The Internet is filled with slide shows and quizzes about the dozens of gadgets the younger generation will never know or remember.

I recognize every single thing.

I  know what a floppy disc was used for, I still remember waiting for the neighbor to get off the telephone party line so I could talk to my friend and I remember when there were only three television channels.

What brought that realization home was when a young person told me she couldn’t find her way because Google Maps was down.

Her friend had a hard time telling her how to get from Point A to Point B because she also relied on Google Maps for directions.

When we first moved to Fort Bend County almost 25 years ago, a friend gave me directions to Needville High School.

“Drive south on Highway 36. Turn left at the light,” he said.

“What light?” I asked.

“The light,” he replied.

So in keeping with accepting I’ll never understand video games or digital downloads, here’s a few of my observations about what the younger generation will never experience.

Home-fried chicken. I remember my mom putting a few cups of flour in a paper bag. She’d then season the raw chicken with Tony Chachere’s, add the chicken pieces to the bag and shake it. As kids, we took turns shaking the bag and then peeking in to make sure all the chicken was coated with flour.

The smell of that fried chicken was heavenly, and even better was the crispy skin on the outside. My arteries are cringing at the memory, but this new generation will never know the steps required to make really great home-fried chicken.

A real fireplace. We have a fireplace in our house. It has real gas flames. We flip a switch and the flames instantly start dancing behind a pane of glass.

Few youngsters will experience what it’s like to get firewood from an outside stack of logs – always on the lookout for scorpions, spiders and snakes. There’s an art to rolling up newspaper and tiny twigs to get the fire started.

Adding logs to the fire takes care because, too many, and the fire takes a long time to get back up to the place where you can hear the crackle and pop of the burning wood. The smell is heavenly as well and one does not experience that from the image of a fire on the television.

The family portrait used to hang over the mantle. Most of the time, it was a picture taken at church, courtesy of Olan Mills Portrait Studio. Now, there’s a flat-screen TV over the fireplace, and the family portrait is on somebody’s phone.

Home-made bread. There are still some who go to all the trouble of making bread. The last time I did that, one loaf cost me about five dollars, was as heavy as a brick and the kids wanted to know why I didn’t buy a loaf of pre-sliced Sunbeam bread.

I wondered myself.

The closest I come now to making my own bread is cracking open a can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and serving them hot out of the oven.

There are some antiquated things this younger generation will never have to experience – waiting 10 minutes for the television or radio to warm up, not having anything to do on a sleepless night because the television stations all signed off at midnight and remembering telephone numbers.

Talking about fried chicken and home-made bread has made me hungry. Maybe I’ll look up those recipes in my dog-eared and well-used “River Roads” cookbook because I still know what a genuine plastic spiral-bound cookbook is used for.

As our country folk might say, I’ve got a hankerin’ for something good.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.