Geezer Test
I made a 16 on this. Give it a try....see if you rate the geezer category. FOR THOSE OF YOU UNDER 30...DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE LOW SCORE YOU WILL GET.....
BUT BE SURE TO READ THE ANSWERS JUST TO SEE HOW LIFE USE TO BE.
History Exam...
If you don't score very well blame it on being too young !! It is a win -
win situation.
This is a History Exam for those who don't mind seeing how much they
really remember about what went on in their life. Get paper and pencil and
number from 1 to 20.
Write the letter of each answer and score at the end.
1. In the 1940's, where were automobile headlight dimmer switches located?
a. On the floor shift knob
b. On the floor board, to the left of the clutch
c. Next to the horn
2. The bottle top of a Royal Crown Cola bottle had holes in it. For what
was it used?
a. Capture lightning bugs
b. To sprinkle clothes before ironing
c. Large salt shaker
3. Why was having milk delivered a problem in northern winters?
a. Cows got cold and wouldn't produce milk
b. Ice on highways forced delivery by dog sled
c. Milkmen left deliveries outside of front doors and milk would freeze,
expanding and pushing up the cardboard bottle top.
4. What was the popular chewing gum named for a game of chance?
a. Blackjack
b. Gin
c. Craps!
5. What method did women use to look as if they were wearing stockings
when none were available due to rationing during W.W.II
a. Suntan
b. Leg painting
c. Wearing slacks
6. What post-war car turned automotive design on its ear because you
couldn't tell whether it was coming or going?
a. Studebaker
b. Nash Metro
c. Tucker
7. Which was a popular candy when you were a kid?
a. Strips of dried peanut butter
b. Chocolate licorice bars
c. Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
8. How was Butch wax used?
a. To stiffen a flat-top haircut so it stood up
b. To make floors shiny and prevent scuffing
c. On the wheels of roller skates to prevent rust
9. Before inline skates, how did you keep your roller skates attached to
your shoes?
a With clamps, tightened by a skate key
b. Woven straps that crossed the foot
c. Long pieces of twine
10. As a kid, what was considered the best way to reach a decision?
a. Consider all the facts
b. Ask Mom
c. Eeny-meeny-miney-mo
11. What was the most dreaded disease in the 1940's?
a. Smallpox
b. AIDS
c. Polio
12. "I'll be down to get you in a ________, Honey"
a. SUV
b. Taxi
c. Streetcar
13. What was the name of Caroline Kennedy's pet pony?
a. Old Blue
b. Paint
c. Macaroni
14. What was a Duck-and-Cover Drill?
a. Part of the game of hide and seek
b What you did when your Mom called you in to do chores
c. Hiding under your desk, and covering your head with your arms in an
A-bomb drill.
15. What was the name of the Indian Princess on the Howdy Doody show?
a. Princess Summerfallwinterspring
b. Princess Sacajawea
c. Princess Moonshadow
16. What did all the really savvy students do when mimeographed tests were
handed out in school?
a. Immediately sniffed the purple ink, as this was believed to get you
high
b. Made paper airplanes to see who could sail theirs out the window
c. Wrote another pupil's name on the top, to avoid their failure
17. Why did your Mom shop in stores that gave Green Stamps with purchases?
a. To keep you out of mischief by licking the backs, which tasted like
bubble gum
b. They could be put in special books and redeemed for various household
items
c. They were given to the kids to be used as stick-on tattoos
18. Praise the Lord, and pass the _________?
a Meatballs
b. Dames
c. Ammunition
19. What was the name of the singing group that made the song "Cabdriver"
a hit?
a. The Ink Spots
b. The Supremes
c. The Esquires
20. Who left his heart in San Francisco?
a. Tony Bennett
b. Xavier Cugat
c. George Gershwin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANSWERS
1. b) On the floor, to the left of the clutch. Hand controls, popular in
Europe, took till the late '60s to catch on.
2. b) To sprinkle clothes before ironing. Who had a steam iron?
3. c) Cold weather caused the milk to freeze and expand, popping the
bottle top.
4. a) Blackjack Gum.
5. b) Special makeup was applied, followed by drawing a seam down the back
of the leg with eyebrow pencil.
6. a) 1946 Studebaker.
7. c) Wax coke bottles containing super-sweet colored water.
8 a) Wax for your flat top (butch) haircut.
9. a) With clamps, tightened by a skate key, which you wore on a
shoestring around your neck.
10. c) Eeny-meeny-miney-mo.
11. c) Polio. In beginning of August, swimming pools were closed, movies
and other public gathering places were closed to try to prevent spread of
the disease.
12. b) Taxi. Better be ready by half-past eight!
13. c) Macaroni.
14. c) Hiding under your desk, and covering your head with your arms in an
A-bomb drill.
15. a) Princess Summerfallwinterspring. She was another puppet.
16. a) Immediately sniffed the purple ink to get a high.
