My First Love

My family belonged to a Catholic Church and we lived in the diocese of St. Ignatius about a mile from the school and church. My schooling from the 1^st through the 8^th grade was at the Catholic school. We had nuns for teachers. Every morning we were marched from the school to the church for services. We marched from the tune of a piano. In the sixth or seventh grade the piano player was a student about my age. She was a girl with curly blond hair. As she played the piano her head would bob back and forth and her curls would bounce up and down. I was fascinated with her looks.

One day I got up the nerve to talk to her (I was about fifteen) and ask her if I could walk her home from school. She said yes and I took her books and we started to walk. I was in seventh heaven. We talked about this and that. Finally we go to her house. She lived about a mile from the school but in the opposite direction from where we lived. As we walked she asked me, “I’m not taking you out of your way, am I?” I said, “Oh, no. You aren’t taking me out of my way.” When we got to her house I handed her back her books and said goodbye.

As I started to walk home I realized I had to go quite a long way home. It was a mile back to school and another mile back to my house. When I got back to my house, my sister, who was the cook was VERY upset. “Where WERE you?” I have to have potatoes for the meal. It was my job to peel potatoes for our large family – so a LOT of potatoes. I had to hurry up so I took my potato peeler and went as fast as I could. The peeler had an end to dig out the eyes, but this night a lot of the eyes were left.

The next day when school was out the girl with the blonde hair was waiting for me to walk her home. I told her I couldn’t because I have to go home to peel potatoes. It just wasn’t working out and that was the last and only time I walked her home. It turned out that was the end of our relationship – all because of potatoes.

In later years I told my kids that if it wasn’t for those potatoes they might all have blonde curly hair.