Today, Sept. 22, is observed as the birth date of cold, creamy, smooth, crunchy, crispy, delicious, dairy royalty.

It was on this date in 1903, you see, that Italo Marchiony of New York filed his patent for ice-cream cups. Edible ice-cream holders eventually would become known far and wide as ice-cream cones, held in high cream esteem, as they still are to this day. 

I grew up just 23 miles east of St. Louis and was always of the persuasion that the ice-cream cone was invented at the 1904 World's Fair in old St. Louie. I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Woe is me. All this time, I thought I was from cone country, the birthplace of the ice-cream cone.

Hang on a minute. Let's look at this another way. St. Louis is, after all, home of the best ice-cream cone of all time – the waffle cone! Yep, it was at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904, when ice-cream vendor Arnold Fornachou ran out paper serving dishes. Syrian immigrant Ernest Hamwi came to his aid, rolling up some of his waffle-like pastries, which served well as yummy ice-cream vessels. 

Now I learn that the waffle-cone story might be inaccurate. No hard evidence exists to credit the storyline of that 1904 legend, according to the Missouri Historical Society, although Hamwi did end up founding the Cornucopia Waffle Company, which became the Missouri Cone Company. So, there you go, folks; St. Louis has played a role of sorts, at least, in ice-cream cone history.

History, smistory. The important thing is the mere existence of ice-cream cones – then, now and hopefully forever. The smooth creaminess and the sweet crunchiness and the exhilarating coldness all combine to create the most luscious, spectacular treat in the world of treats, desserts and goodies. Not even brain freeze can detract from the joy of devouring an ice-cream cone.

In the world of ice-cream cones, you basically have your hard-cream cones and your soft-cream cones and your chocolate-dip cones. I'm a soft-cream man. I'm talking about custard or soft-serve ice cream, preferably in a waffle cone or sugar cone.

My father loved the old-fashion, custard-style, soft ice cream in a cone. When I was a boy, we stopped at little ice-cream shops along little highways all over Illinois and Missouri, sampling the local, handmade, soft-serve ice creams in different kinds of cones. Some of my best boyhood memories are about me and Dad motorcycling on hot, summer, Sunday afternoons, stopping at ice-cream shops we hadn't tried before.

I wonder how many shirts I've ruined with chocolate spots after letting the chocolate ice cream atop my cone drip before I could lick the drip and slurp it between my lips, as any experienced cone connoisseur should be able to do adeptly and easily. The out-of-control dripping usually happens under a bright sun on a broiling hot day. I know that's no excuse, so maybe I'm just a bit of a slob. But with an ice-cream cone, I'm a gloriously happy slob.

Be happy. Be sloppy if you want. It's the anniversary of the ice-cream cone. I'll take two scoops, thank you.

This week marked the birthday of the Hollywood Sign, which is 90 years old.

It's probably one of only a few signs with an uppercased "Sign" in its name. It's an iconic landmark, an indispensable, historic, necessary piece of the Hollywood landscape. If you're an Angeleño, especially a Hollywood resident, you gotta love it.

I used the hillside sign as a backdrop in one of my self-portraits – above is a photo of the photo – for a Cal State photography-class assignment. I shot a series of five self-portraits showing only my hands and arms to tell the story of my Marine Corps career, which included three years as a liaison to the motion picture and television industry in Los Angeles. Heck, yeah, I had to have the Hollywood Sign in that photo!

When I received my orders to the Marine Corps Public Affairs Office, Los Angeles, way back in 1982, my fellow Marines harassed me about becoming a Hollywood Marine. That wasn't to be confused with a Marine who had completed boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. You see, if you graduated from boot camp on the West Coast, instead of the more famous Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., you were called a Hollywood Marine, which really didn't make sense because recruit training was in San Diego, not Los Angeles or Hollywood. Anyway, I was told by my fellow gyrenes that I was going to be a true Hollywood Marine in Hollyweird, Calif.

Our office in Los Angeles operated as a West Coast adjunct office of the Division of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. Our staff consisted of me, an administrative sergeant and two officers. Our job was to help screenwriters, producers, directors and actors get it right when portraying Marines and the Corps. It benefited them and the Marine Corps to produce stories and scenes that were accurate and authentic, with attention to detail in regard to procedures, tactics, language, uniforms, haircuts, weapons and equipment.

I landed on a Hollywood set my very first week in L.A. – as a technical advisor on the production of a Kodak commercial. The set design depicted the interior of a barracks, which we could assume was at boot camp, because one of the actors was portraying a Marine drill instructor, or DI. The other main character was a Marine recruit, who had just received a Kodak camera in the mail. Now, any jarhead knows that recruits are allowed to receive only letters in the mail, so I grabbed the director and the advertising company rep and offered that if we're going to stretch the truth a little, let's add some humor. I suggested that the DI be in the recruit's face, yelling at him, and the recruit points the camera in the DI's face, at which point the DI grins big for the camera. Once the recruit snaps the photo, the DI goes back to yelling at him.

