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Smith Cottage

We returned to Puerto Rico just before summer. Edda was soon to be six
years old and ready to start school. Although we were protestants, our
parents enrolled Edda in “Colegio San José”, a Catholic parochial school
which was almost adjacent to the campus and in which teaching was done
mostly in English. I was only four years of age, but since I would turn five
before the end of August, I was allowed to enroll in kindergarten.

From where we lived by the dairy farm to Colegio San José was quite a hike;
perhaps a 20 to 30 minute walk. Our folks decided that this was too far for a
five and a six-year-old to walk on our own, so they petitioned the college for
a more suitably-located faculty house. Fortunately, not only did a house
soon become available, but also it was the closest house on the campus to
the school. Our new house also had a name, “Smith Cottage”. (Later we
were to discover that the houses were named after the benefactors that had
donated the funds to cover the construction costs.)

“Smith Cottage” was almost adjacent to the parochial school. Well, I say
adjacent. There was nothing between the school and our house, except that
it was on top of one hill and we were on top of another hill. In between, there
was a large field devoted, in alternate years, to cattle and sugarcane. It went
straight down hundreds of feet to a draw, then hundreds of feet up again to
the school walls. From our front yard, we could see right to the back of the
school. It was no more than a couple of hundred yards from house to school
as the crow flies but, perhaps, twice that by actual walking. If we walked
down off our hill to the main street of the campus, we could access a dirt
street that led to the side entrance to the school. We would slip in through a
small gate and come in to the back of the school. There must not have been
a full kilometer walking distance between us and it was no more than a ten-
minute walk at most.

Smith Cottage had a spectacular setting! It was built near the top of a hill
overlooking a beautiful river valley that stretched from horizon to horizon and
was usually covered with sugarcane. The central mountain range that
stretches from west to east down the middle of the island could be seen
some kilometers away to the north. The top of the hill behind us was
uninhabited and covered with tall grass and rocky cliffs, great for exploring

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