It All Started With Dishwashing Powder

I looked forward to breaking some gender barriers when I signed up for a special class offered by my junior high school “Boys Home Ec”.  Us guys were going to learn all the secrets of home economics: how to sew, how to iron, how to cook.

Sewing was kind of cool because you got to run a sewing machine. I made a barbeque apron. I even got the machine to spell out “What’s Cooking?” on the front. I thought it was wonderful and worthy of commercial production.

Ironing was, however, the opposite of cool. It was tedious, dangerous, and difficult to do well.

Knowing how to iron came in handy when my mother had to spend a year in Ohio taking care of my brother’s family after my brother and his wife were involved in an automobile accident. I ironed my father’s laundry for him. I was doing OK with the ironing until I tried ironing my father’s nylon stretch socks. The Boys Home Ec class never taught us how to get the melted rubber off an iron.

Cooking was the coolest part of the class.

The first thing we cooked was broiled apple sauce sandwiches. We took a slice of white bread, spread apple sauce on it, sprinkled brown sugar on top, and put it under the broiler until the brown sugar got bubbly. I thought the result was yummy.

At home that evening, I offered to make apple sauce sandwiches for my mother and father. Unfortunately, they were too full from dinner to try one. In fact, they were so full for the next couple of days that I finally stopped offering.

The real highlight of Boys’ Home Ec was learning to make pizza pie from scratch.

You mixed flour with some stuff, added live yeast, and put a dishtowel over the bowl. Under the dishtowel, the yeast did some magic and the dough puffed up. Next came the physical part: you got to punch the dough down. It was soft and fragrant as you formed it into a compact ball.

Things got more physical. You needed to activate the gluten in the dough. In the restaurants in town, they worked the dough by spinning it and tossing it up in the air. This was beyond the dexterity of a typical eighth grader, so our teacher had us play catch. We tossed the dough back and forth. Definitely cool.

Yet, there was danger in cooking. The class was divided into kitchens: four boys in the blue kitchen, four boys in the yellow kitchen, etc. One day we made biscuits. The boys in the blue kitchen announced that their biscuits tasted terrible. One day we made cookies. The boys in the yellow kitchen announced that their cookies tasted terrible.

The teacher figured out what had happened, and tracked it down to a boy in the red kitchen. He had sabotaged the other kitchens by putting dishwashing powder in their flour canisters. His name was Harry.

Last year, I helped our high school reunion committee track down our classmates for our 50^th Reunion. I found Harry’s current address. It was “In Care of the North Carolina Department of Corrections.”

A life of crime…and it all started with dishwashing powder.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com