17. b) Put in a special stamp book, they could be traded for household
items at the Green Stamp store.
18. c) Ammunition, and we'll all be free.
19. a) The widely famous 50's group: The Inkspots.
20. a) Tony Bennett, and he sounds just as good today..
SCORING
17- 20 correct: You are older than dirt, and obviously gifted with mental
abilities. Now if you could only find your glasses. Definitely someone who
should share your wisdom!
12 -16 correct: Not quite dirt yet, but you're getting there.
0 -11 correct: You are not old enough to share the wisdom of your
experiences.
:cool:
17, but I swear I'm not THAT old! :redface:
15.
Several of these were still in operation when I was a kid in the late 60s: milk delivery, skate keys, green stamps.
And the first car I remember had the footswitch for high-beams. I think it was a pre-Ralph Nader Corvair, unsafe at any speed.
And when you were a kid you always stood in the passenger seat, because when you're 5 that's the only way you can see where you're going. No silly child car seats or any of that nonsense, and if your parent hit the brake instead of the high-beam switch, well, rides were a major source of entertainment.
17 (but we should be able to divide it by our age to 'normalize' the score!)
I got a 17.
I had milk delivery in the early 70s at my house. We used to fill the milk cooler box with frogs and stuff we would catch. Not as a prank to scare the milkman, just because it made a nice container.
My cousin had a GMC Gremlin in the mid 80s. I helped him replace the foot switch for the lights, because it had rusted through.
My mom used to collect those green stamps when I was a kid. She got a cheap wheelbarrow with them one time.
My kids today, in 2006, do Eeny-meeny-miney-mo to decide between things, unless there are more than two, then they do one-potato two-potato.
We had those wax bottles filled with bug juice when I was a kid, but I wouldn't call them popular.
Also had those metal roller skates that needed the key.
I sniffed plenty of mimeographed paper. Even helped the teacher once after school by cranking out papers on the machine. It had a big handle.
The other ten I got right were things I had heard of or were obvious guesses based on how the questions and answers were phrased.
The metal roller skates became prototypical skateboards once nailed to pieces of 2 by 4s in my neighborhood -- and the cause of more than a few broken arms.
18
I am not as old as many questions on that test, but I do read a lot.
I got a classical guitar (that I still own) and a card table (that my computer is sitting on) with Plaid Stamps.
I never had the roller skates with the key ... mine were the leather strap variety. I didn't rollerskate much ... I really preferred ice skating, and since it was less than a mile walk to the community skating lake, I spent a lot of time there.
10, but most of those were SWAGs.
18.
Missed the Princess puppet question, and the mimeo question. But then again, I wasn't wired that way in school, too straight arrow, when I wasn't daydreaming.
I missed on the one about the car, and the fill in the blank song title.
18. I think Bruce sent this to me awhile back. I am sorry to say that I am in fact old enough to have either experienced all of the above or to have had it related to me in a wistful fashion by parents or grandparents. On the other hand, the Ink Spots are awesome.
18.
Missed the puppet princess and the studebacker, both of which are well before my time. Otherwise, good ol' educated guesses.
17 (but we should be able to divide it by our age to 'normalize' the score!)
We already pretty well see the 'average' score......
Maybe most of us really ARE geezers! :rolleyes:
Brings back a lot of memories and confirms a lot of tales.
:lol2: :lol2:
No comment about the Corvair?
Fuck.
20.
God, I can smell the "Ben-Gay" creeping up on me.
I was only born in 1971.
Kill me.
Kill me now.
19. But the only reason it wasn't all 20 was I didn't do eeny-meeny-miney-mo to answer The Ink Spots on question #19.
I like winning, even if it is being the geezeriest person here :blush:
(Crimson Ghost peeked. That's a kid thing, you know, cheating ;) )
OK, so what did I win? A cemetery plot? :reaper:
19. But the only reason it wasn't all 20 was I didn't do eeny-meeny-miney-mo to answer The Ink Spots on question #19.
I like winning, even if it is being the geezeriest person here :blush:
(Crimson Ghost peeked. That's a kid thing, you know, cheating ;) )
Nope.
Didn't peek.
I wrote my answers, and figured that there was a link to the answers.
Ah, well, sucks to be me.
19. But the only reason it wasn't all 20 was I didn't do eeny-meeny-miney-mo to answer The Ink Spots on question #19.
I like winning, even if it is being the geezeriest person here :blush:
Heh! You forgot about your evil twin! I got 19, also. I missed the studebaker question.
I still remember being on long car trips with my folks and falling asleep in the back seat to the sound of my Dad flicking the high beams off and on with that floor button. Later when I turned 16, I was given that same old car to drive and I flicked the beams off and on with my left foot just like my Dad had done. Sometimes to this very day if its late at night and I'm very tired, I'll catch myself feeling on the floor board with my left foot to turn the high lights on! Now,
that's geezerhood!
