Hello, dear FRiend ... that sentence gave me a smile.
How did one register without an email? Snailmail?
The old fashioned way?
When I first started with Free Republic through a news chat on Prodigy, one did not need an email address. I didn’t even have an email address 🙃. Then Jim did whatever he did about 2 years in and everyone had to provide an email address in order to use FR. I was worried about annonimity and stayed off for a few months. Finally decided to get an AOL address and and signed in July 1998. I believe all the original posts are gone from ‘96 to ‘98 unless they are archived somewhere I’m unaware of.