The First United Methodist Church of Kimberly, Kansas always participated in the annual Fall Festival that was held on [Labor Day Weekend], and Eula Mae Johnson was always the prime mover behind the church's participation. Truth be known, Eula Mae was the only one at FUMC-Kimberly who cared about the Fall Festival, and if we were to get brutally honest, Eula Mae's motivation was not from the most noble of reasons.

In fact, if Eula Mae had been forced to put a three-word answer as to why she cared about participating in the festival at all, those three words would have been "Betty Jo Pyle." If forced to use only one word, that word would have been "revenge."

Betty Jo Pyle was now one of the leading ladies over at the Kimberly Presbyterian Church. Being a Presbyterian wasn't the reason Eula Mae wanted to exact revenge on her, however. You see, Eula Mae and Betty Jo had attended Kimberly Public Schools together from kindergarten through twelfth grade without ever having once liked each other. Other than proximity, there was no reason why they should have, because they were opposites of each other in so many ways that were little and yet somehow matter so much.

One example would be the Methodist versus Presbyterian split. While each of these churches is protestant, they exemplify different types of protestant theology. The Presbyterians are [Calvinist] in their outlook while the Methodists are Arminian.

Now, don't be mistaken, Betty Jo could not tell you what a single letter stands for in the acronym TULIP, which summarizes the Calvinist doctrine, while Eula Mae would be equally clueless about who [Arminius] was, much less what he believed, but each of these fine church women would've been delighted in the difference between them.

Another difference, which is probably more important to our story, is in body type. Betty Jo is a perfect size five and had been since high school. She was a late-life child of her parents and the youngest of a family of four sisters. Her three elder siblings had all taken delight in dressing her up like a doll, and she had continued this of her own accord once she was old enough to dress herself and then on into adulthood.

By way of contrast, Eula Mae was not a size five, perfect or otherwise, and a keen sense of self-preservation kept even her closest friends from enquiring as to what number one might associate with her size. Suffice it to say that her backside was big enough to sell advertising space on. As for clothing, she was always neat and clean, but there were definite limits as to what she could purchase for her full-figure. However, this was not a burden to her as she was a person who was universally recognized as having a beautiful soul. She cared deeply about the needy and devoted a lot of free time to helping them. She worked in soup kitchens and filled food baskets at Christmas time.

On the other hand, Betty Jo was much more interested in appearances than in the poor. Although she did engage in many of the same activities Eula Mae did, she did it because it made her look good rather than out of a desire to help the needy.

Ironically, it was one trait they both shared, that led to their lifelong enmity rather than any of their differences. This trait was a fondness for one Roger Pyle.

Roger had been a football player at Kimberly High when Eula Mae and Betty Jo were both schoolgirls. He had come to Kimberly High as a sophomore when Eula Mae and Betty Jo had both been freshmen. At that tender age, Eula Mae's posterior had not yet reached its full magnitude, and she was considered attractive by many a young man, Roger Pyle among them.

Eula Mae and Betty Jo had each dated Roger Pyle in turn. Such was his charm he was able to convince each of them that she was his one-and-only. This alternation of affection continued throughout the high school years until he went away to Lawrence to go to college. The studies there were strenuous for him, the parties were even more so, and as a consequence, his visits home were infrequent. He did come home on Christmas, however, and on this trip each of the young women competing for him plied him with cookies.

Even as a senior in high school, Eula Mae made the world's best chocolate chip cookies. Each was as big around as a saucer and contained the perfect number of chocolate chips. She had recognized at an early age that it was as easy to put too many chocolate chips into a cookie, as it was to put in too few. Somehow, there in the flower of her youth, she had discovered the perfect chip-to-cookie ratio. This is the sort of thing one cannot be taught.

On the other hand, Betty Jo made perfect French cookies. Each was a geometrically perfect circle and exactly three inches in diameter and sported a mathematically precise grid on either side. To Eula Mae, these cookies tasted like waxed cardboard, yet they always disappeared soon after Betty Jo put them on display.

Eula Mae and Betty Jo each gifted Roger with a plate of their specialty cookies that Christmas and soon thereafter it became known that Roger had proposed marriage to Betty Jo. They wed the following June soon after high school graduation and went off to Lawrence to live in bliss where both attended the University of Kansas. After finishing there, to the astonishment of all Roger attended law school. Then they returned to Kimberly where Roger set up his practice.