Hee hee, yeah, the Twins would naturally get the same geezer-level :blush: I thought everybody knew about the dimmer button on the floor, every car we owned had one, even the 1969 Cutlass which I bought from the momster. Many of those questions were actually pre-boomer history, and I only knew the answers because I was always listening in when the adults were talking. And besides that, progress used to arrive rather slowly back in North Carolina.
My 1980 Datsun 210 had a floor mounted high beam switch, IIRC.
I got 19 rite, but then I was hatched in 57. Kewl year, my first car was a 50 Chrysler Windsor. And yes the 70s are a blur. :fumette: :bong:
15, but I guessed on a few.
I got 16 and I was born in 69. I almost got 17 with the Howdie Doody question, but I was scared of ventriloquist dummies as a kid and avoided that show.
It also was not on the air when you were a child.
It was off by the time I was a kid too, but I had a recording of the theme song.
16. Would have been 17 but I decided not to count the studebaker question as my hubbie told me the answer. I was born in '69, but I am a Jeopardy champion in training and know a lot of trivia, so that's my excuse. :right:
20, but why should I have not. Dirty old man or sexie senior. Hell I'm older than baseball!
18. Missed the Studebaker and the pick you up in a taxi.
"I've got a brand new pair of rollerskates/You got a brand new key..."
I'm pretty old. I can remember when Woody Allen was funny!
And when the late Jaime Cardinal Sin's paycheck was... uh... cause for comment...
14 and proud of it - being born in 1972 in England means this was a test not so much of my age as my ability to pick up on other people's cultural references.
Oh and some guesses of course...
Didn't know this was here. I got a 16. I'm geezeresque. We still had a lot of this in the 60's and my dad and aunts talked a lot about the depression and WWII. Also, I read the time–life "this fabulous century" books over and over.
yeah, that's the ticket.
I know I pretty much suck at pop culture.
I've been continuously amazed at the scores. I reckon the geezer test scores aren't really based on one's age, but how well we retain information. A lot of the questions I got right were not from experience, but from other folks' experiences that they had shared with me as a young man.
I still think the only way you can walk for miles to school UPHILL BOTH WAYS is to live in two separate places and have an evening chauffer. ;)
What if your home and your school are on different hills two miles apart?
you would only walk HALFWAY to school uphill both ways. ;)
yeah!! I only knew 10 (and actually guessed a couple of those) ... I am not an old geezer like the rest of you!! :lol:
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning …… uphill BOTH ways .. through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs .....
to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full- time, after-school job at the local textile mill .... where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But…….
Now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ….with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!
And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!
We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked!
Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!
And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! ... Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!
Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little bastards!
And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up .. we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire. imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.
You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980.
:lol:
awesome, xoB :lol:
That reminded me of something from my wee small days, though. We didn't even have a phone line to ourselves. It was a party line. And the woman we shared it with (who lived about 2 doors down, IIRC -- but I was young) would get calls at ALL HOURS of the night. And whenever you wanted to use the phone, she would be on it. And she'd get all huffy when you asked her to let you use it.
Wow. Thanks for the weird deja vu moment, dude.
Cool! I forgot that we had a party line when I was a kid too.
We were lucky, because the people we shared it with were never on the phone. I only remember a handful of times that I picked up the phone when someone else was using it.
My parent held on to that party line for as long as they could. The other parties on their party line went and got their own private lines, and my parents ended up paying the lower party line rate while having a private line. They did this for years, until some change in phone regulations allowed the phone company to drop them from that plan.
I would have had a 20, but I simply skipped over 13 somehow; didn't answer it at all. True geezerness. I agree that the questions pretty much tested knowlege about the '60s.
I agree that the questions pretty much tested knowlege about the '60s.
You meant to say "the PEOPLE in their 60'S" :lol: A lot of those questions were about life in the late 1940 and early '50s.
My parent held on to that party line for as long as they could. The other parties on their party line went and got their own private lines, and my parents ended up paying the lower party line rate while having a private line. They did this for years, until some change in phone regulations allowed the phone company to drop them from that plan.
We lost the party line when they went to dial phones but that may be because it was a small town. :)
MaggieL! Wow! Long time no post!
You just missed her
here :D
OK bruce, post#36, did you pen that and how did I get a version of it ascribed to mickey rooney, of all people, in my email from my dad last month?
I had a party line whern I lived in VT in the late 70's early 80's. We also only had to dial the last 4 digits of the phone # if we were calling within the same prefix.
I still think the only way you can walk for miles to school UPHILL BOTH WAYS is to live in two separate places and have an evening chauffer. ;)
Unless you go to school with m.c. escher.
You meant to say "the PEOPLE in their 60'S" :lol: A lot of those questions were about life in the late 1940 and early '50s.
Point well taken...execpt that the only thing specifically pre-1950 was the leg painting . I think of myself as having "grown up in the '60s", alhough I was born in 1952.
