American Boomers in the Early 60s Quiz

Answer: Touch football

Can you remember Camelot - Jackie in her pillbox hats, JFK's special chair for his bad back, the comedic record album entitled "The First Family"? The U.S. still had peacekeepers and not troops in Vietnam - and a president who could shave properly while tricky Dicky couldn't even get elected Governor of California.

Many loved that engaging New England accent and when John Kennedy spoke he seemed to make us feel so good about ourselves and our country. Where were you when you heard about Dallas?

Answer: Liverpool

Did you sweat when you danced in the gym? How come you never had the courage to ask HER to dance? Did she still seem worth it at your 40th high school reunion?

No music died in 1963, whatever Don McLean might later imply in his "American Pie" song. The Dave Clark Five really invaded first with their successful appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show". And even regular guys could look as good as Ringo and stop using that greasy stuff on their hair.

Answer: Ajax

How many hours a day of TV did you watch? I'm betting you know that Cheer was "new and blue", that Sugar Frosted Flakes were great and that Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch. Can anyone else see a problem with Ajax's knight pointing a long lance at dirty people and zapping them clean in our present day Bart Simpson environment?

Answer: Frisbee

Walter Morrison and Warren Franscioni began tossing discs to one another in 1948. After Walter improved and patented the device in the 1950s, Wham-O toy company purchased his patent rights and marked the "Whamo-O Pluto Platter" that later became the "Frisbee". I'll bet our "Pluto Platters" would be worth almost as much as our baseball cards if we had had the prescience to save them! Did you ever use your "Wham-o Whirley Whirler" disc as a Frisbee? ("Whirley" was the Wham-O spelling for its product.) "Whirley Whirlers" and "Pluto Platters"! Quite an alliterative company.

Answer: Lawrence of Arabia

Although both men were nominated, neither O'Toole nor Sharif won Oscars in 1963. The British actors Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole invaded American film in the 1960s just as the Beatles and Rolling Stones invaded American music.

Answer: Available fourspeed transmission

Did your family have a 1964 Mustang? Which did your parents do first, sell the Mustang or throw out your baseball card collection? Did they at least keep the car long enough for you to have a chance to drive it? Did they give it to your brother instead of you? OK, confess - it had an automatic transmission didn't it?

The original Mustang developed in Germany had only two seats, but having a better understanding of the American public, Ford marketed a four seat Mustang. Ford's marketing strategy included introducing the Mustang at the 1964 World's Fair in New York and having a Mustang included in a chase scene in the James Bond movie "Goldfinger".

Answer: $1.00

Things sure were cheap in the early 60s - new cars for $2,000, new houses for $20,000... and laborers for $1.00 an hour! Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage climbed almost 20% between 1960 and 1965. And cokes were still a dime and you could get a burger for 19 cents. I don't even want to think about why they called them "beef-burgers" instead of hamburgers.

Answer: Fitzgerald and Baines

In 1961, Time magazine reported that "By general agreement, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson can outtalk any other ten Texans with one tongue tied behind his cheek..." - an important asset for a man saddled with the liability of a wife named Lady Bird and daughters called Luci Baines and Lynda Bird. Sadly, the Vietnam War often obscures the fact that President Johnson was also committed to a "War On Poverty", introduced and worked for passage of significant civil rights laws, and was instrumental in the creation of Medicare.

Answer: Nikita Krushchev

In the event of a threatened nuclear attack, the desks we crouched under were supposed to protect us from the collapsing ceiling and pulling down the classroom blinds and shutting our eyes would keep the nuclear flash from blinding us. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, sending women and children away from populated areas was discussed.

In a Tom Leher song an "American" scientist named Wernher von Braun exclaimed, "Ven zee rockets go up, who cares ver zey come down? Zats not my department!". Luckily for us all, the War remained "Cold".

Answer: Smoking cigarettes

While we cowered under our desks fearful of nuclear annihilation, approximately 50% of our parents regularly smoked the cigarettes that would be the foremost reason for our parents dying before reaching their life expectancy. In the initial report, the surgeon general maintained that cigarette smoking was a cause of lung cancer in men and of chronic bronchitis. So restrained was this report that smoking was only said to be a "probable" cause of lung cancer in women.