Eula Mae always suspected the French cookies were to blame, and astonishingly, she was right.

During his first semester at the university, a wealthy attorney who was an alumnus of that institution had entertained Roger's football team. All of the finery impressed Roger so much that he decided then and there he wanted to become a lawyer. Among the finery displayed on a silver tray were French cookies. Those cookies were forever associated in Roger's subconscious with exactly the sort of luxury he wished to enjoy, and so when he came home for Christmas in a mood to choose a bride and was made of gift of these circular delights, his mind was made up. Betty Jo would be his bride.

Eula Mae, on the other hand, had never married, and it may have been seeking solace in her perfect chocolate chip cookies that led to her ample derriere. It is best for those who love cookies not to dwell to long on such matters. She stayed home and built her life in Kimberly, while Roger and Betty Jo went off to college. Over the years she and Betty Jo became linchpins on opposite ends of the Presbyterian-Methodist axis in Kimberly, and each year their cookies would complete with each other a the Fall Festival, as if to repeat the contest of that Christmas long past when Betty Jo had won Roger.

The victories were almost evenly divided between them. As each always made the same type of cookie and everyone knew it, chocolate chips always won the years when the Methodists controlled the judging, while French cookies took home the prize the years the Presbyterians did. As of late, however, peanut butter cookies had been winning with greater frequency as the Baptists were making inroads on the committee.

The Fall Festival was always held on Labor Day Weekend and heralded the end of summer. This weekend was alternated between being the last miserably hot weekend of the year or the first rainy weekend of the year.

It was organized much like any other of the enumerable such festivals that dotted the Midwestern landscape that time of year. Spaces for booths could be rented to use to sell food, crafts, or to dispense information. Booths for dispensing information were popular among local organizations and over the years a curious practice had developed. As there were so many organizations, contests had been created wherein they could engage in a little friendly competition. The first such contest had been an arm-wrestling tournament that had begun in the Thirties. The second had been the cookie baking competition.

These contests were only open to organizations, not individuals, although it seemed the same few individuals represented particular organizations years after year. So it was with Eula Mae and Betty Jo, who put their cookies in mortal combat year after year. I say 'mortal' because none of the cookies emerged whole or any other way.

As the years passed, various organizations came and went, or their interest in the event waxed and waned. It seems to be the nature of such things that more of the organizations went than came, so there was a point at which support for the traditions ebbed to a low. This caused much concern among the organizing committee, or they would have never allowed Wigglers the status of an organization.

Wigglers, not to put too fine a point on it, was a strip joint. It billed itself as a "Club for Gentlemen," yet the tank top and the tattoo have never been the hallmarks of those who call themselves "gentlemen." It had appeared on the edge of town like Clint Eastwood in some spaghetti western about fifteen years previous and had, because of its proximity to the highway and the general popularity of its wares, prospered. About five years previous to the events of this particular Labor Day, its owner had begun to seek some sort of respectability. One means pursued in this endeavor was getting a booth at the Fall Festival. The organizers of the event had resisted for the first four years, but then had relented in the face of declining participation. Wigglers was given a booth.

Such was the pent-up desire for participation that the Wigglers crew signed up for every competition. The bartender signed up for the arm-wrestling, the custodian signed up for the horseshoe throwing, and Wanda Lafleur, who was, shall we say, the chief attraction, signed up for the cookie contest.

To those who are familiar with the dynamics of life in small, Midwestern towns, it will come as no surprise that Eula Mae knew Wanda and had in fact watched her grow up. She had handed Christmas boxes to Wanda's family several years, she had given them an electric fan at least one August, and she had signed checks to help them with their heating bills a couple of cold winters, all of this by virtue of her church work. During that time she had watched the pretty young girl grow into a beautiful young woman, and when Wanda begin to mature, Eula Mae had said a quiet little prayer when she now believed had gone unanswered.

There was much discussion in church circles about having to compete with Wigglers now. One pastor remarked they had been all along, but now it was official.

Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend arrived, and as was the rule, each contestant took her cookies to turn in between 7:45 and 8 o'clock. The judging would not begin until noon, however the rules had been established so that the cookies were certain to be cold when they were judged. It was generally recognized that a hot cookie would have an unfair advantage.

It was during the entry process that Eula Mae, Wanda, and Betty Jo all ran into each other.

The table where entries were being taken was located under a dining fly. Eula Mae and Betty Jo each sat down their cookies at the same time. Eula Mae wanted to speak first and look like the more magnanimous of the two, but Betty Jo beat her to it.

