When I was growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money. While I never heard it said, in the scope of things back then, we were probably considered fairly poor. Oh, we always had plenty of food on the table, an assortment of nice clothes and a warm house to come home to, but by and large, I have since learned the adults in my family went without a lot to make sure we had everything we needed ... maybe not everything we wanted, but everything we needed.

As I think back, most of my friends came from families who had far more than I did. Those kids lived in homes that never knew about drafts that made the curtains move ever so slightly in the winter; and in the summer, those same homes were cooled with air conditioners that were nothing more than a pipe dream for us in our old farmhouse.

Those same kids went on vacation every summer to exciting places like Disneyland in California, the Grand Canyon and the beaches in Florida, however, we instinctively knew Mickey Mouse ears would never find their way into our kingdom. Likewise, my friends usually had clothes and shoes from the nice places on Main Street, while ours came via the Sears Roebuck catalogue. And even though we lived on a farm and butchered our own cattle/hogs (which I really didn’t understand until I was an adult — ugh!), hamburger, chicken and hot dogs graced our table far more often than my city friends who were known to have steaks quite often.