I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, and Valentine Memories are fond ones. At Sam Houston Elementary School, like many other elementary schools, homeroom was a special place, especially on those days like Valentines. Our homeroom mother’s (in some cases homeroom dads) were our heroes!
A Look Back: Vintage Valentine Day Cards
School Homeroom Parties and Valentine Memories
We literally hounded our moms or dads to get to McClelland’s or Woolworths Fine and Dime Stores before Valentines were all gone! And we picked out the ones with extra envelopes as we know we will mess up addressing to Susie, Tommy, Harriett, Delores, Margaret, Gerald…. Now we’re home from shopping and we get permission to call a friend and see what package they got! After comparing whose is better, we get to the most important part of, picking out that special Valentine for that special someone. And don’t forget the shoebox! That shoebox served as our mailbox to bring home our treasured pieces of paper.
The shoeboxes were as colorful as our valentines! They were decorated with hearts, arrows pointing to the slot our moms or dads cut carefully as had to be the right size, glitter stickers, and anything red or pink we could find, including pieces of ribbons from our mom’s sewing tins.
Decorations, Heart-Shaped Cookies
The big day is here! We leave our last class of the day and head to homeroom. As we walk in the door, we see decorations of colorful linked paper chains. Most are hearts linking hearts in pink and red, the colors of the day. The homeroom Mothers have not let us down. There are trays of heart shaped cookies with pink and red icing. Maybe cupcakes with red sprinkles, red fruit punch and beautiful plates and cups. But before sticky fingers and red stains, we were more than excited to start giving our valentine out. Our teachers made sure that everyone had Valentines to give out as there was usually one classmate that forgot theirs and usually one family that could not afford to buy them. She had them addressed and only had to give those classmates time to get them signed.
As we were walking around the room, carefully laying out those treasured pieces of paper on the desks of our friends, we were silently watching that special boy or girl for his or her reaction as the valentine was taken out of the envelope and the passage was read, and then the signature.
We were ecstatic by their reaction or embarrassed. All excitement of acceptance or lack of, were soon forgotten with the gobbling down of the sweet heart cookies and the red fruit punch! There was no homework that evening as the teachers gave us time to read every verse of every valentine that night. Dreams of Mickey, Minnie, Donald…………
Vintage Valentine Day Card Images
Find vintage Valentine day cards at any of our Texas antique malls.