By the time I was in a public school they no longer taught "duck and cover"...what had been a "air-raid drill" was now called a "retention drill", and while the procedure card still had the Homeland Security^h^h^h^h^h Civil Defense logo on it, it was clearly generalized to be useful for weather emergencies as well.
I suspect "duck and cover" was expected to be useful for a *nuclear*("Atomic", A-bomb, fission bomb) attack; the standard position for *thermonuclear* ("Hydrogen", H-Bomb, fusion bomb) attack was "head between legs/kiss ass goodby".
Tim Leary always said growing up in the 1960's was like being raised in an insane asylum. Anybody remeber the movie "Pleasantville"?
I love that movie. Own it too.
By the time I was in a public school they no longer taught "duck and cover"...what had been a "air-raid drill" was now called a "retention drill", and while the procedure card still had the Homeland Security^h^h^h^h^h Civil Defense logo on it, it was clearly generalized to be useful for weather emergencies as well.
I started school in 1950. Strangely enough, I do not remember any of the duck-and-cover drills from my school days, and only know about them because from the beginning they were mocked in the media as absurdly inadequate to deal with any real emergencies. If we had them, I would have remembered because I always thought it was great fun to pretend that a hurricane was coming and we had to get under the dining room table and stay away from windows when such weather was approaching. I DO remember fallout shelters for the backyard being sold, however, and how well into the 1960's the civil defense sirens were tested at noon and signs directing you to the (supposed) shelters were posted in large buildings. The attitude in this country nowdays about protecting the public is nonexistent. While Switzerland and China have completed massive projects to greatly increase their chances of survival, America outside the Mormon church would not even have a clue what to do or where to go. But fear not, this Administration has well provided for the protection of Dick Cheney, Congress and their families, and the nitwit in the White House who will probably be on vacation anyway should something befall us.
The attitude in this country nowdays about protecting the public is nonexistent. While Switzerland and China have completed massive projects to greatly increase their chances of survival, America outside the Mormon church would not even have a clue what to do or where to go.
Living in D.C., the one thing that struck me about the attacks of 9/11 is that our government is impotent in an emergency. There were lots of sirens and lots of activity that day in DC, but nothing of any value was done (except by the Arlington County fire department and area hospitals.)
New Orleans simply reiterated that lesson.
I now have little more than disdain for my government's ability to do anything worthwhile in an emergency. Just assume there is no government when there is an emergency, and take care of yourself. You will be better off. How full is your pantry?
I don't recall the emergency drills other than fire drills. I spent a lot of my tad days in Catholic scool, so maybe that explains it . I reckon we just thought Mother Mary would handle it.... Not to mention St. Chris. But he got fired, didn't he? hmmmm...
OK bruce, post#36, did you pen that and how did I get a version of it ascribed to mickey rooney, of all people, in my email from my dad last month?
I had a party line whern I lived in VT in the late 70's early 80's. We also only had to dial the last 4 digits of the phone # if we were calling within the same prefix.
Email, not ascribed to anyone. I'm too old to be writing about the 80s.
Yes, dial 4 digits in your own exchange, which in my case was the whole town. They didn't get a touch tone system until the late 90s. Although you could use a faux touch tone phone, data transmission was kaput. :smack:
One of the most fascinating things I've ever seen was in 1989 - an old telephone switch still in operation. At the time I worked in telecommunications and was working with various baby bells to upgrade their equipment. Every phone number came into the old switch building and terminated at a set of relays. The room was full of these relay sets. The old dial phones would activate these relays and a mechanical connection would be made. The room was loud with clicking relays.
These massive switch rooms previously replaced massive rooms of operators, who would help you make your call by actually plugging wires into jacks. The switches were a huge advance back in the day: "direct dial". People actually had to be educated in direct dialling and how NOT to use the operator.
Now, these switch rooms are replaced by silent computers which can make these connections at the speed of light. An entire room of switches replaced by, roughly, a desktop system.
All those hundreds of thousands of operators jobs are lost, but we are better off without them because it doesn't cost $20 to call Omaha for 5 minutes.
Think of the energy savings as well. I wonder what we do now that'll be seen as so obviously inefficient. Of course those relays were EMP resistant...
While Switzerland and China have completed massive projects to greatly increase their chances of survival, America outside the Mormon church would not even have a clue what to do or where to go.
I suspect that's a perception that's reinforced by time spent in (or watching through the lens of media that originates in) urban centers, an ecological niche that cultivates a population that depends on the government to do everything for them and screams in abject victimhood when it doesn't.
I don't think it's a fair assessment of the US population as a whole. Folks I know in other areas are much more self-reliant.
I was born in '64. we did a LOT of tornado drills in the 70's.
One of the most fascinating things I've ever seen was in 1989 - an old telephone switch still in operation. At the time I worked in telecommunications and was working with various baby bells to upgrade their equipment. Every phone number came into the old switch building and terminated at a set of relays. The room was full of these relay sets. The old dial phones would activate these relays and a mechanical connection would be made. The room was loud with clicking relays.
