TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 103

[Julie Anna Teague]

Quoting Tobie Shapiro <tobie at shpilchas.net>:

> 	I don't remember if it was Miss or Mrs. Hedricks who was the sewing
> teacher at Willard Junior High School.  This was the eighth grade,
> and all the boys took shop while all the girls took, "Home
> Economics,".  Home Economics was a euphamism for cooking and sewing.
> They would have had us diapering baby mannequins if they had the
> funding, and teaching us how to mix a martini for our husbands' grand
> arrival home after a day of earning the bread money.  It was all
> swallowed whole back then.  And even if you resented it, which I did,
> you didn't think of why.  You just accepted the inequality as one
> more thing that a girl has to do that a boy doesn't.  One more thing
> a boy gets to do that a girl doesn't.

I don't know if this is any consolation, but when my son was in eighth 
grade, he, and all the boys, had to take "Home Economics", which is now 
called "Family Science".  What are the elements that go into making a 
family?  Obviously, someone who knows how to cook, someone who knows 
how to sew on a button, and someone to change the baby.  Mix these 
elements together in a three-bedroom, one-and-half-bath beaker, and 
there you go--a family.  It's science!  Andy made cookies, sewed 
himself a sweet pair of boxer shorts, and has some experience with 
rubber babies with timers in their bellies (although his baby was 
obviously defective because it never cried, not once in the whole 
weekend it lived with us).

Shop class is not offered anymore.  Apparently some student's family 
gave the schools a stiff lesson in liability laws somewhere along the 
way.  All those saws and smoldering soldering irons.

I credit Junior High Home Ec class for the upsurge I've seen in women 
my age who refuse to cook.  Sure, it was really "women's lib", but Home 
Ec class, which lagged behind by at least a couple of decades, really 
drove the point home.  Most of us were incensed by the apron project 
and the meatloaf project.  Many of us would've loved shop class.  But I 
do find it unfortunate that many of my women friends find cooking 
abhorrent and against their feminist values because someone told us at 
a young age that it was something we had to do.  Some of them go so far 
as to hint that I may have gone over to the dark side because I cook 
and bake, can knit a scarf, crochet a granny square, and employ my 
sewing machine to slipcover a cushion.  What the hell's wrong with me?  
Why do I even own a sewing machine?

I actually love to cook now.  I think it's a key ingredient in my 
personal health that I can cook.  I think of it as a tribute to my 
mother and grandmothers, not a curse, that I picked up some of their 
culinary skills.  Several of my female friends have become dependent on 
their husbands who cook because they absolutely can't or won't.  And, 
honestly, that isn't a very liberated idea, is it?  Isn't it the ideal 
that both people can generally take care of themselves if necessary?  
Not that one person can't be the main cook and bottle-washer if things 
play out that way, but that the other is prepared to step in, and even 
volunteers to step in and switch roles when needed.  I see cooking as 
an important "personal" skill, rather than a "family" skill.

Anyway, food for thought.  Thanks for the sharing your buffet, dear heart.

Julie













>
> 	In cooking class, which was the first semester, there was a big
> class room that had clusters of kitchens.  It was like a laboratory
> class.  There would be four girls to each kitchen.  In the kitchen
> would be a stove and oven, a sink, a refrigerator and cabinets.  In
> the cabinets were supplies like flour, sugar, salt, pepper, canned
> goods, and in the drawers were tools like beaters, whisks, measuring
> spoons, rolling pins.  It's a wonder they didn't have us ironing,
> making beds, wiping noses.  And did the boys get lessons on how to
> buy flowers if they'd been bad?  No.  They got to turn wood on a
> lathe, and make tongue in groove joints.  They drilled holes and
> glued and clamped and operated dangerous machinery.
>
> 	Back in cooking class, we were to keep notes in a kitchen diary.
> Every class had a cooking project, and we were supposed to keep a
> running commentary on our experiences with the ladles and spatulas,
> the  mashers, blenders and bowls.  One lesson was given over to
> making meringue.  The separating of eggs was a big mystery.  Take the
> yolks and put them in one bowl and put the albumen in another.  Not a
> fleck of yolk should contaminate the whites, because we had to whip
> the whites until they were stiff and formed peaks when shaped with a
> spatula.  We were told that even a tiny dot of yolk would spoil the
> whipping.  The four of us paired off and each got a turn at cracking
> the eggs, then using the broken shells to pour the yolk back and
> forth from one shell to the other until all the whites were emptied
> into one bowl and all the yolks into another.  But ours had a tiny
> error.  Just the slightest jot of yolk had ruptured on the edge of
> the broken egg shell and contaminated the whites. My partner and I
> decided that this miniscule amount of yolk couldn't possibly make a
> difference.  And we were only given so many eggs each, so we didn't
> have much of a choice.  We beat those whites until our arms were
> sore, but they wouldn't rise or stiffen.  They remained a dull grey
> and liquidy mix in the unhappy bowl.
>
> 	I noted this in my kitchen diary.  "When they say you can't let any
> yolk at all get into the whites, they really mean it.  None at all.
> Or you will fail like we did."
>
> 	The teacher took great pity on me and gave me an A for caring so
> deeply, and for my perception about the yolks.  It was a decade later
> that I learned to separate the whites from the yolks by cracking the
> egg into my hand and letting the albumen seep between my fingers
> while the yolk stayed behind in my palm.  We made tamale pie,
> biscuits from a mix, custard, fried chicken, and brownies.  By the
> time we graduated from cooking class, we were ready to get married.
>
> 	You don't actually need to know how to sew to survive in the modern
> world, but sewing was the second  semester.  And this is where Miss
> or Mrs. Hedricks came in.  She was a monster teacher.  Everyone hated
> her, except Carol Jurs who was the teacher's pet.  It was rudely
> obvious.  Anyone else could get a tongue lashing for what Carol would
> get praise for.  Hedricks fawned on her, and held her up as an
> example for the rest of us miscreants.  She took it all in with
> marvellous grace, and held it over all of our heads, saying she could
> get us in trouble if she wanted to, that Hedricks was wound around
> her little finger.  Carol Jurs was one of those tomboys who hogged
> the ball in team sports, and excelled at kicking, running, leaping
> and aiming.
>
> 	Miss or Mrs. Hedricks knew that most of us hated her and that didn't
> improve her mood any.  She was missing her left ring finger and
> legend had it that she sewed over it with a big old singer sewing
> machine.  I eyed her hand surreptitiously and gasped quietly.
>
> 	In sewing class we worked from patterns. She would have us write
> down what pattern we were to purchase at Hink's, and we'd go there
> and get them.  Butterick.  I remember Butterick, makers of fine
> patterns the world over.  We each got a singer Slant-o-matic sewing
> machine and we learned how to fill a bobbin with thread, and how to
> thread the sewing machine.  Then the first project was,  ta da!,
> making an apron.  An apron! How convenient.  We worked our way up
> through the sewing projects until finally we were to make a skirt.
> We got our patterns at Hink's.  And this pattern required a zipper.
> Do not take your zippers for granted, ladies and gentlemen, for they
> are the most impossible things to install. I read all the
> instructions on the black board, and followed them to the letter.  My
> zipper was all goofy and not matched up.  I had to take it apart and
> start over again.  This time, I was specially careful to follow those
> instructions to the last little detail.  No soap.  The zipper had to
> be torn out again.  After three tries and three times ripping out the
> zipper I finally approached the fearsome Miss or Mrs. Hedricks, in
> deep frustration, and asked her what to do.  I showed her my botched
> job attached, as it was, to my aquamarine gathered skirt.  I asked
> for her help.  This was a brave move.
>
> 	"Go follow the instructions on the board! Read the instructions!"
> she snapped.
>
> 	"But I did.  It didn't work.  I tried."
>
> 	She screamed at me, "Go back and read the instructions.  That's what
> they're there for. I'm not here to answer your questions!"
>
> 	I looked at her, non-plussed.  I checked what she had said to me
> against all logic and my mouth fell open.  I made the mistake of
> using my voice.  "Then what ARE you here for?"  I asked in complete
> innocence.
>
> 	"You have a sharp tongue, young lady!" Then she elaborated on the
> theme, dressed me up and down.  Told me I was cocky and useless.  "Go
> back to your machine, and follow the instructions.  Any idiot can put
> in a zipper!" She ripped those words right out of her throat and beat
> me with them.  I went back to my machine and cried.  I had a sharp
> tongue, but I was bettered by Miss or Mrs. Hedricks, who made my life
> miserable for a whole semester.  I guess that's what she was there
> for.
>
>
>
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> --
>
>
>
>
> Tobie Helene Shapiro
> Berkeley, California   USA
>
> tobie at shpilchas.net
>