Frozen with suspense, I stood pat on the number 36 blue leaf that was pasted on the floor next to the Dr. Scholl’s Air Pillow Insoles. Would this be my lucky day?

Immediately I was transported back 35 years to my days as a fourth-grade student in Mrs. Rhonda Sample’s class at Hayesville Elementary School in Salem, Oregon.
One evening of each school year was set aside as an “open house” for the students to dazzle our parents with a showcase of our talents in the classroom. Everything from frogs slurping up fat flies in a glass aquarium to samples of cursive writing hung around the room.

Mother and Dad could see their tax dollars at work by taking a guided tour of the spotless stainless steel kitchen where “cookie” prepared our hot lunches.

For me, the highlight of “Open House at Hayesville” was the cakewalk in room seven.

Mrs. Sample was the bandleader of our cakewalk, and as her students, it was our job to fix up the classroom in preparation for the event.

We moved all of the desks and chairs to the sides of the room so we could make way for the cakewalk in the center. We then pasted footprints cut out of colored construction paper in a large circle on the spotless, Formica-tiled floor. Then each “foot” was given a number from one to twenty. Streamers were pasted from the outer walls of the ceiling, and then brought into the center to define the middle point of the cakewalk circle.

The mothers of the students then traipsed in with their plastic Tupperware cake caddies, literally a cake parade into the classroom.

A large table was set to one side and it held forth all manner of cakes, tarts, tortes, and even the odd pie or two. It was a table of pure cake gluttony-and all species of cake were represented: angel food, chiffon, pound, marble and plain yellow. On and on it went through the annals of cakedom-coconut dusted, chocolate frosted, sprinkled with chopped peppermints, dotted with spiced gum drops. Cake after cake after cake.

Now I was a kid in the know when it came to cake, and I spotted my victim the minute I entered the room -- that intense Red Velvet Cake with Vanilla Frosting that Bernie Bennett’s Mom had baked.

While my mother’s “Heath Bar Crunch Cake” was good, it would be considered a total embarrassment in front of one’s friends to choose a cake made by your own mother.

Tickets for the cakewalk cost a mere 25 cents. Given the fact that there were up to twenty people for each cakewalk, and we did a cakewalk every 15 minutes throughout the night, our fourth grade class could make some serious cash for upcoming events.

To add to the drama of competition, Mrs. Sample would allow 25 people to enter the cakewalk, although there were only 20 numbers posted on the floor. Inevitably, the weak would be shut out by the strong.

When it was time for the cakewalk, Mrs. Sample pushed the button on the portable record player and a vinyl LP dropped down on the turntable. She announced, “start cakewalking” just as a silly tune like “Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush” crackled out of the little speaker.

At the height of anticipation, Mrs. Sample would take the needle off the record and immediately shout, “stop the cakewalk!”

The bigger, older kids-and a few pushy grown-ups-would shove the little kids off a “footprint,” relegating them to the sidelines to wait for the next cakewalk.

Mrs. Sample then drew the winning ticket out of the fishbowl and announced the winner, “number 19 is a winner!”

As I delved deeper into my research of the cakewalk for this story, my memories of winning a Pineapple Upside-Down Cake at Hayesville Elementary School faded as I uncovered the rich history of the cakewalk and the important role it has played in the history of Americana.

The roots of the cakewalk were sown in the segregated deep South after the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War. Many former slaves continued to toil away on large Southern plantations once they were legally free -- most had no other place to go. Yet with emancipation came more freedom of expression. One form of that expression was dance, and with their new-found freedom, the former slaves took African tribal dances and combined them with Western European traditions.

According to slaves’ oral histories, the cakewalk began around 1850 as a parody of the way the slave masters would escort their women into dinner or to dance. When the plantation-owners saw the dance, they missed the satirical element entirely and took it on as their own. The wealthy farmers sponsored competitions between plantations and the dance moved to the city where it became a staple of first minstrel and then vaudeville shows.

Often, on the plantations, the winner of the dance contest won a cake, leading many to think that this is where the name “cakewalk” comes from, but the use of the word as a dance seems to pre-date other references. Still, it was from this humble beginning in the sweltering, humid heat southern plantations that the African-American music that would evolve into ragtime and then jazz first exploded into the popular consciousness of all Americans.

By the 1890’s, African-American actors, dancers and musicians had started forming their own production companies and staged versions of the cakewalk became all the rage.

The vaudeville team of Mr. Egbert Williams and Mr. George Walker were two of the first African-Americans to take their show on the road on a grand scale. Crowds packed into The New York theatre in 1903 for 53 stunning performances of song and cakewalk dances in William’s and Walker’s production of “In Dahomey”-the first all-black musical to be performed in a major Broadway venue.

“In Dahomey” then went across the Atlantic, performing for seven months at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London before returning to New York.

While audiences were stomping their feet to the beat of the cakewalk dancers on the stage, a change was taking place in the kitchens of America.

By the turn of the century, Americans were moving off farms and into towns and cities in record numbers. Along with that migration came the need for more sophisticated means of refrigeration.

The invention of using ice to keep foods cold had been employed for literally thousands of years. And farm families had always kept their perishable foods cold in root cellars chilled by huge slabs of ice. But living in tight quarters in a Baltimore co-op meant one had to find a more productive, space saving means for storing foods.

Iceboxes had been sold commercially since the early 1800’s. The icebox was basically an insulated metal box that held a huge block of ice in the top. Cold air would filter down through the food storage areas, keeping Grandma’s fresh-picked radishes crispy.

Yet the design of the original icebox required frequent visits from the Iceman and his horse and buggy to stoke the unit with a block of ice to keep things cold.

