Fried Potatoes

This is a picture of my mother when she was sixteen, the very same year she quit school and left home. She got a job at a local drive-in (the food kind, not the movie kind) in the dusty west Texas town where she lived. She figured if she had to work like an adult, she might as well live like one, too. My mother had me when she was thirty-two, so it's such a shock to my senses to see her so young. It's kind of like the feeling you get in junior high or high school when you realize that teachers actually have lives outside the classroom.

When I called my newly-ninety year old grandma last week to thank her for sending me the picture, she referred to this time in my mom's life as "when she lived off fried potatoes." Sounds like a pretty good time to me.