That's so cool! Somehow my dad finagled a tour of the local teleco for my siblings and me back in the early '80s. We went into a switching room just like the one you describe. I was amazed that there was one switching machine that corresponded to each telephone line in my home town. The guy led us over to the mechanical switching machine for our phone number, but of course it was idle since we weren't at home placing a call.
I went on so many tours of places like that when I was a kid. A sardine packing factory in Maine was a real treat to see. They have little old ladies that pack those fish into the cans like that. Raw. Then they bake the can, and apply the lable.
Companies used to give tours back then. Now privacy issues and liability concerns mean that you can't get tours of anything. The few places that offer tours are really just trips to the gift shop.
I suspect that's a perception that's reinforced by time spent in (or watching through the lens of media that originates in) urban centers, an ecological niche that cultivates a population that depends on the government to do everything for them and screams in abject victimhood when it doesn't.
Nope, my perception is based on a sister who has lived in Switzerland for 10 years and who is required by law to keep a fully stocked shelter in her basement. Then there is my cousin who is married to a Chinese national and travels back and forth frequently due to her job teaching at William and Mary College. Both countries started long ago on a system of public defense that is mind-boggling to American mentalities. The Swiss even have all those tunnels through the Alps set up to act as giant fallout shelters if necessary. This stems from being a country located inbetween historic adversaries who might launch attacks on each other over the top of Swiss heads. Sounds like foresight against the obvious to me, not dependence on the government. As for China, they have all the slave labor they need and even built the largest dam in the world by ordering women and children carrying woven baskets of dirt to do what we do with union workers on bulldozers for 1000 times the price. China got the very logical idea that either the US or Russia was going to end up attacking them one of these days, so when they started rebuilding all their cities they made sure the proper facilities were added underground. Chinese do not ask the government to take care of them, they have no choice in the matter.
So you are quite mistaken on this count. And may I ask, if the government is NOT required to take care of the population in this area, how do you think it will get done? For one thing, how would you suggest that private industry handle it? Sell timeshares?
despite my near complete lack of musical aptitude (although I can remember lyrics to songs after only hearing them once or twice, I only need to learn to carry a tune) I always wanted to start a group that only played fifties and sixties cover tunes and call it "Duck and Cover."
I just thought it was too obscure for most people. That and my afforementioned total lack of talent.
:(
Tonchi:
I have heard, and this may be one of those viscous rumors/urban legends that all those fallout shelters etc. we had in the US during the cold war (such as gymnasiums and school basements) weren't intended to help anyone survive the blast or firestorm, but rather created a tidy way of dealing with the inevitable, unmanagable population of rotting corpses. "Be calm and follow the signs pointing to your nearest mass grave."
That way when the folks in the really deep holes came out to salvage what they could, they wouldn't face the overwhelming pile of decay, it would be neatly below ground already.
It could have been just the P.O.V. of my hippy science teacher.
Speaking of Duck and Cover, we watched "The Iron Giant" tonight and it had a really amusing little scene involving duck and cover drills...
Tonchi:
I have heard, and this may be one of those viscous rumors/urban legends that all those fallout shelters etc. we had in the US during the cold war (such as gymnasiums and school basements) weren't intended to help anyone survive the blast or firestorm, but rather created a tidy way of dealing with the inevitable, unmanagable population of rotting corpses. "Be calm and follow the signs pointing to your nearest mass grave."
That way when the folks in the really deep holes came out to salvage what they could, they wouldn't face the overwhelming pile of decay, it would be neatly below ground already.
It could have been just the P.O.V. of my hippy science teacher.
I hadn't heard that before, it sounds like some marvelous attempt at gallows humor. Actually, although I remember seeing the "home size" shelters advertised on tv and in newspapers, nobody I ever met had one. I've seen films of the backhoes digging the holes for the drop-in module types, and remember thinking it looked more like a porta-potty than something that could protect a family of 4. In those days we were all very naive as to the lingering effects of a blast, and that is why John Wayne and a lot of Nevada residents are no longer with us, not to mention anybody who had been on a ship at Bikini Atol. The silly little ventilation chimneys these shelters had look very unscientific to us now, but in those days everybody acted like only the largest cities would ever be attacked anyway. But before the Cold War ended and all the missles were counted, there was a bomb somewhere pointed at every city of note, coast to coast.
The main uban legend they have spread in my area is that the Central Valley of California will purposely be spared the radiation because the Russians had specific plans for us. Neutron bombs and bioagents would be used instead to eradicate the population without disturbing the facilities and farmland. Since this area produces much of the food in our country, they intended it for their own use. Possible truth? Who knows. Hope I don't have to find out.
I've a gut feeling that all these "secret plans" attribute the US and Soviet leaders with much more control and much more intelligence than is warranted. I think the reality was, when we don't know what to do next, push "the button" and see what happens. :D
Nope, my perception is based on a sister who has lived in Switzerland for 10 years and who is required by law to keep a fully stocked shelter in her basement. Then there is my cousin who is married to a Chinese national ...
