Birthday and potatoes......

It is my birthday today and I am so surprised who really cares. Edward Jones knows it is good business to keep our relationship warm, friendly and close, the guy in Granger finally has quit sending me cards as I haven't bought a car from him at that dealership since 1996, but the Dentist who is taking a lot of my money has sent me an email birthday greeting. What a deal that is....
I was nostalgic today and bought some seed potatoes. After being on the internet, I am confused about what I bought. The sign said they were a golden yellow potato, but not Yukon, but the potato above pictured from Burpee says it is a white potato, it has this purple skin. I think my friendly hy vee screwed up the identity of their merchandise. Anyway, I will plant them.
I was raised in southern Iowa where my mom and dad cut all the leftover potatoes into small parts, each having at least one sprout on them. They were Kennebec potatoes and we planted many long rows of them. I remember that it was a family job to get them planted. My dad would drop them in the long furrow and step on them, and the younger boys followed with a rake to cover them up. We had many rows of potatoes as we a family of six ate potatoes all year on them. It was the boys job, the four of us, to keep the weeds down. The older two boys were out of the house eventually so it was the two younger boys job. By fall when they needed to be dug, the weeds had been left to grow. It was my older brother Dwight and me to go out and find the dying vines among all the weeds and dig them up and let them dry for a day. We didn't do this all at once but it always became a drudge job by the time we were done. The baskets were heavy and we would leave the out in the garden filled ready for my dad to carry them to the basement.
All of that flashed before me as I picked out about a dozen whole purple skinned potatoes. They have multiple sprouts so I can probably get 4 or 5 starts off each one. I hope that the kind that I bought were golden yellow as that is the reason I wanted to grow them. I think it would be nice to have something different to grow and to eat. I will go back to the store next week and check out exactly what I bought and I will get a sweet potato to get started in water for planting. I live in central Iowa so I am curious to see how this goes with a different zone.
Birthdays are fun when there is cake and my wife is making a red devil's food cake for me. My two brothers have called already, both of them older and arguing about when I was born. They were born before and during WW2 and my brother Dwight was born in 1947 and I was born in 1950.
We have the post war and prewar gap in age so the older guys have a hard time knowing anything about their younger siblings. Now that one brother older than me is gone, and Mom and Dad are gone, they have to rely on my oldest brother's wife to know what is going on, or they break down and call me. The two sons will call tonight. One will call the other to remind him as his computer will remind him that it is his dad's birthday. It will be good to hear from them.
Thanks for reading... oh yes if you haven't figured it out, this is my last year to be in the fifties.