I thought it was brilliant. The director smugly cast off my suggestion and stuck to the script. The ad man, too, blew off my bright idea. I still think it was brilliant – well, rather funny anyway.

I soon started learning that the more famous a Hollywood type was, the nicer he or she probably was, in most cases. Phone calls from the famous, for example, usually were nicer than calls from the wanna-be famous.

Steven J. Cannell called one day. He wanted about four Marine Corps UH-1E Huey helicopters to be in one of his television shows, "Riptide." The story in that episode had nothing to do with the Marine Corps, so I politely explained that we could not use the taxpayers' helicopters and the taxpayers' fuel and the taxpayers' Marine Corps chopper crews – and, thus, the taxpayers' money – to make his cool show even cooler. Cannell said he understood and that he had assumed that would be my answer, but he still wanted to ask. We then partook in a friendly conversation. Nice guy.  

Stanley Kubrick called one day. I answered the phone, and he identified himself, and I went into Bill Cosby's old, old routine about Noah talking to God. I said to Kubrick, "Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight! Who is this, really?" He soon convinced me it really was Stanley Kubrick, and he wanted a technical advisor for an upcoming feature film called "Full Metal Jacket." Long story short: Lt. Col. Fred Peck, my boss, had worked on a film with R. Lee Ermy and recommended Ermy, who not only got the job as technical advisor but also got the part of the senior drill instructor, Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.

One day I got a call from a woman with "The Karate Kid," the 1984 film starring Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio, which was in preproduction at the time. She said one of the characters, a karate instructor, is a former Marine Corps DI, so they wanted the actor to get dressed as a DI, then photographed, and then the photo hung in a frame on a wall in the character's karate studio. As with any project, we had to see the script first, so she sent over a script for me to read.

If you've seen "The Karate Kid," you know that the karate instructor – the teacher, the sensei, played by actor Martin Kove – is an evil jerk and rotten to the core. So, I called my nice "Karate Kid" contact and told her nicely that a Marine DI, or any nice Marine, exhibits honor, integrity and respect. "Why don't you make him a former Green Beret?" I suggested. "They're a little more wild and crazy." (Forgive me, my Special Forces friends.) And that's why – when you first see the jerk's karate studio – the framed photo on the wall shows Kove's character dressed as a Green Beret. Another brilliant idea, if I
must say so myself.

Yes, I enjoyed an interesting tour of duty in Los Angeles, interfacing with the Hollywood entertainment industry. And whenever my family and I hosted visitors, I always included the Hollywood Sign in the obligatory tour of Tinseltown and the surrounding L.A. environs. That tradition continued when I retired from the Corps and settled in Southern California. Love that Sign, the Hollywood Sign, a sign of the times since 1923.

I like old stuff.

You perhaps could call me a poor man's picker. Don't get the wrong idea. I don't root through the neighbors' trash cans, and I'm definitely not a hoarder. However, I enjoy looking at antiques, browsing thrift stores, looking for old treasures, and finding aged artifacts while on walks and jogs and hikes.

I love buying unique, interesting, old stuff for next to nothing. I'm talking about things that escape the waste-collection truck and, for mere pennies, become priceless gems in my foxhole.

My foxhole is my version of a man cave. It's hardly worthy of being called a man cave, or even a man corner, so I just call it my foxhole. One would think that after 20 years in the Marine Corps, I'd call it my fighting hole. In the Corps, you see, we never used the word "foxhole." We used the term "fighting hole." But foxhole simply seems like an appropriate name for my corner of the garage.

I have acquired many of my favorite things not for pennies or dollars, but for free. It all started when I was a boy. At one time or another, my mom might have said to my dad: "You better talk to your son. But, first, go look in his room." And my dad might have said: "What did that boy drag home now?"

I might have dragged home a rusty bike or a raccoon skeleton or a live snake or lizard or frog. I guarantee, though, that to me it was always something pretty darn neat.

My dad usually made me throw away things I'd find every Saturday, when he and I visited the city dump with our week's worth of garbage and junk. While he was tossing away the trash, I was scavenging. The scene usually went like this:

"Hey, Dad, look what I found!" 

"Throw that away!" 

"Dad, look at this!" 

"Throw that thing away!"

"Oh, Dad, you won't believe this."

"Let me see that thing."

Dad had a little bit of picker in him, too.