So you are quite mistaken on this count.
I was of course suggesting that your perception of
Americans that might be a bit myopic. But clearly you've been everywhere and seen everything.
Or your relatives have.
And may I ask, if the government is NOT required to take care of the population in this area, how do you think it will get done?
You think it's possible to
require the government to do something? I just think it's foolish to expect "the government" to take care of you...especially in view of their track record in other endeavors. Education, for example. I suppose we could pass a law like the Swiss one requiring people to provide and equip their own shelters.
How well do you think that would work? Seriously.
Of course, Swiss citizens subject to conscription in emergency (all the males from 20 to 40, same law that requires shelters) are required to keep an assault rifle and know how to use it, too. And it also requires you to make any space in your shelter available for government use.
I'm sure Swiss civil defense is admirable in principle (although I don't evny them their tax rates). Apparently they were spending at the level of US$33 per capita on civil defence in the 1980s...probably gone up quite a bit since then. Of course they only have about 7.5 million people. (Compare the Philadelphia metro area at 5 million.)
Many Americans have made preparations for emergencies. They just don't talk about it a lot...perhaps so others of a more socialist bent (you know, the ones who want "the government " to take care of them) won't decide it would only be fair for them to share in the event of an emergency.
Which brings us back to that assault rifle thing. :-)
Speaking of "fallout shelters", it's quite true they were not intended to guard against blast or fire, and that's why they were callled "fallout shelters" rather than "bomb shelters".
The yellow trefoil sign indicated the presence of a public building that might offer some modest protection from prompt radiation from a nuke going off some distance away as well as shielding from the dusting of fallout afterwards. They were stocked with emergency water in 55-gal drums, crackers and hard candy sealed in cans, and simple radiation monitoring equipment. The hope was that folks who took shelter might be able to survive on the emergency rations inside the building until the outside radiation levels became survivable. Obviously the story for anybody close enough to a strike to be affected by blast or firestorm was pretty grim.
Nobody with any sense at all thought these very minimal measures offered any garauntees. It was just viewed as better than nothing for those not close enough to a target to have been immediately crisped...which was a substantial fraction of the entire poplulation, even more so back then.
At the time I was living here in Philly--with the Frankford Arsenal, the Navy Yard, NAS Willow Grove (key antisub base), Univac and GE Missile and Space division, we were pretty sure the town was worth a warhead or two,
Those viscous rumors really stick around, don't they, Foot? ;)
As a wee tad of about five, I remember Meeker, Colorado as not having direct dial in 1961-63: you lifted the receiver, the operator would say, "Number please," and you'd give her all seven digits and she'd connect you. I don't know what you did to dial out of town, but that was the local procedure. Meeker was not a big town, and our street didn't get asphalt until right about the middle of our stay.
Leaping to another comment, having grown up in the sixties myself, my experience says Tim Leary was a dope. Too, I'd have trouble awarding the "foul decade" prize to any decade I've inhabited -- too much good on the other end of the seesaw from too much bad. The Seventies did have some spectacular stupidities. Perhaps the dumbest of these was disco: dumb music doesn't make it.
Speaking of "fallout shelters", it's quite true they were not intended to guard against blast or fire, and that's why they were callled "fallout shelters" rather than "bomb shelters".
Most people around here called them bomb shelters, and a few folks called them storm shelters.
I knew lots of folks who had dug a huge hole and pushed an old car in & covered it up to use as a 'bum' shelter. As a child they were very scary places. But cool.
I also take the position that fallout shelters are not bomb shelters.
I vaguely recall there being a CD sign on the front of my hospital when I started working there, but it's since been removed. I also remember a number of buildings on my college campus having that designation, and there were also actual bomb shelters on the property.
As a wee tad of about five, I remember Meeker, Colorado as not having direct dial in 1961-63: ~~snip~~, having grown up in the sixties myself, ~~snip~~
You didn't grow up in the 60s. :eyebrow:
Are you implying that UG never grew up?
Most people around here called them bomb shelters, and a few folks called them storm shelters.
Some folks did build real "bomb shelters"....I was referring to the then-ubiquitous Federally-stocked fallout shelter sites, denoted by a sign like this one:.
Here's the crackers/candy/water/dosimeter/geiger type equipment I referred to:
http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/shelsupp.htmlIt all looks so morbid.
I've heard them called fallout shelters, but rarely in the southeast.
Most of the older folks I knew would tell you that a nuclear attack would be 'the end of the world'. I believed it. I was very sure it would put your eye out.
Besides.....the crackers tasted like shit. :vomit:
Besides.....the crackers tasted like shit. :vomit:
Indeed. The candy kepy pretty well though. According to an article at that site the crackers were eventually recalled. How long they were speced to last, I don't know.
