That's all, folks and friends.

Now, back to the strange email I received.

Someone asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?"

"We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow."

"C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?"

"It was a place called at Home,'' I explained.

"Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.

"By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table."

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.

I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 19 before I tasted my first pizza; it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a one-party line. A friend of mine and his parents were on a four-party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was and so was a huge block of ice for the "ice box" once a week.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers - my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents.  He had to get up at 6 AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust out laughing. Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Other memories:

My Dad was cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons.

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.

Ignition switches on the dashboard.

Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.

Wood-burning kitchen stoves.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.

Soldering irons you would heat on a gas burner.

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Blackjack chewing gum.

Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water.

Candy cigarettes.

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles.

Coffee shops or diners with table side jukeboxes.

Newsreels before the movie.

P.F. Flyers (Posture Foundation athletic shoes – supposedly they made you run faster).

Butch wax.

TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels... IF you were fortunate).

Peashooters.

Howdy Doody.

45 RPM records.

S&H green stamps.

Hi-fi's.

Metal ice trays with lever.

Mimeograph paper.

Blue flashbulb.

Packards.

Roller skate keys.

Cork popguns.

Drive-in theaters.

Wash tub wringers.

Anyway… legally, anyone could purchase items of ivory when Grandmama bought me my little friends (all in one piece in 1945 when I was just five years old, and they're still in one piece and I'll take them to my grave. (The red, black and white paint on them is now just about nil since I played with and handled them so much over the years.) But thank God, now it's illegal to purchase ivory any longer (at least in this wonderful country of ours) because of the slaughter of the elephants for the ivory of their tusks; they're such wonderful animals! So loving, so gentle and so familial if treated correctly. I long with all my heart to walk beside one of those marvelous creatures with its trunk wrapped around my shoulders or neck.

When I was in Egypt in 2001 (7 months before 9/11) I wanted to buy a beautiful chess set at the Cairo Museum, but the sales person told me that the white player-pieces were of ivory and that I could not take it back to the United States. For just a brief moment, I was saddened for not being able to have the set I had picked out, but quickly I remembered our ill-legality law about ivory and I settled for camel-bone (white) and onyx (black) pieces. Visually, the white pieces of each 'opponent' team were not that far apart in color.