Separating fact from falsehood on April's day for fools
A true or false quiz for those who have a high IQ on Davis lore
Let’s just say today is April 1st and leave it at that.
But please keep that date in mind if you care to take the quick quiz that follows.
I’d straight out say it’s April Fool’s Day, but I’ve never really been clear if the apostrophe on this day lands between the ‘L” and the “S” or should follow only the “S.” And I know how crazy people can get about misplaced or misused apostrophe’s. (See Eats Shoots and Leaves).
If it’s the former (April Fool’s), it seems to suggest there’s only one fool in all the world, while if it’s the latter (April Fools’), then that category is plural. Or maybe it’s not possessive at all, which just means it’s a day full of fools (April Fools).
No matter, for what follows is a true/false questionnaire that deals with facts, not tomfoolery.
To prevent cheating, answers will be printed at the bottom in every language known to man except English. (Okay, that is an April Fool’s statement, designed to throw ICE off the scent.)
I. True or False: Ronald Reagan once ate at Black Bear Diner in Davis and said “You seen one black bear, you seen ‘em all.”
2. True or False: Bernie Sanders once ate at Black Bear Diner in Davis and ordered the $10.99 steak-and-eggs special.
3. True or False: Fred Korematsu was a student in Marguerite Montgomery’s fifth grade class at West Davis Elementary School.
4. True or False: Goodwin J. “Goody” Knight was the only California governor to ever attend Picnic Day.
5. True or False: John McMurdie and Bob Black rolled a single die in the Davis City Council chambers to break an electoral tie and decide who would become mayor.
6. True or False: Kozy Korner was Davis’ first nursery school, complete with pillows and blankets, with Twinkies and chocolate milk at snack time.
7. True or False: East Davis Elementary School was renamed Valley Oak to erase the stigma of students living on the wrong side of the tracks.
8. True or False: Davis High School has more Nobel Prize winners than UC Davis.
9. True or False: Davis namesake Jerome C. Davis is the great, great, great grandfather of longtime Davisite Robert Jerome Dunning.
10. True or False: Sambo’s restaurant in Davis was renamed when the original name was deemed racially insensitive.
11. True or False: While a student at UC Davis, Jerry Brown was a volunteer coach for the Cubs in the Davis Little League.
12. True or False: The author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian was born in Davis.
13. True or False: The city of Dixon was originally named Dicksville after Thomas Dickson.
14. True or False: The town of Monticello is buried under 526 billion gallons of Lake Berryessa water.
15. True or False: Billionaire Charles Schwab once donated half a million dollars to an elementary school in Woodland.
16. True or False: UC Davis quarterback Ken O’Brien was drafted in the first round by the Oakland Raiders.
17. True or False: Philz Coffee now occupies the space once held by Phil’s Grill.
18. True or False: Donald Trump has invited members of the World Baseball Classic champions from Venezuela to eat Big Macs with him at the White House.
19. True or False: The UC Davis campus used to be called the Northern Branch of First Northern Bank.
20. True or False: The very tall palm trees at the Davis Train Station date back to the time when Davis was a major date-producing region, shipping the fruit by train all over the country.
21. True or False: The Lewis and Clark Expedition paddled along Putah Creek on their way to rescue the Donner Party.
22. True or False: Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Jack Ohman just won the Herblock Prize (and 20,000 smackers) as the top cartoonist in the country.
23. True or False: “The Library” was actually a video games parlor, so named so Davis schoolkids could honestly tell their parents they were “at the library” after school.
24. True or False: Donald Trump recently voted by mail in his home district in Florida.
25. True or False: Mark Twain worked for 55 years at The Davis Enterprise before moving on to fame and fortune at The Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City.
26. True or False: Clara Lane in East Davis is named for Clarabell the Clown of Howdy Doody fame.
27. True or False: Upon learning of former FBI director Robert Mueller’s death, Donald Trump wrote, “Good. I’m glad he kicked the bucket.”
28. True or False: The Pony Express route in Davis was specifically designed along East 8th Street so riders could water their horses at Bros Liquor on the corner of 8th and Pole Line.
29. True or False: State Market on Russell Boulevard was run by the State of California to serve Davis families below the poverty line.
30. True or False: Several years ago a grizzly bear cub that had climbed to the top of a redwood tree in the UC Davis Arboretum was subdued with a tranquilizing dart and eventually released on Main Street in downtown Woodland.
31. True or False: The Save America Act is actually designed to force Barack Obama to finally reveal his certified birth certificate from Kenya.
32. True or False: The Milk Farm once provided 87 percent of the milk for Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese.