As for "morbid"...well...in those days the risk of nuclear war was quite real. In fact--although we didn't know it at the time--one Soviet sub sent to break the Cuban blockade was armed with nuclear torpedos. And they had tacical nukes that would have been used in the event of an invasion. It would only have taken one small miscaclulation on either side to light the big fuse.
T'was a very, very near thing. I'd hate to think we might have failed to prepare for what might have happened because it was "morbid". There was indeed a high level of fatalism in those days--one that is probably diffcult for somebody growing up post-Cold-War to imagine.
That would have been bad, by the time the Cuban thing happened we'd already hit the supplies in the dorm basement fallout shelter. :blush:
Those viscous rumors really stick around, don't they, Foot? ;)
:lol: They
slip by most people...
Those viscous rumors really stick around, don't they, Foot?
They slip by most people...
We got a couple of comedians here.
... But clearly you've been everywhere and seen everything.
Or your relatives have.
I was talking about the examples of China and Switzerland. Period. Your sarcasm is unwarranted.
You think it's possible to require the government to do something? I just think it's foolish to expect "the government" to take care of you...especially in view of their track record in other endeavors.
Well you see, it's kinda like this. We have these old pieces of paper cluttering up our history that say a few things about the purpose of government being to defend and protect the citizens. That's why we pay taxes and allow ourselves to be conscripted into the military should the need arise one of these days. Whether they, nowdays, are actually DOING that is a different issue for discussion. I am not saying anything whatever about the government "owing" me (or anybody) anything else. Not food or housing or education or toilet paper, nothing except the very reasonable expectation that they plan to prevent another power from dropping bombs on my head or in other ways terminating me while I am just going about my business. If we peasants are all toast, the so-called governors will have nobody to foot the bill either, so that is also their incentive to keep us safe, one would think. The deal is, we give them money and they take care of "all that", that's a contract that citizens have with their governments, and otherwise we would have to go back to fuedalism in order to secure our own protection. So please don't try to turn it into another discussion about entitlement mentality. Civil defense or the lack of it is not part of the welfare programs the last time I heard.
I was talking about the examples of China and Switzerland. Period. Your sarcasm is unwarranted
I'll keep my own counsel on that; my sarcasm is warranted whenever I deem it so. When I suggest you're off-base about how well prepared most Americans (when you include the population *outside* the Blue cities) are to deal with emeregencies, handwaving about China and Switzerland misses the point.
The deal is, we give them money and they take care of "all that", that's a contract that citizens have with their governments....
Did you ever sign a contract where you exchanged valuable consideration for the promise of something as vague as "all that"? We're pretty far from universal agreement on what "all that" actually entails and how to provide it, which is one reason we have the "pieces of paper" to which you allude.
With any kind of luck we'll avoid some of the definitions in use in Switzerland and China, where the distinction between "civil defense" and "welfare" does indeed seem a bit blurry. You should go read that Swiss law you're holding up as an exemplar. When the law requires me to turn over shelter space for use as the government sees fit (i.e. to give to somebody else), I'd say we're in the blur zone.
I'll keep my own counsel on that; my sarcasm is warranted whenever I deem it so.
Oh, how nice. We have somebody else like UG who feels free to jerk the conversation in any direction and attack the other person's knowledge, personality, motives or background when observed to be doing so. Well, I'll leave you there because, after all, my evil twin and I are only around to provide comic relief for people like you. Enjoy.
By the way, my mother's family has lived in Switzerland for 4 generations and if I wanted any further elaborations on what it is like there I would not be interested in having you tell me.
Oh, how nice. We have somebody else like UG who feels free to jerk the conversation in any direction and attack the other person's knowledge, personality, motives or background when observed to be doing so.
I just don't care to simply allow you to frame all the terms of debate. If you feel that's "jerking the conversation in any direction" and constitutes a personal attack on your motives, well, sorry. You'll just have to deal.
My main points are
1)The apparent truth of the proposition "most Americans are ill-prepared to deal with an emergency" varies widely with which subset of the population you're most familiar; it's far from isotropic.
2) The strategy of "I don't think the people are doing $X the way I think they should so let's have 'the goverment' do it for them my way at taxpayer expense." is not a winner
and
3) "How 'the government' does $X for them in China or Switzerland" is usually not portable to a country of our size, structure, situation and politics, even if we assume it was desrirable in situ.
THIS is what I said, and nothing else: "The attitude in this country nowdays about protecting the public is nonexistent. While Switzerland and China have completed massive projects to greatly increase their chances of survival, America outside the Mormon church would not even have a clue what to do or where to go."
