I'm a very good Dutchman. The "F" words dominate my daily routine.

"Food" comes first, just behind "Family". "Friends" are important and "Free" insinuates itself into just about every situation. Yes, we Dutch are as frugal as the legendary Scots-neither is wont to pass up that word free. Unfortunately you seldom see free and food used together.

As a dedicated Internet junkie I have been astounded at the frequent use of the word free! Very few of them are really free.

Assuming that you have a computer, modem and telephone line, you can surf the net to your heart's content at no additional cost (i.e. FREE).

First, the connection. Forget America On Line, Prodigy, D&E Soupernet, Prolog and all the other ISPs (Internet Service Providers) who want your money. AltaVista.com, one of the premier Internet search engines, will give you free, unlimited access to the Internet. FreeI.net also offers a free connection as does NetZero.com and WorldSpy.com.

You pay for them by having to put up with advertising banners that will appear on your screen unless you get your hands on one of the hacker programs that zap the ads before they are displayed.

So you've dumped AOL and you miss your chats and your instant messages with friends around the world. Surf on over to Yahoo.com and sign up for "My Yahoo". You will get a home screen that the industry calls a "portal". Whenever you log in it displays the weather for whatever cities you select, the status of your favorite stocks, the local television schedule, news from Reuters or the Associated Press or the TV networks, your horoscope, computer tips, your email account and an indication of which of your "friends" (AOL calls them "buddies") is currently on line for you to chat with.

Email? Use your Yahoo! email account or one of the hundreds of other free email accounts that you can get anywhere on the net.

How about free long distance telephone calls? You will need to have a sound card installed and a microphone attached to your computer to use this free service. Sign up with DialPad.com-there is no charge. Once you are over that obstacle open the dial pad, tap in a phone number and hit "DIAL". The person on the other end answers their home or business phone and their words come out of the speakers on your computer. You talk back, the microphone picks up your voice and sens it to the telephone on the other end. FREE!!!! The connection is sometimes a bit sluggish and you will have to look at more advertisements, but it is FREE long distance telephone service.

You can even play the lottery for free. Well, not "the" lottery, but "a" lottery. Iwon.com will give you up to 100 entries per day in their lottery just for logging in and surfing their pages. Every day someone will win $10,000. Every month someone will win $1,000,000 and on tax day, someone wins $10,000,000.

LititzPA.com is also free and it will tell you a lot about Lititz. (Shameful plug for my little web site). Hang 10 and save your money.