Promises Like Pie Crust
Mrs. Rasco died last week. That means nothing to most of you. To a 14 year old freshman who picked a calico fabric with a cream colored background & tiny heather pink flowers as her fabric to make the pullover blouse that would define both 1981 and half of her grade one semester, it means plenty. Frances Rasco was my Home Economics teacher. Hers was the classroom where you entered on day one, lackadaisical and borderline disrespectful, as one does with perceived blow off classes when one is a freshman, only to end the year realizing how difficult it really is to balance a checkbook, calculate caloric values of recipes, figure out how many cents per person it takes to make a meal for a family of four, and yes, how to sew a basic V-neck blouse that you then have to wear for an entire school day. In true Mrs. Rasco fashion, I remember an entire class devoted to the unnecessary act of making cake from scratch when boxed cake mix was the best thing since sliced bread, so long as you don’t tell anyone it was from a box and you add extra eggs and some sour cream, wink wink. Since I learned of her passing, I’ve been waxing poetic about that whole era and the unsung hero that was the Home Ec teacher. IMHO, as today’s kids would say, that’s what’s wrong with the world. We stopped teaching our kids how to do life. But first, let’s cook.