I call her Mizzzz Olga. She is actually my mother's sister, my Aunt Olga. Olga Renard is a sprite 84 years old this year and is the mother of two of my favorite cousins, Cathy Saleeby and George Renard, and the grandmother of seven.

My mother's brother, Eli Mack, the former Mayor of Lexington, calls her the "mouth of the south" and "Mother Superior." Mind you… this, coming from a man, who is a legend in his own mind. He has some nerve calling my humble aunt the "mouth of the south," but the fact is, when I want to know anything about family matters or Lexington news, I check in with Mizzzz Olga for an update.

I call her several times a week, mainly just to aggravate her and to get caught up on the local news. When I call, it takes her about five minutes just to get to her old black steel telephone that still has the rotary dial.

My Uncle George keeps me entertained while she makes her way to the phone. "She's moving at the speed of a glacier," he facetiously says. "She moves so slow that she doesn't even set off the motion detector on the back porch," he adds.

Mizzzz Olga and Uncle George are just good people. They've lived right there on South Lake Drive next to what used to be the old Lexington Post Office for as long as I could remember. As a child I loved going over to play in their yard because my uncle had piles of what can best be described as junk. Our favorite thing to do was to play on the chassis of old broken down cars and trucks that he piddled with over the years.

George Renard met my aunt in much the same way my mom met my dad. The military encouraged people of various ethnic groups to host soldiers in their homes during World War II. With both being of Lebanese descent, they met over kibbie and tabouli, two terrific Lebanese dishes that will cause anyone to fall in love.

Today, Uncle George occasionally gives a speech about "the big one" that was in all the newspapers, referring to "WW II,"as he likes to call it. The couple married in September of 1944 when Uncle George was discharged from the US Air Force at Camp Atterbury, Indiana.

Uncle George went to work for the National Guard after his career in the US Air Force, where he was a bombardier navigator. He retired from the Guard 32 years later.

Olga was the oldest of four Mack children. My late mother, Alice, was second on the totem pole followed by Eli (now 80) and Arthur (now 79). Her brothers ran Mack's Cash & Carry Grocery Store for several decades.

Mizzzz Olga was also a proprietor as well. As a child, she worked in my grandfather's General Store, which was located on Main Street next to what used to be Harmon's Drug Store, beside the old Lexington Court House. She worked there as a child when laborers built the Lake Murray Dam.

As an adult, she ran what used to be called The Toastee Shoppe on Main Street in Lexington, which was situated next to where the old Sessions Department Store used to be located. They ran the quaint little diner for about 12 years featuring a "blue plate special" that offered one meat, three veggies and a dessert for 45 cents. "We actually cooked on a pot belly stove," recalls Mizzzz Olga. She ran The Toastee Shoppe from 1945-1957, when she began babysitting children in her home.

Mizzzz Olga was a terrific cook. My favorite dishes were her famous Liver Nips, those delicious grape leaves, she rolls, her black-eyed peas and rice and her world famous pimento cheese, which contains a secret ingredient of sour cream. She gave me a bowl of the latter to take home to my wife recently. Orlando is about an eight-hour ride from Lexington. Suffice it to say most of the pimento cheese had mysteriously disappeared before I hit the Florida-Georgia line. Guilty as charged.