The only statement of yours which even approaches it is 1). If you wish to take my statement, which I still stand by, and turn it into a discussion of entitlement mentality while dragging me by a noose around my neck into YOUR territory, forget it. I am not talking about anything else this government does or does not do, I said simply that if our government has abandoned any pretense of civil defense, there is no other way to do it on the scale which is required. I'm not interested in your survivalist mentality about every man for himself when the balloon comes down so let's stock up on ammunition and too bad if you other scum want into my shelter cause it ain't gonna work. I'm talking about the CITIZENS, all of the country, the 300 million people give or take a few million illegal aliens, who will be forced to take the consequences when a government who has only provided sanctuary for their highest officials leaves them in the open. I said that Switzerland and China have long ago addressed this issue and resolved it as well as possible, which is TRUE. That was the only point on which these other countries were mentioned and whatever else they do with their citizens or revenue is not at issue; nobody is analyzing HOW or WHY the did it, they just DID IT. One country is Socialist and the other Communist, they have nothing whatsover in common in this thread except that they looked to the security of their citizens. Our way of government has practically nothing in common with either of those countries, and although we have the ability to follow their example or go them one better, we have not and probably will not. My statements stop there. If you want to take those thoughts somewhere else and extrapolate into your own take on the situation, do not drag me with you. Go by yourself.
So, "how or why"...
one Socialist country twice the size of New Jersey with a population comparable to metro Philadelphia
and
one Communist country with five times the population of the US (in slightly less land area)
...have done what they've done to "protect the public" aren't germane to your version of the discussion, and that one is Socialist and the other Communist is irrelevant too (presumably because there's obviously no connection between Socialism and Communism).
My sense is "the attitude in the country nowdays about protecting the public" is that people should plan and provide their own protection as much a possible, rather than relying on "the government" to protect them. Of course, that's the attitude prevailing amongst the crowd *I* run with; *your* peeps obviously have a different view.
I think centralized planning and provisioning for emergencies sucks rocks; a distributed approach is much more robust. I suppose we'll find out how effective the centralized approach is if one of those systems you cite is ever called upon to perform, since they've "solved it as well as possible".
Are you implying that UG never grew up?
No, unfortunatly he did, but not in the 60s.
He said he was 5 in 61~63, so at the end of the 60s around 13, clearly not old enough to make the decisions that people facing the war had to make. He was probably mimicing the the adults he wanted to so dearly please.
When he did grow up in the 70s/80s, he busied himself with learning languages so that he could find authors that agreed with his left over childhood notions and never had to make real choices.
Sad really. :(
I'm an even bigger geezer now. I had completely forgotten this thread.
17, but you only need a good background in social history to get most of them.
I got 15.
1. B
2. C X
3. C
4. A
5. B
6. A
7. C
8. C X
9. A
10. C
11. C
12. C X
13. B X
14. C
15. C X
16. A
17. B
18. C
19. A
20. A
I got 20, even tho I had a problem with a couple of answers. Number 16 had a misnomer, calling ditto, or spirit duplicators mimeos. Mimeo sheets usually stunk, but dittos, which have been banned from classrooms here, have that nice smell of alcohol. I didn't use it to get high, and neither did anyone else I knew. It just smelled good.
Number 19 I only heard sang by the Mills Brothers. The answer says the Ink Spots were a fifties group, but they were around long before the fifties.
Okay, it's just details, but I'm geezer enough to be allowed to be crotchety.
I got 15...and most of them I lied/guessed. Very little relevant to Brits.
13. boy do I remember those air raid drills!
No, unfortunat[e]ly he did, but not in the 60s.
I date back to the Eisenhower Administration -- not that I really remember.
He was probably mimic[k]ing the the adults he wanted to so dearly please.
The adults I wanted to please didn't have an input here. Sometimes they looked quite askance at things I said. But they weren't going to tell me I was being some kind of evil monster for being anticommunist, after all.
When he did grow up in the 70s/80s, he busied himself with learning languages so that he could find authors that agreed with his left over childhood notions and never had to make real choices.
Sad really. :(
So you think you understand the motives behind my endeavors. If that's what you've come up with, you're only kidding yourself. Kidding yourself is a great way not to think in an enlightened way, which is regrettable in a man of your parts, Bruce. Right now, you're being a wanker, looking for any excuse however specious to reject proliberty, prohuman thought, just to see if you can make me feel bad. Not gonna happen; too much enlightenment and prodemocracy, proliberty thinking on this end. If there's not enough on your end, isn't it time to pull up your socks? You really seem to disapprove when I inveigh against totalitarianism and declare it should be made extinct -- which tells me you want it around. If you didn't, you'd sound more like me, and I have a very good way to sound. I make democracy's slackers quite uncomfortable by pointing out the horrors with which they declare themselves in sympathy -- I can see behind a lot of what people write, looking at their reasoning process. If you can't tell when you're slinging the BS, Bruce, I certainly can.
[edit] And I got 17. Tended to miss the music/popculture ones.
which is regrettable in a man of your parts, Bruce.
Something you boys want to share with the board?
[eta] I'm sorry. I can't help it. I'm British. I am genetically programmed to pick up on unintended smut.
:bolt: They're geezers.:bolt: