Kelley White
Right after I won second place for the state of New Hampshire in the Betty Crocker Search For the Homemaker of Tomorrow


a boy argued that the contest was unfair as it excluded males and so the not-so-subtle change was made to "Family Leaders": meanwhile the Home Ec suite at Laconia High School, long fallen into disuse, was disassembled. Gone the living room with ugly gray cut velvet couch, the dinette set, the half bed (as seen in furniture showrooms,) folded like a bad-perspective hallucination of itself. Gone the kitchen with its sweet tie-back curtains overlooking the bricks of the industrial arts wing. Gone the copper bottom pots and tea cosy, bosom-ruffled aprons and silver tea set. I'd never learned there anyway. I barely cook. If I'd won first I'd a been found out at the bake-off or the "tea for senator's wives in our nation's capitol." For a few years I got the newsletter, read which state winners and runner-ups had placed in the canning competition at which state fair and I looked forward to them running the news of my graduation from medical school. I wanted to comment on the periodic interview questions. I should have been more respectful. Now they call it Family Consumer Science and I have nearly consumed myself to death.

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"Cook, Book (Front)" - Michael Haeflinger