From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Back in the fifties, glass candy shelves at Potters Dime store in downtown Glenwood were loaded with sticky red heart gumdrops, red licorice and tiny heart candies with messages in capital letters like KISS, SQUEEZE, HONEYBUNS, SWEETIE PIE.

Every kid’s mom would purchase a sheet of 25 punch-out valentines.  An additional, larger valentine for the teacher would be in the package of cards to be punched out along the dotted edges. Kids hoped that valentine would be rewarded with a good grade on their report card, which was scrutinized by most moms and dads.   

As a kid in braids tied with big bows, I loved Valentine’s Day! February 14th was party day in elementary school topped off with  homemade cupcakes in pinks and reds with cherry Kool-aid for a sweet treat.  Teachers provided red, pink and white construction paper and bottles of Elmer’s Glue to decorate the empty shoe boxes we were supposed to bring to school.  Sticky fingers glued hearts, hard candies and love messages to our boxes with sliced slits on top to slip valentines into.  And each of us anxiously waited to see which kid had dropped a valentine into our box.  How exciting to open those little white and red envelopes and read each message slowly: “Roses are red/Violets are blue/ Do you love me?/As much as I love YOU!”

I’d hold my breath, hoping against hope that the red crayoned names scrawled on my valentines would be from Jimmy, Charlie, or Kenny. It was obvious that their Moms had made them write their names on at least 25 other cards, but now, even if it was a messy envelope wet with milk drops and cookie crumbs, I could hardly wait to open the valentine. Crossing my fingers that no boy would give me one of those valentines with an ugly, hairy gorilla shouting out, “I’m APE for YOU!”, with great anticipation, I opened the first tiny card.

A few creative moms made “homemade” valentines using sparkle glitter that stuck on everything the card came in contact with.  Most kids used Elmer’s white bottle of glue that burped out a sticky blob to anchor the hearts or silver glitter.  A few kids spent some allowance money on fuzzy red and white pipe cleaners with wires inside that could be shaped into hearts.   Others attached lacy edgings onto felt valentines and wrote their LOVE messages with rickrack taken from Mom’s sewing machine drawers.

Teachers usually wore red rhinestone heart earrings, necklaces and pins on their dresses.  Everybody wore RED.  If I didn’t have a red shirt Mom would tie red grosgrain ribbons in my curly pigtails  or tie a huge satin bow on top of my head.  She got into the holidays big time, just like I do today.  Pulling red envelopes out of the mailbox on February 14th is still a day brightener for me. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to YOU!

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.