I remember my brother and me riding our bikes looking for change on the side of the roads in our neighborhood. We were rich if we found a penny, a nickel or a dime. We would then go to the corner store and buy penny candy. For just a penny, you would have one of those small paper bags filled with hard candy. You could buy a coke for a nickel, and two of the Hostess cupcakes for a nickel.
That was the only time we could get a coke is when we found change on the side of the road. We drank Kool-Aid, and our parents would give us a dime whenever the ice cream man drove through our neighborhood. You ate whatever was on your plate or go to bed hungry. It's funny. I hated green beans, back-eyed peas, cabbage and butter beans when I was a kid, but I love all of that now.
My dad grew a garden every summer. We had tomatoes, purple-hull peas, snap beans, squash, cucumbers, corn, watermelon and cantaloupes. We had two plum trees, a fig tree, two pear trees, and two blackberry patches in our backyard. I would help my mom with the canning every year. We would have plum jelly, blackberry jelly, pear preserves, and fig preserves to last through the winter. We also had a freezer full of corn on the cob, purple hull peas and canned tomatoes for soups that would last through the winter.
In elementary school, my mom would wrap up two of the jars of blackberry jelly to give to our teachers as a present each Christmas. I remember my teachers telling me to please thank my mom for the delicious blackberry jelly.
Did those cigarette packs have the Surgeon General's warning on them? 