33. True or False: Hickey Gym was named for a former mayor of Davis.
34. True or False: Davis has an intersection of A Street and B Street.
35. True or False: Davis has a 12th Street and a 14th Street, but no 13th Street.
36. True or False: Rancho Yolo was the name of General Vallejo’s massive estate where the Davis Cemetery now stands.
37. True or False: Murder Burger is now serving 15 years to life.
38. True or False: Bob Hope once performed in Davis but waived his $50,000 fee in order to help the Davis Senior Center.
39. True or False: Aggie Villa is where UC Davis students lived in rundown old Army barracks left over from World War II.
40. True or False: Toomey Field was once so muddy that UCD groundskeepers were ordered to paint the field green so it looked like real grass for a nationally televised football game.
41. True or False: George the Barber had no hair.
42. True or False: Sugar beets used to be the leading cash crop in Yolo County.
43. True or False: College Park is named after a city in Maryland.
44. True or False: The $1 admission fee to the Yolo County Fair makes it the cheapest county fair in California.
45. True or False: Mousie’s was a pest extermination business hired to control a serious rodent outbreak in downtown Davis.
46. True or False: UCD Chancellor Emil Mrak told Vanna White he wanted to buy a vowel.
47. True or False: Davis is the hometown of both the men’s and women’s champions in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, Dave Scott and Chelsea Sodaro.
48. True or False: Davis Centenarian Herb Bauer wrote hundreds of pithy letters to the editor that became known as “Herb’s Herbs.”
49. True or False: North Davis Elementary is named for Oliver North.
50. True or False: NFL star Jerry Rice was once a basketball standout at UC Davis.
51. True or False: President Harry Truman brought his whistlestop campaign to the Davis train station.
52. True or False: Davis mayor Julie Partansky told Stephen Colbert on national television that she wanted to build a new police station out of straw. (And they huffed and they puffed and they blew the police station down.)
53. True or False: Davis Police arrested a woman for felony snoring while she was still asleep.
54. True or False: Terry Cottle is the only person on earth who was a star quarterback at both Davis High School and St. Mary’s.
55. True or False: Willie Mays once got a speeding ticket in Davis. (Said he was chasing a fly ball.)
56. True or False: Jim Harbaugh, while passing through Davis with his family on the way to Lake Tahoe, picked up a couple of pepperoni pies at Pizza Guys and tipped to the moon while signing a pizza box as a souvenir for the staff.
57. True or False: Sheep used to wander freely on Shepherds Lane in Central Davis.
58. True or False: “Henle’s Horses” refers to the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.
59. True or False: Beginning today, ICE agents have been assigned to control fights over parking spots outside Trader Joe’s at the revamped shopping center formerly known as University Mall.
60. True or False: Donald Trump refers to one popular Davis grocery store as Traitor Joe’s because it was founded in California, a state that is controlled by radical leftists who hate America.
61. True or False: Chief Justice John Roberts once bought a bag of Cheetos from a vending machine in the basement of the King Hall School of Law at UC Davis.
62. True or False: Ralph Villanueva is the greatest athlete ever to compete for Davis High School.
63. True or False: Donald Trump will not sign your dollar bill if you voted for Sleepy Joe.
64. True or False: Davis High basketball superstar Denise Curry scored more points at UCLA than Lew Alcindor.
65. True or False: Davis resident Bob Warren spent 11 years of his childhood living in the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento.
66. True or False: The massive water tower on West 8th Street is made of fluoridated steel.
67. True or False: Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, John Denver, Bob Hope, Cyndi Lauper and the Connecticut women’s basketball team have all drawn huge crowds to the UC Davis arena formerly known as Rec Hall.
68. True or False: UCD’s Freeborn Hall was named in recognition of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
69. True or False: UC Davis trailed 51-0 to USC in the 1971 Miracle Game.
70. True or False: UC Davis Young Republicans have invited Vladimir Putin to ride on their float in the Picnic Day Parade later this month.
71. True or False: The hottest temperature ever recorded in Davis is 117 degrees Celsius.
72. True or False: Davis Mayor Julie Partansky once turned to her council colleagues and asked “Exactly where is West Sacramento?”
73. True or False: Putah Creek is named for the smell of tomatoes rotting in the sun.
74. True or False: The Department of Enology at UC Davis has invited a carpenter from Nazareth to teach a course titled “Converting Water to Wine” in Fall Quarter 2026.
75. True or False: Kindergarteners at Central Davis School were the first schoolchildren in America to receive the Salk Vaccine in 1955.
76. True or False: Army Captain John Barovetto was a larger-than-life war hero who grew up on Rice Lane in Davis and died in Vietnam while delivering humanitarian aid to an orphanage.
77. True or False: Davis High School head football coach Marc Hicks was a star running back at both Cal and Ohio State.
78. True or False: The Yolo Causeway has been “Under Construction” since 1934.
79. True or False: Davis schoolteacher Cathy Carr West won two Olympic gold medals in swimming, setting world records in both events.
80. True or False: The nationwide 1957 Asian Flu outbreak was first discovered at the California Girls State convention held at UC Davis when nearly all 300 high school participants and the entire Girls State staff were stricken.
81. True or False: Former Davis Mayor Jerry Adler lost a leg in a military plane crash before becoming a lawyer and teaching law at UC Davis.
82. True or False: Richard Nixon got more votes than John Kennedy in conservative Davis in the 1960 presidential election.
83. True or False: UC Davis Athletic Director I.F. “Crip” Toomey was so nicknamed because he walked with a limp.
84. True or False: Der Wienerschnitzel in Davis used to sell 18-inch long hot dogs in a 12-inch bun.
85. True or False: Berryessa Dam was built in 1956 to tame the Mighty Putah.
86. True or False: The Davis City Council originally denied Jack in the Box’s request for a drive-thru lane because the city wanted people to “get out of their cars and socialize.”
87. True or False: Shortly after it opened in Davis, the regular price for a Foster’s Freeze hamburger was 19 cents.
88. True or False: The Hattie Weber Museum in Central Park is actually the old Woodland Public Library building that was dismantled, trucked to Davis and reconstructed at its current site.
89. True or False: The original concrete bathrooms in Central Park were a Works Progress Administration project.
90. True or False: Nugget Market started as a Giant Orange in Knights Landing.
91. True or False: German POWs worked the fields of Yolo County during World War II.
92. True or False: The Glory Hole at Lake Berryessa was arrested for indecent exposure during the severe drought of 2006.
93. True or False: Many of the Braceros who came up from Mexico to work near Davis lived in a farm labor camp at Cactus Corner.
94. True or False: For years, the best Mexican restaurant in Northern California was El Charro in Dixon.
95. True or False: In a 1967 football game against Chico State on Toomey Field, both an Aggie defensive back and a game referee suffered heart attacks within minutes of each other. Both were taken to the campus Student Health Center, treated by Dr. Tom Cooper and trainer Dick Lewis, and both fully recovered.
96. True or False: The Davis A&W featured a Papa Burger, a Mama Burger and a Baby Burger, plus servers on roller skates to deliver your meal.
97. True or False: The UC Davis campus was originally known as University Farm Circle.
98. True or False: The Mondavi Center is named for Robert and Margrit Cabernet.
99. True or False: Former Aggie infielder Daniel Descalso is the proud owner of a World Series ring.
100. True or False: ICE raided Holy Rosary Parish in Woodland after learning that three of the four Sunday Masses were celebrated in Spanish.
101. True or False: When Bernie Sanders held a rally at UC Davis during his 2016 presidential campaign, he was introduced to the large outdoor crowd by Tulsi Gabbard.
102. True or False: The truth always wins out.
Answers
1. False. 2. True. 3. False. 4. True. 5. False - It was John McMurdie and Ernie Hartz who rolled the die. 6. False - Kozy Korner was a burgers and shakes joint across Russell from Davis High School. 7. True. 8. True - Davis High grad Carol Greider takes the honor. 9. False. 10. True. 11. False - Jerry Brown was never a student at UC Davis. 12. True. 13. True. 14. True. 15. True. 16. False - O’Brien was drafted by the New York Jets. 17. False. 18. False - He’s still in denial that the United States lost to Venezuela. 19. False. 20. False.
21. False. 22. True. 23. True. 24. True. 25. False. 26. False. 27. False - Donald Trump said “I’m glad he’s dead.” 28. Perhaps True. 29. False. 30. False. The brown bear cub was released in Colusa County. 31. True. 32. False. 33. True. 34. True. 35. True. 36. False. 37. True. 38. True. 39. True. 40. True.
41. True. 42. True. 43. False. 44. False - Admission to the Yolo County Fair is free. 45. False - Mousie’s was a nightclub in downtown Davis. 46. False. 47. True. 48. True. 49. False. 50. True. 51. True. 52. True. 53. True. 54. True. 55. True. 56. True. 57. True. 58. False - Henle’s Horses were Davis High School football players. 59. Possibly True. 60. False.
61. False - He bought Reese’s Pieces. 62. True. 63. True. 64. True. 65. True. 66. False. 67. True. 68. False. 69. False. 70. Likely True. 71. False. 72. True. 73. False. 74. True. 75. False. 76. True. 77. True. 78. True. 79. True. 80. True.
81. True. 82. True. 83. True. 84. False - Davis never had a Der Wienerschnitzel. 85. False - It’s Monticello Dam that’s taming the Mighty Putah to this day. 86. True. 87. True. 88. False - It’s the old Davis Public Library. 89. True. 90. False. 91. True. 92. False. 93. True. 94. True. 95. True. 96. False - No roller skates. 97. False. 98. Sort of True. 99. True.
100. False - Although three of four Sunday Masses are celebrated in Spanish.
101. True.
102. True.
Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com