“Sentimental valentines had Verse, honey-comb hearts” from the February 15, 1968 Door County Advocate
VALENTINES from about 1880 are shown here with their lacy edges, sugar-sweet verses and hovering cupids. Forget-me-not blossoms were a favorite decoration. Valentines courtesy of Mrs. D. E. Bay. —Advocate
Sentimental valentines had Verse, honey-comb hearts
By KETA STEEBS
Valentine’s Day, like May Day, seems to be a less auspicious occasion than I remember from my youth. Just after Scotty trotted off to kindergarten this morning, clutching a bag of rather flippant valentines, I realized what was bothering me. There wasn’t one sentimental, honey-combed heart in the lot.
When I was his age, honey-combed hearts were true status symbols; indisputable proof of both prosperity and popularity. But, then, that was back in Brown School, where a high, wood fence divided the playground and the only time girls could socialize with boys was at Valentine parties or on May Day, when, with special parental permission, we could join hands and dance around the flagpole.
Brown School was equally segregated inside. There was the little room (grades 1-4) and versus the big room (grades 5-9) and no big room kid would as much as share the water cooler with a little room kid. I didn’t care much one way or the other when I was Scott’s age because we little room kids had the best Valentine parties.
Miss Hultgren would glue red crepe paper on the biggest card board box Grimord’s General Store had and allow us to decorate it with lace doily hearts. After the valentines were passed out, she’d give us each a penny sucker to suck on the long walk home. We’d gloat over our cards with suckers stuck in our cheek—bragging about who was the most popular. The year Elaine Johnson only had two from boys she grabbed our lollypops and stamped them in a snow drift. Doris and I each had three.
Mad as we’d get at each other—it was the big room girls who could really irritate us. They’d stand at the water cooler giggling over the sentiments inscribed on their fat, honey-combed hearts. While we little room kids struggled with arctics, we’d hear one of the Olson girls read “You’re My Dream Girl,” followed by a tee-hee-hee; but, she omitted mentioning the scribbled postscript on the back saying “Spare me such nightmares,” which I could read upside down.
The year I went into the big room was the year Mr. Stern entered our hallowed halls—the first male teacher in Brown School’s history. We had the depression to thank for that.
It wasn’t that Mr. Stern was an inferior teacher—he was just indifferent. He spent more time absent-mindedly cleaning his right ear with a rusty nail than he did concentrating on our rendition of Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. We realized he had an inferiority complex brought about by a late-ln-life marriage to Mrs. Stern, a brilliant but demanding little woman who could have taught Hitler how to give orders.
This marriage, made half-way between purgatory and the place below, caused Mr. Stern to take his personal vendetta with Cupid out on us. He not only forbade our annual Valentine’s party, he even refused to let us exchange hearts and flowers on our own time.
If Vernon Peterson hadn’t just been transferred from town school, I wouldn’t have minded so much—but Vernon, along with being dark and handsome, was TALL. Officially he was supposed to be in 7th grade but, due to his inability to cope with Silas Marner’s tribulations and the intricacies of long division, he was tactfully dropped to our 5th grade class; a move which delighted five gangly girls and ruined the school year for four short, blonde boys.
We girls fought for the honor of tutoring Vernon during recess. In return, he personally petitioned Mr. Stern to relax his ordinance against our precious party. Mr. Stern predictably refused but, Mr. Stern overwhelmed with Vernon's charm, conceded. We were allowed to have our party.
I had never received a honey-combed heart in my life but I knew (by artfully questioning LaVerne Grimord) that Vernon had bought the only four, two for a nickel, Valentine hearts sold in Grimord’s Store. This meant one of us 5th grade girls was going to be left out. “Poor Elaine” I thought to myself.
The day of our party, I wore my flattering, vertical striped, red and white dirndl skirt topped with a puffed sleeved blouse. Elaine wore her usual brown jumper and hadn’t even bothered to put a curling iron in her hair. But, when Doris passed out the valentines, those beautiful honey-combed hearts bearing Vernon’s precious signature went to every girl in class except me—with good, old Elaine first on the list.
Even though I received two cards from Howie, my day was ruined. My first, big room, Valentine party turned out to be a complete, utterly miserable, total flop.
The next day, Vernon surreptitiously slipped me a 5¢ Babe Ruth (double the price of the valentines) but no stale candy bar could take the place of a sentimental honeycombed heart.
Which is one reason, I’m rather glad Scott left for school this morning without any.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[Arctics is possibly a kind of calligraphy.
“conceded” replaces another word in the original article, which did not fit.]
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