Message to my sons: Your dad’s McDonald’s is gone.

I just saw this link posted to my Facebook feed this morning. McDonald’s — which once sold burgers for 15 cents apiece and hired only boys — has gone higher-tech than it already had been.

http://toprightnews.com/15-minimum-wage-pushers-devastated-after-mcdonalds-makes-this-bold-move/

This comes from a conservative website that I opposes cities and states lifting the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Oh, the agony of reading this link.

A St. Louis, Mo., McDonald’s is introducing bottom-less French fries, cushy lounge chairs for its customers and kiosks that will take customers’ orders. Fast-food vending machines might be next.

I’m an old man now and I’m starting to sound like my own father who used to recall the old days with some fondness.

McDonald’s is a big part of my life story.

I got hired at a McDonald’s on the corner of Northeast 122nd Avenue and Glisan Street in Portland, Ore., the day before my 16th birthday. It was such a major event in my life that I actually remember the date with as much clarity as I remember my birthday, my wife’s birthday, my wedding day, the births of my sons and my granddaughter and the day I got my draft notice.

It wasn’t a high-tech operation.

I got paid a dollar an hour; we peeled our own potatoes every morning in machine that spun the spuds around a rough-sided drum. Burgers sold for 15 cents, cheeseburgers cost four cents more, milk shakes and soft drinks sold for a quarter. A big day occurred when we grossed $1,000 in sales … for the entire day; today, they take in that kind of fiscal volume in an hour.

What about sex-discrimination laws? Don’t make me laugh.

The owner of the place hired only boys in keeping with corporate policy. We might as well have taken the sign down from the tree fort and hung it on the front door: “No girls allowed!”

I don’t object to the minimum wage increasing to a more livable sum. I am saddened, though, to see the impact these municipal and state laws are having on a venerable American tradition, which would be the fast-food joints that used to employ youngsters such as myself.

I made friends for life working with guys just like myself. I met two of my best friends ever working at the McDonald’s where I started out. One of them became my best man. The other one became my “brother” because we resembled each other as kids and our customers used to think we actually were kin; the hilarious part of that story is that we look like brothers today.

That was the environment we shared as kids working for virtually nothing, hauling 100-pound sacks of spuds up the stairs and sweating over a grill frying burgers by the dozens.

Onward we go to a future that guarantees a “livable minimum wage.” It’s a shame that we have plowed asunder a tradition that allowed many millions of Americans to come of age.