[jyl]

I had dinner with a friend who grew up in Czechslovakia when it was still behind the Iron Curtain, in the early 1960's. His parents were doctors and they were fairly middle class by the standards of the time and place.

We were talking about the food of his boyhood. He mentioned that they almost always had food to eat, and only went hungry a few times, "nothing serious".

This got me wondering whether I ever went hungry as a child. My best recollection is that, except for one time when I was punished by not being allowed to eat for 24 hours (long story, and I deserved it), I never went hungry.

My father, growing up in rural China, did go hungry sometimes - not a routine occurrence, but during World War Two and later during the Chinese Civil War when his family were refugees. My wife, who grew up in a small town in Washington, never went hungry. My kids have never known the experience. I'm not talking about being hungry because one meal got skipped, I'm talking about being hungry because there was no money to buy food, or no food to be bought with money.

Did you ever go hungry as a kid? Did your parents ever not have food to eat?