host. (Probably fears of radiation killed both things --along with the doctor's fluoroscope.) I recall as a three year old being mesmerized by Kate Smith on tv in the afternoons.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 08:47 AM

Toadfrog is right about the mimeograph/Ditto machine distinction. "Ditto" was a brand name; the generic term was "spirit duplicator." (Don't feel bad; many people confused the two even when they were new.)

And as I remember it, we sniffed the pages because they smelled good. I never heard of "getting high" until several years later.

Ditto machines used a paper "master." You could write or type on the master, and the thick purple ink would be deposited on the back of the paper from another sheet that was something like carbon paper. (How many people remember carbon paper?) You would tear off and discard the back sheet and attach the front sheet to the Ditto cylinder with the back side of the paper facing out, so that the print appeared backwards. As the cylinder rotated, the master would be coated with a thin clear aromatic solvent that partly dissolved the ink and allowed it to be deposited on the paper that passed through the machine. The ink that was initially present on the master was all the ink there ever was; there was no way to replace the ink when it was used up. As the ink was used up, the copies gradually got fainter until they were illegible. Then the master was useless. As I recall, you could only make about 50 copies.

Mimeographs were used when more copies were wanted. A mimeograph "stencil" was a thin sheet of waxy plastic, which you would put in a typewriter, disable the ribbon, and then pound hard on the keys (This was before electric typewriters.) so that each keystroke would cause the letter to actually cut through the stencil, making holes that ink could later flow through. But you couldn't pound TOO hard, because that would cause the enclosed parts of letters like "a" and "e" to fall out, making them appear solid black in the finished copy. The ink was thick, black, and not very aromatic. You poured it directly into the center of the drum and spread it around with a brush. As the copies got faint, you could add more ink. I never saw a mimeograph stencil wear out. I think you could use them to make 1000 copies or more.

So, if a teacher was making copies for one class, it was probably a Ditto machine. If the principal was making copies for the entire school, it was probably a mimeograph.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 01:47 AM

Way to go, y'auld phart!! :>)

Nice to hear from you after such long absence!!

Warmest regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 22 Sep 03 - 12:39 AM

100% on the test for this geezer

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 09:22 PM

My first job paid 63c per hour. Cleaning the stables for the pony express.

No, actually it was in a sardine packing plant.
As a teen I dug clams for $6.00 per bushell. They now sell them by the pound in super markets.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 08:24 PM

Wasn't there also a "Red Feather Man" on the radio who used to tell stories about battles between red and gray squirrls?

There was also the Fairy Tale program sponsored by Cream of Wee-Wee.

Our phone number was 16W2.

Now who served in the GROUND OBSERVOR CORPS, what did you observe, and what were your call letters?

Cheerily,
Fox-Trot-Popa-1-4-Black

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 08:22 PM

EGAD, Sandy, I only lived a couple of blocks from there! Just up Latona Avenue. About the time you were flipping up seats on the water-bicycles, I was just a couple of blocks away, passing out numbers to people standing in line at DeMent's ice cream shop on the corner of N.E. 71st and E. Green Lake Way. Dement had the first soft ice cream machine in town, and on Saturdays and Sundays hordes of people used to line up around the block to get a soft ice cream cone, and he didn't want them getting into arguments about who got there first. Now, little machines do what I used to do. You just walk up to it and "take a number." DeMent paid me two-bits an hour, and on my breaks, I got a soft ice cream cone. The pay wasn't much, but the bennies were very good!

And Kendall, if I remember rignt, the Cisco Kid's sidekick was Pancho. At the end of each program, as Cisco and Pancho were riding off into the sunset, Pancho would crack some horrible pun, and then:

CISCO (with a mixture of horror and disgust, and in spite of himself, amusement): "Oh,PANCHO!!"
PANCHO (in the spirit of "HA! I got off another good one!"): "Oh, Cisco!"
(Ride off, both laughing uproariously.)

(I suspect there may have been some allusion there to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 07:47 PM

If you don't count getting $1 a day for raising and lowering the seats for customers renting water-bicycles on Green Lake in Seattle back in 1940, my first real wages were $.40 an hour working for Consolidated Printers & Stationers in Salina, Kansas, in 1944. I think I was paid about the same extravagant sum for pumping $0.135 (thirteen and a half cents) per gallon gas at a Dixie Oil Co. station, also in Salina. That's why I felt RICH when I dumped that job to follow the harvest in the wheat fields and was paid $14 a DAY, plus food and lodging, although the lodging was frequently a pile of hay in the loft of an old barn. It may have been a bit crude, and occasionally itchy, but I thought it was the bee's knees!
    I got 19 out of 20. The Ink Spots answer stumped me. I suspect the proper answer should have been the Mills Brothers. Our milk bottles were just left standing on the back step, but fancier folks had those metal-clad, insulated boxes to hold them. Kenwood 1427 reached us on the first phone we ever had -- Arlington, Virginia, 1942.
    I knew Jack, Doc & Reggie because the boys double octet in which I sang always practiced on their broadcast night and had to take a break to listen when they came on. It was years before I realized the announcer wasn't saying "Isle of a Mystery!" at the opening of the program. (For the Brits: actually, he was saying "I Love a Mystery" -- an early Mondegreen for me.)
    Sorry, Kendall, I can't answer the hard ones. What product sponsored "Little Orphan Annie" on the radio? Can you still sing the introductory song?
    Sandy (a curmudgeon, for sure)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 07:23 PM