My first freebee as an adult was an Asian red-deer antler. I picked that beauty in a forest in the hills south of Hue, Vietnam, while on a four-day reconnaissance patrol in 1968. When I got back to our rear area, I took it to a little plaque shop in Phu Bai, where the owner made me a wood mount for the antler. He engraved a silver plate for the mount, too, which read: "To Grandpa. Found while on patrol in RVN." The handsome plaque became a Christmas present for my grandfather, who had taught me how to hunt.

The best Asian pick for me was a free pot. I saved it from being heaved into the local trash man's truck in Iwakuni, Japan, in 1978. And I still have it, still treasure it. It's a beautiful example of Japanese pottery. It's not an urn or ginger jar or vase. It could be a pot for a potted plant, though, or it could be a cookie jar if it had a lid. To give you an idea of its size, if it was a cookie jar, it could hold two packages of Oreos. It's whitish, with blue bamboo artwork, but it has a hairline crack in it. It was sitting amongst
some trash outside a home on a tiny Iwakuni street. It screamed to be rescued, and I rescued it.

Stuff you have to pay for is also fun to acquire if such stuff is a bargain. 

Making a living as a picker would be especially fun. You would be on a continual treasure hunt, buying antique junk and selling it all in your antique-junk shop. And imagine if you could do that and star in a hit television show all about you doing just that. Great idea!

A couple of Iowa boys named Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, in fact, have such a TV show. It's called "American Pickers," and it's on the History Channel. And it's popular. If you haven't watched it, you should. Well, if you like unique, interesting, old stuff, you should check it out. It's a hoot. A hoot? Even some of my expressions are old.

During every intro into "American Pickers," Fritz says, "We travel the back roads of America, lookin' for rusty gold." That's gotta grab your interest right there, right? Confess. You want to watch this show. No? OK, how about this.

Also during the intro, Wolfe says, "What most people see as junk, we see as dollar signs." Eh? Gotcha now? Sounds good, huh? No?

OK. Next Wolfe says, "Each item we pick has a history all its own. … We make a living telling the history of America, one piece at a time."

If you're not hooked by now, there's no hope for you. And, believe me, you're going to be missing some captivating television. Listen, I give "Pickers" two big thumbs-up.

Wolfe and Fritz pick their treasures from businesses; homes; garages; old warehouses; closed-up stores; and the barns, sheds and outbuildings on many farms. Wolfe calls a lot of their picked items "farm fresh." I like that.

My first motorcycle was bought farm fresh. It was covered with dust, sitting in a barn on an Illinois farm between Lebanon and St. Jacob. It was an old, 125 cc, Harley-Davidson Hummer. I was only 15, and I bought it – picked it, we could say – for $100. It's not like I picked a classic motorcycle from the turn of the century. Yet, it was my first bike, so to me, it was a masterpiece of two-wheeled, motorized machinery.

Treasures for free are still the best. This year, I have found two old bottles while jogging along the north edge of Lebanon, my hometown. One is a bitters bottle, made for Baker, and the other is a soda bottle from M. Rithman, a Lebanon bottler who went of business quite some years back. I found an ad for M. Rithman in a 1927 McKendrean, the annual yearbook of McKendree University in Lebanon. I found the bottle, by the way, as I was jogging along a small stream and saw it sticking out of the creek bank. Great bottle!

My wife and I have at least one thing in common. She loves thrift stores, consignment shops, yard sales and garage sales. Sure, we don't travel the back roads of America, picking rusty gold, but perusing area shops and local yards is fine. I'm not picky about where I get to pick. I'm just a po'boy picker.

I can scarf down a slice of pizza as fast as a bullfrog can tongue-zap a mayfly.

A lot of people say they enjoy a certain food so much that they could eat it every day. I never say that. Anne always says it for me. "My husband could eat pizza every day," she often proclaims. It is true, though – that I could eat pizza every day, I mean.

For several months, I've been steering clear of wheat products, so I've missed out
on a lot of pizza. However, right now, I'm on a break from that crazy, self-imposed,
wheat-free regimen. And just in time.

Pizza Hut currently is promoting its $6.55, large, one-topping, carryout, pizza special. It's available Monday through Thursday only for a limited time, and I've already taken advantage of the Hut's special offer twice. Both times I ordered pepperoni, my absolute favorite. Picture this: pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni slices on Pizza Hut's
hand-tossed crust, piping hot from the pizza oven, smelling like heaven in a pizza parlor, making you fumble your money when paying because you want to hurry up to your car and get that thing home quickly.

Comedian and actor Kevin James describes that trip home so simply: "There's no better feeling in the world than a warm pizza box in your lap."  

