You remember the darndest things about your youth…

For instance, I vividly recall the plastic runners that one of my aunts had on the floor to protect her carpets in her hallway. I remember the synthetic covers everybody's mother had over her lampshades. What's that all about anyway?

I remember how my mother used to save the tin foil after she cooked in it. She would delicately clean and store it for future use.

I remember how we used to take our shoes to the shoe repair shop up on Hendrix Street so that we could get new soles put on them and pass them down to my younger brothers and sisters. We were just as happy to have old shoes. We didn't know how it felt to have new ones. At least the old ones were already broken in.

I can't ever recall my mother wearing anything but a moo-moo. I have no idea from where the word moo-moo comes, but mama Alice always wore one. The exception was when she was out on the town, which was reserved for funerals, church and significant events.

When I say my mom was a stay-at-home mom…. trust me- she stayed at home. She produced 11 children after losing three. My dad stated later in life, "When we found out what was causing it, we put a stop to it."

We never had air conditioning growing up. Our a/c unit was a giant ceiling fan that pulled the outside air through the house and out the attic.

We knew more ways to repair, fix and rebuild everything from clothing to toys and bikes than anybody in Lexington. Today, people simply pitch the old and replace it with the new. I suspect we looked at waste as a by-product of affluence. Since we were never affluent, we were taught to never waste.

Nothing went uneaten or unused. I remember one Sunday my older brother George had staked out the white meat of the chicken on mom's dinner table. George, who we called "Buzz" as a child, would lick his finger and reach in and touch his preferred pieces and would say, "this one's mine, this one's mine and this one's mine…"

After being relegated to wings and such for three Sundays in a row, my baby brother Andrew had had enough. He too licked his finger and pointed to the identical three pieces of chicken, touching and rubbing the saliva in slowly and deliberately saying, "you can have it, you can have it, you can have it."

Such was the way of life growing up in a big family. Even Drexel the dog had to call for a fair catch. That dog was more than a little crazy. He loved chasing cars. One day Drexel actually caught a car, unfortunately upside his head. We had a nice funeral for that old hound dog. Drexel actually looked a lot like my father, no disrespect meant. It's funny how your dogs tend to take on the persona of their masters.

My parents had a great marriage mainly because they worked their butts off 24/7 raising 11 kids and another half dozen stragglers that occupied our home on any given evening. Our insurance agent, the late Lou Schaeffer ate spaghetti with us every Wednesday night when he'd drop by to collect the weekly debit on our life insurance.

I bought my first life insurance policy from Lou when I was only 14. I owned three by the time I was 20. Lou worked every family member on those spaghetti visits. Mama Alice could stretch a pot of spaghetti further than anybody in Lexington. There were nights when I wondered whether there was such a thing as meat sauce.

Life was simpler in those days. We were poor but my parents never let us know it. Now, to be fair, there were occasions where I suspected it. Being poor wasn't anything for which one should feel humiliated. Having a pity-party because of it is shameful.

You treasured little things because they meant so much. You remembered the good times, not the good gifts. You treasured the warmth of a Sunday dinner with nearly a score of family and friends always present. The menu, often as simple as soup and bread, made little difference. The terrific stories that were told over fried chicken were more valuable and priceless than the pitiful two channels we could get on our black and white television with rabbit ears.

Holidays were a big deal in our home. People always congregated over Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. While we never had much in the way of material things, those were the happiest days of my childhood. How we yearn to recapture those warm feelings of our youth and the way we were.