Ok, so my memory is fading. Maybe it wasn't the Cisco Kid. Then who was Chito, Jose' Gonzales, Bustamante Rafferty?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 03:51 PM

I remember horse-drawn milk-delivery-carts in what's now called Inner London - they came back during the war and a few years afterwards.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: curmudgeon
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 03:40 PM

You really have me stumped, Kendall.   My memories of the Cisco Kid go back to the third grade (1950) at the latest; I cannot recall any partner but Pancho. I even saw them together at a rodeo in the Boston Garden -- Tom

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: kendall
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 02:40 PM

Well, I guess no one cares what the Cisco Kid's sidekick was called. sniff

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Mark Clark
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 02:27 PM

I remeber fluoroscopes in the shoe store, breaking the red berry and kneading the marjarine to make it yellow, I remember WWII ration stamps, our telephone number was 5 digits long—all our relatives still counted rings—and I remember seeing the milk bottle caps (a small cardboard disc) raised up by the frozen cream in the winter but how many had the milk delivered by horse-drawn wagon in a city of 200,000 or more?

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 05:06 AM

That free-milk post was mine - my cookie had crumbled.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 05:02 AM

At school the little free-milk bottles used to freeze some mornings, and the milk monitor had to stick the bottles on the radiator to thaw. You drank it with lumps of ice floating around in it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Gloredhel
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 02:23 AM

Pardon me, but I am not as old as dirt. I got 18 answers right, and that happens to be my age. It's just my parents who are older than dirt, and I actually listen to all those stories.

Papa has a 1951 Studebaker Champion. Bullet-nose and everything. Pretty baby, but not as pretty as the '47 Lincoln that lives down the street. Oh man!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Padre
Date: 21 Sep 03 - 12:02 AM

I have a song book of tunes 'made famous' by Smilin' Ed McConnel - he did a radio show before the Buster Brown Gang, where he sang gospel songs.

It's bad enough that I got 18/20 on this test, but every car I lusted after in High School now has an 'antique' license tag on it. And whatever happened to Nila Mack and 'Let's Pretend,' or 'The National Farm and Home Hour?'

Padre (who feels 10 years older just reading this stuff)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Ely
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 10:50 PM

Whoa, I'm 26 and I have at least a "muddy mind", going on full-blown geezer.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: SINSULL
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 10:39 PM

My sister-in-law is from Buffalo and was a member of the Peanut Gallery.

We had bread delivered as well as milk. And once in a while the breadman came with tiny wrapped loaves for children.

Before TV was on 24 hours a day, the screen would be filled with test patterns and the sound was an annoying whistle. But just before they went to the pattern they showed a Burl Ives cartoon of Barbara Allan and another of Susie Snowflake. I knew Barbara Allan before I was five years old. The TV was in my cousin's house. We didn't have one at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Don Firth
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 09:56 PM

Yeah! My job during WWII was to break the little red bullet and knead the bag of lard until was the color of butter. Sometimes I'd take a Mason jar (remember Mason jars?) full of heavy cream and shake it until it turned to actual butter. It was pretty bland (salt free) until Mom dinked with it a bit. Saved red points that way (anybody old enough to remember red points during WWII?).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: MAG
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 09:08 PM

17. and those were real x-rays, doing horrible things to our feet no doubt.

I really liked the milkman, because when he saw I was trying to learn how to garden, he brought me his extra tomato plants. Only in small towns ...

AXtel 9 -

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 07:10 PM

OLEO!! THe little red bullet in the plastic bag of lard. I musta been about four! LOL!

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Nancy King
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 06:49 PM

Well, I got a 17. It never occurred to me to sniff the mimeograph/ditto ink. If only I'd known!

Anybody else remember kneading the little dye pellet into the margerine?

Or looking at the bones in your feet through the X-ray machine (or was it a fluoroscope?) in the shoe store?

Cheers, Nancy

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 06:45 PM

Man what a buncha old geeezers!**bg** I got 16 right, but only knew some of them through osmosis from older sibs; I hadn't even heard of duck and cover and a lot of other things until I was an adult! I think my kids would do as well on the test as I did, as we had milk delivered, still, when my youngest was a baby, 26 years ago; they've heard all about green and gold stamps and seen the items I bought my sibs with them for Christmas, way back when, as my mom let me save some of them up for that; and, when we moved to MA in 1983, a small store there had wax bottles of sugar water, PLUS wax lips and harmonicas at Halloween. I loved green stamps!!

Has anyone noticed that towels today don't even last as long as those thin, skimpy ones which used to be in boxes of laundry detergent? And, how on earth to young folks build up their sets of glassware without boxes of detergent with glass tumblers inside?

katontheshysideofbeingageezette:-)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Think You're a Geezer??' Exam! (US)
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 03 - 06:30 PM

My fondest memories of youth were of working a dairy farm on a boarding school I went to. Didn't do haying, though -- just spreading and shoveling manure and milking.   And they couldn't make it too hard on us.

Diamond Reo!!A blast from the past indeed, Charlie. I think they went out of business around the time the Stanley Steamer did!! lol!

A