Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for November 15, 2017

Take up drag racing Arlo, your talents could still be used there.

Well, way back when I got directed into Shop Classes a guy taking Home Economics was not allowed, just as girls taking Shop Classes was not allowed. They were allowed in Mechanical Drawing (better known as Drafting) and Graphic Arts (Print Shop) however. I lucked out in that Mom was State Certified at the Secondary Level as a Home Economics Teacher. So I got “Private Lessons” in various Basic Level Cooking Skills and Arts, along with budgeting, financial planning, and “How and Why not to Mess with Your Mother”. And during my HS years a tutor in Organic Chemistry and Biology. The only real benefit to me from the Shop Classes was that I learned that I could design the projects and do the drawings, but had better leave the actual building and use of hand tools to someone else. Plus I had free access to all of her and Dad’s College texts.

And now cars don’t even have carbs, do they?

Charliegirl: Thanks for your comment. I completely missed the fact that Arlo was actually saying that he had learned a skill that rapidly became obsolete, whereas learning to cook would have been much more practical.

You can tune a carburetor, but you can’t tuna casserole.

Everybody should learn to cook, preferably when they are children. Baking is a good place to start: what child does not enjoy cake or cookies they have made?

Among her other weird ways, my mum did not like anybody else in her kitchen. If it hadn’t been for home ec – now known as Domestic Arts! – I’d have never learned to cook.

My friend told me they took the metals shops out of my high school and made them into a nursery. I asked, why did they start teaching farming in a city school? He said nursery for the high school girl’s babies so they could stay in school.

I couldn’t take Home EC in HS, but all the girls were in typing and shorthand, which I could take. And I learned to cook at home. But now my wife don’t like others in her kitchen. So I just eat.

Gee by the mid-70’s guys were taking Home Ec; went to two different middle schools and got to take it twice. Showed some fundamentals of sewing, cooking, and budgeting.

When they began to offer Spanish in our small high school we all scoffed, “Why would we want to learn Spanish?”

First year in college and taking engineering classes learning how to use a slide rule was mandatory. They even had an 8-foot working slide rule on the wall as a prop.

After Christmas break one student came with a handheld calculator and we all gathered around looking at the glowing red letters. That calculator was a Texas Instrument which cost $500 back in 1968 or about $3,000 in today’s money.

At the start of my second year in the fall they dropped the mandatory slide rule class and the class was gone shortly thereafter. It just faded away due to lack of participation.

My Grandpa Harris was quite a Man’s man. Had to go to work in the lead mines in Missouri when he was 12 to help support the family. He was also a great cook, so was my grandma. the only thing he didn’t make was pot roast, that was her specialty and man was it good.

This was the exact reason I took gymnastics and aerobics and swim class in high school. Laughed at by the bullies of the day until the saw the outfits the girls were in and I was one of only 3 boys in the classes…Then there tune changed very quickly. I was no fool back in the day.

As opposed to autos, cooking technology hasn’t changed much in thousands of years. You mix it up, turn on the heat and eat.

Way back when, my brother, for just this reason, was the first male to take Home Ec in Jr. High. He’s no dummy.

In my junior high and high school, Home Ec had nothing to do with cooking. It was more on how to sew and knit. Knitting I learned from my mother when I was in elementary school. Sewing was something I dreaded as the teachers seem to have a problem with me and kept tearing out my work, so those projects were never done on time as a result. I can sew clothes, mend seams and holes, put buttons back on, etc. Not a problem for me at all. But those teachers sure could put someone off on wanting to do it at all.

My buddies and I would spend weekends under the hoods of our cars tuning the carb, setting the points, gaping the plugs. Now I just change the oil and air the tires.

Arlo has something there…. when I was in high school, in the early 70’s, you didn’t see any guys in home economics or other “girls only” classes. I took typing, which turned out to be a very valuable skill in my career as a tech geek, and was the only guy in the class. And at home I learned to cook, clean, sew, wash and iron – I was the oldest and the first one drafted into household chores. When I was a senior in HS I took accounting and several other business type courses (also considered “girls only” back then) and have benefited greatly by that choice. Then I went in to military service and learned all about being a first class janitor and coffee bar mogul. All skills that are still useful to this day.

Did I ever learn how to tune a carburetor? Only in a half assed kind a way and now that is a skill only needed with much older vehicles. My truck and motorcycle are both fuel injected. Only the airplane engine has a carb and, because of the rules, I’m not “allowed” to work on it so much.

I took Home Ec. in 6th grade. It was the second or third year that boys could take Home Ec. & girls could take Industrial Ed. Mother insisted that both my brother & I would take the class, having vowed that no son of hers would grow up to be helpless in the kitchen or live in a pigpen of a bachelor pad. Turns out there were unexpected benefits later, after Gina & I started dating she later told me she found my cooking skills to be a big selling point!

Unless someone gave me a Corvette I would NOT own a new one at all. I liked working on my car…my dad believed girls had to know everything about a car and I did.

I had Home Ec right before lunch. That was after Auto Shop first thing in the morning.

One of my favorite lines is from a mechanic I had who said, “Carburetor is French for ’Don’t f*** with it.’”

From all the fun they have neither of them must have taken a sex ed class

Shop was not wasted…I did learn how to set type.