Icebox cakes became very popular in the early 1900’s as more and more Americans purchased electric refrigeration units and the latest adaptations of the old-style icebox. With the advent of electricity, cooks had a new means of keeping foods fresher longer, which eliminated daily trips to the market.

While most of us think that the concept of paneling a refrigerator with sculpted cherry wood is a recent invention exclusive to brands like Thermidor and Kitchenaid, in fact, the icebox set the trend for modern kitchen appliance design.

Many iceboxes were sculpted out of steel and chrome; others were paneled with intricately carved and stained hardwoods.

Icebox cakes quickly became popular because they were quick to assemble and didn’t need to be baked in a hot oven.

The American passion with dance theatre had faded by the 1920’s, yet an early concept of the cakewalk endured, chiefly as a contest to raise money at church socials and school functions.

From Crown King, Arizona to Rosebud, South Dakota, our love affair with cakewalks continues to this day.

Of course, acakewalk is no place for a frilly Frozen Mocha Bombe garnished with Caramelized Passion Fruit. Such a fancy-dancy cake is strictly forbidden from the cakewalk prize pool. No, an event steeped in American history must be a showcase of cakes baked by the hands of home cooks -- and a showcase of the decades of fun we have had at cakewalks.

Like the kind of cake that we ate in 1900 after a performance of Abe Holzmann’s cakewalk “Bunch O’Blackberries.”

Or maybe a thick slice of Lady Baltimore Cake after watching the American jazz legend Louis Armstrong trumpet “Stompin’ at the Savoy” on the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday evening, July 15, 1956.

Quite possibly it could be a wedge of Rose DeDominicis’ “Streusel Spice Cake,” winner of $25,000 in the 1972 Pillsbury Bake-off.

Personally, I have always shown a disdain for the Pillsbury Bake-off, mainly because I felt it was just a marketing gimmick to get shoppers to buy canned Green Giant Niblets Whole Kernel Sweet Corn.

I felt that it was sacrilegious to my honor as a cook to use prepared crescent roll dough around hot dogs and call it “Tender Morsels of Pork Sausage Encased in Flaky Butter Pastry.”

But oh, those Pillsbury Bake-Off cake recipes are another story.

While the Pillsbury competition is not technically a cakewalk, one could stretch the boundary of definition in this case. Because any cake that takes the prize at Pillsbury is worthy of being the prize at a cakewalk.

Started in 1949, the Pillsbury Bake-off winner doesn’t win a cake as a prize for standing on a number. Rather, this year’s winner will receive one million dollars for offering up a grand-prize winning cake or any item within the four different categories: Easy Weeknight Meals, Luscious & Lighter Main & Side Dishes, Fast & Fabulous Desserts or Treats, Casual Snacks and Appetizers

The Pillsbury Bake-off Hall of Fame fills a trophy case with some of America’s finest cakes. Two of the more noted winners were Mrs. Helen Weston of La Jolla, California, who baked her “Starlight Double-Delight Cake” to the prize in 1951. Phyllis Lidert of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, won in 1968 for her “Buttercream Pound Cake.”

Mrs. Stephen A. Hornung of New York City was the 3rd prize winner of the 1953 Bake-off with her recipe for “Meringue Cradle Cake.” The 1953 cookbook of recipe winners describes the cake as-“Mrs. Hornung bakes golden cake batter inside the meringue ‘cradle.’ She turns her cake upside down after baking-and it is already ‘frosted.”

While many cooks had an electric mixer in 1953, a majority of cooks used only two simple tools when stirring a cake batter -- either a hand-operated rotary mixer, or even more likely, a plain wooden spoon.

Mrs. Hornung was gracious enough to provide instructions for both methods in her recipe.

Some of the ingredients listed in Mrs. Hornung’s recipe are no longer available under the brand name listed. In fact, I have never seen nor heard of the ‘enriched flour’ Mrs. Hornung recommends must be used. But I have found outstanding results with cakes by exclusively using cake flour. Cake flour is finer than all-purpose flour, and it yields cakes that are light and airy. Any brand of vanilla extract and baking powder will do just fine.

At our home, I loved it whenever my Mother made a cake with “cooked” frosting.

Cooked frostings were very popular in the 1960’s. Yet in our continuing quest to spend less time in the kitchen cooking good food, cooked frostings lost their popularity once canned and prepared frostings hit the supermarket shelves.

Seven-minute frosting derived its name from the fact that seven minutes is precisely the amount of time it takes to properly cook this satin-sheen frosting which is the consistency of luxuriously gooey, fondant candy.

In today’s food world, burnt sugar would be called “caramelized pure Hawaiian cane sugar.” But really, as bakers have always known, all it is, is sugar that is melted in a hot pan until it “burns”, turning the sugar into a thick, deep-golden syrup. Cake bakers were not naïve in 1965.

Toasted coconut has always been a popular ingredient in “topping” cakes. Not only does it add texture and flavor, more importantly, it masks any flaws in the frosting and makes the cake look pretty on that heirloom glass cake stand.

The traditions started by the cakewalk have continued into the 21st century.

“Cakewalk” is a cutting edge Boston company that bills itself as “developing and marketing the world's leading music and sound software for Windows. Over 1,000,000 people worldwide use Cakewalk products daily to produce audio for CDs, film, TV, video games, live stage sound, the Internet, and personal enjoyment.” I venture to say that the purchasers of Cakewalk software have no idea where the name came from.

As the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, we have witnessed a re-birth in the popularity of comfort foods. Especially cake. We’re still baking cakes in record numbers. What better way to end a meal of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy than with a warm slice of decadent chocolate cake and a glass of ice-cold milk?

My number 36 wasn’t called that day at Yoke’s Supermarket.