Billy Joe Bob of Compleat Redneck and I have had an e-mail correspondence going on for some time about fried pies. He says he remembers his grandmother drying fruit on feed sack bedsheets. I have no such memory. He wonders if he is dating himself by bringing it up. I suspect it's regional. My grands canned. I don't know that he has ever said where his grands came from, but mine lived most of their lives about 60 miles north of Dallas, TX, up around Gunter, Sherman and Van Alstyne.

I know that my mother's mother was born in 1900. That's a date that sticks with you. My daddy's mother died at 86 when I was in New York, which would be 1979-1983. I couldn't afford to go home for the funeral, and my parents couldn't afford to fly me. Miss Ida Gibson, her name was. Well, at the time of her death, her name was Mrs. Lee R. Davenport.

So, unless I am totally wrong about Billy Joe Bob, he's not entirely out of my generation -- though we could be at the long ends of one. My big brother is about 64. "Talking about my generation ..."