Wow. Y'all ate a lot of meat! My parents grew up during the Depression, and my dad wouldn't eat rice until the day he died. And one of his favorite meals was beans and cornbread. We got punished for putting more than one slice of lunch meat on a sandwich because that was gluttonous. And my dad bought a freezer with a lock on it and kept the key. Even my mother had to get permission to get meat out of it. I grew up with television, having been born in 1966. But we got our first color TV when my older brother bought one for my parents for Christmas in 1984...the year I graduated from high school. We cut the grass in our 3/4 acre yard with a push-mower, did the weeds the mower wouldn't handle with a sickle, trimmed edges with a large pair of scissors, trimmed shrubs with those big hedge clippers, and weeded the fence row of goat thorns and sand burs without gloves. (men should have tough hands and a high pain tolerance, you see) We ate a lot of beans, pasta, stew, casseroles, bologna, cereal, and peanut butter. We did not have soda or candy in the house. And we knew better than to sit around (even reading or watching TV) until after dinner because that would get you extra chores. So we all stayed busy with extra-curricular activities, hobbies, etc. as much as we could. We all got excellent educations and stayed out of trouble (deep down we KNEW mom and dad would be far worse to deal with than the authorities if we did). Oddly enough, my father was a leading computer systems analyst and network designer as far back as the late 1960's. And we had a home computer from the time the first one hit the market. When I say "we," I mean us kids. But we didn't play games on it much. He taught us programming. And my junior and senior years of high school I taught the brand new computer science classes while the teacher took role, recorded grades, and sat and watched and asked questions. My folks both had violent tempers and abusive streaks...and plenty of eccentricities. But all six of us kids darn sure learned the difference between a necessity and a luxury, work and play, and how to give something 110%. We understood sacrifice, commitment, responsibility, integrity, and that life is not even supposed to be "fair." We learned that we had to EARN what we got, and that even that could be taken away. So our ability to adjust, adapt, overcome, and endure far exceeds that of most of our peers. And for that I am extremely grateful.