"Chocolate chip again I see," she said with her face hardly changing expression.

"Yes, and you have stuck with your French cookies, again," Eula Mae retorted.

"I suppose we all stick with what we've succeeded with," came the response, and then casting her eye on Eula Mae's chocolate chips, "or at least what we are familiar with."

Eula Mae was on the verge of saying something blistering, what exactly she didn't know, when another voice burst onto the scene.

"Is this where you turn in the cookies?"

The voice belonged to Wanda Lafleur.

Betty Jo said nothing, but her face turned briefly from stone to fire, and then with a rapidity that surprised Eula Mae, she took her perfect size five body out from under the tent.

Eula Mae turned herself around to face Wanda's body, which most would agree, mere numbers were insufficient to describe and answered, "Yes, Wanda, this is the place."

Wanda set her cookies down and turned around to face Eula Mae. Faced with full-frontal Wanda, Eula Man was caught somewhat unprepared. While the weather forecast for the day had predicted it to be warm, in Eula Mae's opinion it would not be so warm as to preclude wearing a bra, a shirt that met one's jeans, or jeans that covered what should be covered.

"Thanks," Wanda said. "Are you entering cookies too?"

"Yes, mine are the chocolate chip," she said reflexively. "What kind are you entering?" Eula Mae's eyes wandered over to the dark brown cookies Wanda had just set down.

"Well," she said from a mouth that was framed by dimples on each corner, "they are kind of an invention of mine. I call them chocolate la fleur. I have a few extra. Would you like a taste?"

Eula Mae's interest in these cookies had many levels. Not only were they competition, Eula Mae loved cookies simply for themselves. She received the cookie Wanda offered, took a bite, and her tasted buds were flooded with pleasurable sensations. There was the taste of chocolate, chocolate chips, caramel, butterscotch, and a few tastes even Eula Mae's practiced palette couldn't separate.

"This is very, uh," she struggled for a word and finally settled on, "nice."

"Do you really think so?" asked innocently.

Eula Mae only nodded in reply, and then drifted over to the Methodist Church's booth which she would be staffing today. At the booth, there was a large container of iced "living water" for any of the parched festivalgoers who happened by, as well as stacks of literature on various United Methodist beliefs and priorities. Not far away from her, Betty Jo was staffing the Presbyterian booth that featured their literature as well as perfect little loaves of "the bread of life" that were being given away.

There was not much interest in her booth, but Eula Mae sat there with a paperback book and a fan. She alternately read her book, fanned herself, and listened to people talk as they walked past. There were interesting fragments of conversation that she caught.

"Interesting to see her out."

"Must take a lot of nerve."

"Husband…trollop…half-his-age."

They were pieces of a puzzle that were trying to fit themselves together in Eula Mae's mind, but there was still a piece missing.

As noon, and the announcement of the cookie contest winner, drew close, Eula Mae looked up from her paperback and saw Roger Pyle. She expected that he would walk over and join Betty Jo at her booth, but he didn't. He simply stood around alternately staring at his watch and scanning the crowd as if looking for someone.

When 12 o'clock arrived, a man with a megaphone came out from under the cookie tent and said, "May I have your attention, please. It is time to announce the winners of the cookie contest!"

At the precise moment, Eula Mae saw Wanda emerge from the walk up behind Roger, who was still scanning the crowd, and hug him around the waist. Roger immediately turned around, embraced Wanda, and planted a passionate kiss squarely on her mouth.

Eula Mae's eye darted from that scene over to Betty Jo's table, where she saw Betty Jo had been taking it in too. Betty Jo's eyes were a pair of volcanoes with streams of lava tears flowing from them.

The voice from the megaphone continued. "This year 3rd place goes to Betty Jo Pyle, for her French cookies, 2nd place goes to Eula Mae Johnson, for her chocolate chip cookies, and first place goes to Wanda Lafleur for her chocolate la fleur. Ladies would you all come up to claim your prizes."

Eula Mae and Wanda went to claim their ribbons, but Betty Jo made no such motion. Wanda gathered her ribbon, her cookies, and disappeared into the crowd with Roger. Eula Mae took her ribbon and what remained of her cookies as well as Betty Jo's. She walked over to Betty Jo's table, sat everything down, and gave Betty Jo a chocolate chip cookie.

Betty Jo took it, took a bite, and dissolved into tears as Eula Mae embraced her.