Potato Salad

      Shortly after the St. Jude Knights of Columbus Council started in Peoria, they bought an old storefront.  The members fixed it up themselves.  There was a meeting hall on the first floor with a small kitchen to the left in the back and there was a Bar Room in the basement.  On the first Friday of the month, they would put on a Fish Fry.  Now the men  fried the fish but the slaw and potato salad was made earlier in the day by their wives.  My mother made the slaw from a recipe she had gotten years before from Mrs. Capitelli, the mother of a friend (if a sibling has that recipe they should let me know and I will include it sometime) and a lady named Bea White made the potato salad.  If Bea was vacationing or otherwise unavailable I made it from Bea's recipe.  This would have been in the 1960s sometime.  I was looking through old recipes recently and found it - in her handwriting -  and thought you might  enjoy it.

POTATO SALAD     Bea White       Serves 200

Beer - 3 bottles (cigarettes optional)
Potatoes - 30 lbs
Celery - 1 stalk diced
Green peppers - 3 diced
Onions - 2 pkg  frozen
Eggs - 3 dozen
Mayonaise - 1 gallon

Boil potatoes and eggs until done.  Drain and cool in cold water and peel.  Drink one bottle of beer and smoke cigarette.
Dice potatoes and eggs, add the rest of ingredients.
Drink one more bottle of beer and have one more cigarette.
Mix all ingredients together.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Drink third bottle of beer after you put your feet up on chair while reclining.  Have another cigarette.

      This was always the best potato salad and I'm sure you could cut it down to fit your family.  When I made it for the Fish Frys, in my mind, it was never as good as when Bea made it and  now I think it was because I didn't drink beer - at the time - or smoke (optional) cigarettes.