During the school year, on the other hand, I'm up at 6:30 to flip pancakes (the instant kind, from the add-water-and-pour container, lest you think I'm actually cooking at that hour).

People in these stories flip pancakes and dress in parkas in the morning, pour bourbon and worry about what young people are doing to themselves with drugs, and proffer and accept signs of affection without the benefit of irony or self-irony, or even self-consciousness.

I flipped pancakes.

Ms. Mobley has flipped pancakes for 32 years at the Eat-Rite Diner, a short walk from the stadium.

On a much more modest scale, Dr. John A. Whritner, School Superintendent in Greenwich, Conn., made early-morning visits to 13 schools, tied on an apron and flipped pancakes, fulfilling a promise to make breakfast for schools where every teacher, clerk and custodial worker contributed to United Way.

That's partly because Jemima predates them all, having made her debut at Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893, in the person of Nancy Green, a black cook who told folksy stories and flipped pancakes made up from the new, self-rising flour.

Balding, wearing glasses, Keller looks like the junior high school science teacher who doubles as soccer coach, the pillar of the community, who flips pancakes at the town fund-raiser or supervises the carwash on Saturday morning.

Mr. Moxon's family bought the farm from the Reiffs, and he grew up in the farmhouse where he now flips blueberry pancakes and serves them on a table set with English china and family silver.

And he has already given speeches and flipped pancakes in the crucial early campaign states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

I want to just walk up to Jane and say that I miss the way she flips pancakes.