Grandma's Potato Salad

I made potato salad to bring to the Butler Family dinner today. Not just any potato salad, but the special potato salad that I learned to make at the feet of my mother, as she learned to make it at the feet of her mother, and so on. Ever since there has been Hellman's Best Food mayonnaise and Lawry's season salt the women in my family have made this hot German potato salad. And it is D-E-Licioius, if I do say so myself. So awesome in fact, that as kids, we would sneak downstairs after bed and steal bites out of it where it was cooling in the fridge. My mom would invariably wake to find the foil pealed back and at least 8 spoonfuls missing. The potato salad is not easy to make, it takes a lot of literal slaving over a hot stove, although as I made it today it occurred to me that while a task of this length would ordinarily drive me to swear, I enjoyed every second of peeling those hot potatoes straight out of the pot. With every potato I was reminded of being a kid, of watching my mom on Fourth of July morning armed with her kitchen towels and paring knife.
A house with 8 children and two parents is bound to have its fair share of turmoil, and our home was no exception, it seems as though we kids were always getting up to something. Like the time we filled up water balloons and hauled them up to the tree house and pelted our neighbors grand kids that were there visiting. (the sissies ratted us out) Or the time we let out our dog out and she bit the kid that lived down the street. There was the time my brothers got caught hauling shopping carts to the roof of the library and throwing them off (trust me, not the worst thing they got caught doing as crazy youth, or even the dumbest for that matter..) Or when we girls talked the otherwise innocent neighbors into forming a toilet paper posse and sneaking out to TP the *Smith home (*name has been changed to protect us from them ever finding out who it was..) so badly that the home was unrecognizable from the street. There were times when we would all 8 get sent to our rooms at the same time and we would make up songs about getting out and shout them at the tops of our lungs. (I think I better teach Paige to sing the "can we come out, can we come out, can we come out, rockin, rockin" song, it was awesome) There was that time that in an effort to hide from his church teacher my little brother climbed up onto the basketball hoop and had his buddy raise it up till he was stuck on the ceiling.. and no kid that lived within a two block radius can forget when we filled up an old water bed mattress with air, put it on the trampoline and paid kids to jump onto it from the balcony. Couple these things with the intricacies of running a household on a tight budget and lets just say my parents did their fair share of yelling.
Yes there was a lot of turmoil in our home. But Potato Salad day? That was a good day. Was it because we were so happy in anticipation that we were better then normal? Was it the ritual of my mom feeding that first spoonful to my dad to see if it needed more onion? Was it the proud look she wore knowing that she had just made something so delicious that it would postpone even my brothers from the days antics? The world may never know, dear readers. But as I made my very own potato salad this morning, guess who wanted to learn how to make it? Paige and Mia. And they were so good the whole time! Anyone want the recipe?