When I took my first baby steps into the 21st Century about five years ago by purchasing and actually learning how to operate an e-mail machine, “snail mail” dispatches became a thing of the past.

However, old habits die hard and to this very day every column, review and sports story begins with my trusty old pen (Parker’s Pen) scratching out 800-900 words on a lined paper pad in less than a half hour. That’s the “ecstasy” part of writing. The “agony” part comes in when this scribe, using two fingers, begins to bang out the story on the keyboard. That consumes a couple of hours, at least. That’s the way it is!

But as I peck away, I realize that my machine has an upside to it. People I’ll never know, from states and towns I’ve never visited, somehow find and read the stories.

Most respond favorably. There always are a few folks ready to do battle, but that’s all right, too.

One day, I got an e-mail from a lady in Astoria, Queens, N.Y., who read the column that ran in the Napa Valley Register, 3,000 miles from her home. They call that online, but this 20th-century guy calls it a miracle.

I noticed immediately that this fine lady, Mary B. Hennessey, titles every letter she sends me with “Jets-Jets-Jets.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Mary B. was a New York Jets football fan, probably knew the great entertainer Tony Bennett — another Astoria kid — and talked with the same accent I use in my speech.

What I didn’t know was that Napan Joe Hennessey, a wonderful and giving man, is Mary B’s brother-in-law. Joe, a Brooklyn-born Marine veteran and retired Richmond cop, had been sending my stories to his late brother’s wife.

Joe Hennessey, by the way is a man of great faith who recently lost his beloved Susan, but Joe truly believes that there is a reason for everything and one day it will all be explained in that better place.

So Mary B. and I began a correspondence. I learned that she not only roots for her Jets, but is a season ticket holder with a problem that all National Football League ticket holders are facing.

It seems that the Jets this year, like all NFL teams, have been raising season ticket prices by leaps and bounds. Mary B. told me that she and her pals at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, where the Jets and Giants share the stadium, are being squeezed out of those tickets by ever-rising prices.

With the Jets’ season-ticket package, fans now must pay $80 per game for eight home games and two mandatory exhibition games — take it all or leave it! In addition, they pay $150 for a season parking pass. Mary B. said that with the price of gasoline thrown in on those Sundays crossing the mighty Hudson River, her tab equates to over a thousand dollars with no end in sight.

“The NFL is taking the game away from we old and loyal fans” were her words, and she’s right.

Mary B. knows through our correspondence that my Queens pals and I were passionate New York Giants fans from the 1950s through the ’70s. We were season ticket holders from our Polo Grounds days right on to Yankee Stadium in 1956, when the Giants moved over the narrow Harlem River to the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx.

She asked me what we paid for those ducats in those days. For the answer to her question, I searched my garage for the box containing old programs with the ticket stubs stapled to the covers.

Mary B. was astounded when I told her that Giants tickets were $5 a pop, and for the three championship games (the annual events that one day would be called the Super Bowl) we saw at Yankee Stadium the price soared up to $8. By the way, Yankee Stadium parking was free and there was no shakedown for tickets to mandatory pre-season games. But, to put those years in perspective, I pointed out that the average American was making $4,000 to $5,000 back then.

As I leafed through the programs of games played so long ago and the newspaper and sports magazines clips included in the cardboard storage box, the advertisements of those innocent days were a story in and of themselves.

Page after page, the ads went on with their catchy jingles.

“See the USA in your Chevrolet.”

“There’s a Ford in your future.”

“Send the very best — Send Hallmark.”

“We’re #2 — We try harder at Avis.”

But far above all the rest were tobacco advertisements in every football program and newspaper or magazine clipping, luring innocent people into the enjoyment of a deep drag on a cigarette.

Great athletes of the time such as Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, Paul Hornung of Notre Dame and the Green Bay Packers and even comedian Phil Silvers (”Sgt. Bilko” in his hit television series) graced those ads. The connotation was that if you smoked like Ted, Paul or Phil, you to could reach the top of the ladder.

I think the cigarette advertisement with the most chutzpah wasn’t the old “20,000 physicians say (a certain brand of cigarette) is less irritating than all the rest.”

That ad was little league, in comparison to another I found in a magazine clip.

The killer of all killers was filled with fuzzy and warm sentiment written by an accomplished con man plying his trade. It went: “You’ve bundled them off to school and office. Now you can relax with a second cup of coffee and the full-bodied flavor only one cigarette can deliver.”

Wow!

I think Mary B. Hennessey and I might have learned two different lessons from this exercise. In Mary’s case, the realization is that with 24 out of 32 NFL teams with payrolls higher than $100 million, season ticket prices will continue to rise.

In my case, the old ads extolling the virtue of cigarettes clearly showed me how little I knew then — how little all of us knew!

Postscript: Mary, if you are wondering who has the largest payroll in the NFL this season, I note that the Jets rank 12th of 32 teams. This year the Oakland Raiders, of all teams, top the list with a $152 million tab. Last season’s Super Bowl winners, the underpaid New York Giants, were 32nd and last in team payroll at $75 million. Money sure doesn’t ensure success.

Ev Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com or 224-9956.