Valentines
When I was a little boy growing up in Beaver City, Nebraska
during the late 1940's the teachers must have loved Valentine's Day.
It gave them an excuse to keep us kids busy making
valentine's for our mothers and making fancy boxes to put the valentines in
when we exchanged them with our classmates.
The valentine for our mother was always, or so it seemed,
made with lacy paper and red construction paper. Both were cut into the shape of a heart. The lace one was bigger
and formed a border around the red one.
A loving message was written with crayon on the red one. They were put together with the white paste
that teachers loved. They loved it
because we got it all over our desks and tables and they had to wash it
off. I can still smell that white
paste!
The boxes were shoe boxes covered with paper and decorated
with drawn or pasted on hearts. A slot was cut in the lid for the valentines to
be placed into the box during the great valentine exchange.
It was the tradition for each kid to bring valentines for
every other kid in the class. You would walk around the room and place a
valentine in each kid's box on their desk.
I am sure that there were some kids who didn't bring
valentines because their folks couldn't afford to buy them. Other kids had
pretty fancy valentines to pass around.
I was sort of in the middle. My
mom would buy this big sheet of valentines and I would spend hours cutting them
out (they were quite small), and signing them.
By seventh grade the girls were taking this exchange more serious than the boys. They would give their favorite boy a very special valentine. Alas, I never got a very special valentine.