The Pursuit of Happiness
chapter 1
The day my mother dies is a Thursday in mid-June and Loretta's scolding me for leaving my cell phone on the kitchen table. If it were my own family's twenty-first-century kitchen table, there wouldn't be a problem. But the kitchen table where my stuff is right now happens to be in a restored colonial-era farmhouse. Anachronisms are a big, bad no-no at Morrisville Historic Village and employees like me are expected to know better than to leave such modernisms lying around.
It's a day like any other at work. Mary and I complain about our itchy Early American clothing and the ninety-degree weather; if colonial women actually wore as many layers as we do, we joke, they must have stank to the high heavens. Loretta bakes corn bread to show off the authentic brick oven and swats visitors' hands when they reach out for a taste. "Not enough for our guests," she sings. "I'm sure you understand." It'd be breaking character to say "health code" or "lawsuit"; she winks deliberately instead.
Mary and I feed the ducks in the pond out back and give tours of the house, pretending not to know anything about modern-day l ... read full excerpt from The Pursuit of Happiness ebook
