by David Kubicek
When I was in my mid-teens, I teamed up with my sister in a local radio station’s American history trivia contest to win a $40-assortent of fireworks for two years in a row. We also learned the identity of America’s other first president.
A local radio station ran a contest where the announcer would ask a trivia question about early American history, and the caller who had the right answer won an assortment of fireworks valued at $40–and in those days, $40 could buy a lot more fireworks than it can today.
Today, radio stations announce that the fifth caller, or the ninth caller, etc. will be given the opportunity to answer the question. But in those days, before radio stations got wise, they took the first caller.
I was probably 15 or 16, which would have made Maxine 10 or 11. When the radio personality announced that a question was coming up, I headed for the phone (there were no wireless phones in those days, either), and when the DJ started to ask his question, I dialed all but the final digit, having faith that we could pull the answer out of thin air.
The question was asked, and I dialed the final digit. I don’t remember how they phrased the question, but it was something like: “How did the settlers and the Indians [this was before “Native American” came into practice] refer to making peace?”
Both of our minds were blank. On the other end, the phone was ringing. So, under pressure, Maxine grabbed at the first thing she thought of: “Bury the hatchet!” That proved to be correct, and we collected our assortment of fireworks.
The following year, the question was: “Who was the first president born in the United States?” We were about to give the stock answer that every third grader knows: George Washington. But before I dialed the last digit, we pressed pause on that answer.
Washington was the first president, but he had been born in 1732 when the colonies were under British rule. The question was: “Who was the first president born in the United States.” In other words, who was the first president born after the colonies declared their independence in 1776.
Back in this primitive time not only did we not we have wireless phones, but we didn’t have Google. We did, however, have a crude predecessor of Google. It was called the World Almanac.
Maxine looked up a list of presidents while I waited by the phone. I had hung up and would have to redial–another annoying thing about that era was that if you didn’t complete the number you were dialing in a certain amount of time, the system broke the connection, and it was dial tone city.
We were hoping that everyone who was calling in had not listened closely to the question, and they were triumphantly exclaiming “George Washington!” when the station answered. That evidently was what happened, because when I finally redialed–after what seemed an excruciatingly long time–no one had won the fireworks, so I gave what Maxine and I hoped was the right answer: Martin Van Buren, who was the eighth president but the first to be born (in 1782) after the colonies had declared their independence.
That answer proved to be the one they were looking for, and we collected our second assortment of fireworks in as many years.
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