What's that you say? Pizza Hut pizza pies won't do? Chain pizza joints aren't good enough for you? Somebody somewhere once said pizza is a lot like sex. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good.

Give me a pizza – from anywhere, I say, from anywhere – and it's soon history in my presence. 

Here in Lebanon, Ill., we have two pizza places – Schiappa's Italian Restaurant and Mama Gustos. Schiappa's is known as the home of the 40-inch pizza, and Mama Gustos touts itself as an Italian restaurant, pizzeria, delicatessen and caterer. Can you buy a good pizza at either of these places? Would Chuck E. Cheese squeak like a mouse if you dropped one of his oven-baked discuses on his tail? Yep.

However, the O'Fallon Pizza Hut is just 4.63 miles from Lebanon, and a large pepperoni pizza pie there is only – remember what I told you? – $6.55 from Monday to Thursday right now. You simply call in the order, drive to Pizza Hut, pick it up, drive it home, and devour that yummy, delicious, delightful, Italian tomato pie.

While the mouthwatering specials at such places as Pizza Hut and Papa John's can be a good deal, I encourage you to support your local pizza makers, of course. I must admit that I lust over the pepperoni-topped tomato pie at Mama Gustos. Delish, delectable, divine. Ooh. 

I ate my first pizza about a block west of Mama's, which is on West St. Louis Street, at a place called the Lamplight. I was already a teenager by then, but things like pizzas were still pretty exotic in a small town in the rural Midwest, even though we weren't far from St. Louis and its Italian neighborhood known as The Hill.

The Lamplight was pretty much the teen hangout. Previously, for many years, it was Daumueller's Music and Gift Shop. Mr. W.C. Daumueller specialized in Sealtest ice cream, Scheaffer and Parker pens and pencils, and Kodak cameras and supplies, along with a slew of other things. Anyway, old Mr. D finally retired, and the place became the Lamplight and the scene of my introduction to pepperoni pizza. I have been a devoted connoisseur of pepperoni pizza pies ever since. 

Those first pizzas were probably of the frozen variety. I do not recall anyone at the Lamplight tossing pizza dough into the air, and I cannot remember the joint having a pizza oven. So, imagine my elation when I tasted my first real Italian tomato pie at a pizzeria! I experienced explosions in my mouth and bombs bursting in air and little Italian flags unfurling right over my head. OK, I exaggerate sometimes. Suffice it to say that my taste buds burst in exuberant pleasure, and I was culinarily impressed far beyond my small-town culinariness.

Then came Vietnam and the Restaurant Pizzaria in Saigon. Don't correct my spelling. That's how they spelled pizzeria.

Restaurant Pizzaria in the old capital city was at 76-C Le Thanh Ton St., where they made pizza that looked like pizza but didn't exactly taste like Italian pizza. But it was the only pizza we had in Saigon, and I loved it. I especially loved the shrimp pizza.

Let me tell you how dumb I was when I was young. Growing up in landlocked Illinois, I'd eaten only the breaded-and-fried version of shrimp. So, I thought the shrimp on my Saigon pizza was raw. Of course, it was raw when it hit the oven but cooked when it came out. But it didn't look like my idea of cooked shrimp – breaded, fried and crispy. Anyway, my roommate was going to Restaurant Pizzaria one night, and I asked him to bring me some raw shrimp from there, which he did. I know. I know. I realize this sounds really, really stupid. He came back with raw shrimp, wrapped up in butcher paper and plastic. That's when I understood the difference between raw shrimp and fried shrimp and boiled or broiled or sautéed shrimp. And I guess you could say that I ate my first sashimi in Vietnam, not in Japan.   

I have digressed from pizza to sashimi. So sorry. Let me end this with the beginning of my true pizza enlightenment. That came with the discovery of Pizza Umberto, where my wife and I enjoyed Italian tomato pies when we lived in Paris.

Umberto's introduced me to calzones, Chianti wine and great pizza cookery. I adored the traditional tomato pies and the Italian turnovers called calzone and that Italian red wine in the fat bottles wrapped in straw. 

Since then, I have enjoyed many outstanding pizzas – Neapolitan style, Chicago deep dish, New York traditional, St. Louis thin, Japanese octopus. What did I just say? Sure, the Japanese make pizza, too, and I like the octopus, although you might consider their pizzas a little too small, thin, light and too gourmet-like. When I pick up a slice of pizza, I want some weight to it, and I want my mouth and cheeks to get covered with pizza sauce and melty cheese and pepperoni grease. But I'll eat anything that's called pizza. Bring it on.

"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore." Oh, yeah, I love my tomato pies, Dino.

There's one thing I cannot argue about with my wife. She's right when she says I could eat pizza every day. I really could.