&quot;Hey Dad,&quot; one of my kids asked the other day, &quot;What was your favorite <br />
fast food when you were growing up?&quot;<br />
<br />
&quot;We didn&#39;t have fast food when I was growing up,&quot; I informed him. &quot;All <br />
the food was slow.&quot;<br />
<br />
&quot;C&#39;mon, seriously. Where did you eat?&quot;<br />
<br />
&quot;It was a place called &#39;at home,&#39;&quot; I explained. &quot;Grandma cooked every <br />
day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the <br />
dining room table, and if I didn&#39;t like what she put on my plate I was <br />
allowed to sit there until I did like it.&quot;<br />
<br />
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going <br />
to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn&#39;t tell him the part about <br />
how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some <br />
other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his <br />
system could have handled it:<br />
<br />
Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a <br />
golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their <br />
later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card <br />
was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. <br />
Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.<br />
<br />
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because <br />
we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 <br />
pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn&#39;t have a television in <br />
our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It <br />
was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored <br />
plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and <br />
the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It <br />
was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across <br />
someone&#39;s lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the <br />
front of the TV to make the picture look larger.<br />
<br />
I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called &quot;pizza pie.&quot; <br />
When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid <br />
off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. <br />
It&#39;s still the best pizza I ever had.<br />
<br />
We didn&#39;t have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our <br />
family was my grandfather&#39;s Ford. He called it a &quot;machine.&quot;<br />
<br />
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in <br />
the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you <br />
had to listen and make sure some people you didn&#39;t know weren&#39;t already <br />
using the line.<br />
<br />
Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.<br />
<br />
All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered <br />
newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a <br />
paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every <br />
morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. <br />
My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to <br />
keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed <br />
to never be home on collection day.<br />
<br />
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the <br />
movies. Touching someone else&#39;s tongue with yours was called French <br />
kissing and they didn&#39;t do that in movies. I don&#39;t know what they did <br />
in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren&#39;t allowed to <br />
see them.<br />
<br />
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may <br />
want to share some of these memories with your children or <br />
grandchildren. Just don&#39;t blame me if they bust a gut laughing.<br />
<br />
Growing up isn&#39;t what it used to be, is it?