DON'T GET ANY ON YA!......

 Cooking techniques have given me far more pleasure during my lifetime....than bookkeeping, studying the balancing of equations, driving about in even the most luxurious of vehicles...even dining in 'fine' restaurants, or having the skill set to change my own motor oil.......When I was in High School, home economics really appealed to me....but, at 'that time', was a 'girl thing......NOT for 'boys'.....One might think this would have been a 'case' for protest....but, NOT in 1961, when MEN had to take to the 'ball fields and courts'.......Girls were encouraged to make omelets.....Boys, to cut out sheet metal parts and work drill presses!...... The way 'out' of this cycle of gender crap was 'mechanical drawing'......where, at least, I could draw elevations of houses and demonstrate skills at rendering machine bolts.......But...go figure!.....I never had a job, when young, cooking...... the 'drafting' course DID get me a job, after high school, describing the machinery of Army jeep seats, however @ 90 cents/hr......I did get to make French toast for Frank Sinatra, in the Sands Hotel's kitchen, which seemed so epicurean, when I was 15! My Father supervised the construction of the Kitchen facility for Louis B. and Gene Leone...(remember Mama Leone's, in NYC?)....my Mother and I went to Vegas to meet him and do some vacationing at The Grand Canyon and Painted Desert, Carlsbad Caverns, Mexico and Disneyland......Because I was with Louis's 'friends', I was allowed to see Judy Garland, topless Follies Bergere dancers...and tour the kitchen facility that had just opened....I guess I was just precocious enough to go under the radar, since 'children' were certainly not allowed....especially to view topless dancers.....Later, in Ciudad Juárez, however, I was turned away...for being under-aged.... from a performance by Jayne Mansfield, who was playing a violin and dancing with a bunch of gay bodybuilders.......My permissive parents handed me five bucks and sent me shopping in the street markets while they watched 'Jayne' do her 'poor man's Marilyn Monroe' schtick...