The Rented House

There was no sex education in our country school. There was no need for it. All the boys knew all about sex, at least as far as animal husbandry goes. They had seen animals being bred, baby animals being born, and knew the gestation periods of the various animals( i.e. cows 279-292 days. pigs 112-115 days, horses 330-342 days and so on for all the animals.) As far as actual girls went, the local ones were all prim and proper and, well you might say plain, offering no sexual attraction.

All this changed just after the war when the new family moved into the only rented house in the farming community. They moved directly from England when the father, who was a welder, obtained employment in the shipyard in town. They arrived on August 30 th and no one was more surprised than our new school teacher(who was on her first day of teaching all 8 grades in our one room school) when all five of the new kids turned up for her class in addition to the expected 28 students. The two oldest were the GIRLS!!! They were both in grade 8 and easily as tall and as mature looking as the teacher herself. One of the boys was in grade 7 and the twins were in grade 6.

While I was too young as a fifth grader to do other than observe, the older boys were immediately falling all over themselves trying to get the attention of these "real girls". Firstly, the GIRLS had a strange new accent, secondly they both had dyed hair! Vallee was a peroxide blonde while Cole's was dyed pitch black. They even had some make-up on, but the big thing was their clothes. Compared to the local girls loose fitting blouses and ankle length skirts, Vallee and Cole both wore (shrunk on purpose) sweaters that displayed their wares to great advantage and their skirts barely covered their knees when standing and a lot less when they sat.

The new girls were expert flirts and when they stood in front of a boy, they had this habit of standing too close. If the boy automatically stepped back, they would move in again.They would always look the boy straight in the eye and had a practiced habit of touching his arm or even his hair as they talked. Sometimes Vallee would say to the boy "oh, my heart is beating fast--feel it". She would then take his hand and place it on her breast! Within the first week, all the boys thought one or the other girl was in love with them personally. Needless to say, the poor new teacher had a lot of competition for the attention of all the bigger boys as school work was the last thing on their minds.

For some reason, memory work assignments were a common thing in those days, with a poem selected that had to be memorized each week. Vallee could take any poem and within a few minutes alter it into the lewdest piece of writing imaginable (along the lines of Fanny Hill). This would be passed around secretly during class.

Cole's specialty seemed to be book titles; some examples.

The Tiger's Revenge
by--Claude Balls

Spots on the Wall
by the chinese author
Woo Flung Dung

The Hole in the Mattress
by--Mr. Completely

As I remember, the list of books and their authors grew to over 70

The boys from the rented house were another story.

As usual, September was a time for all the school boys to determine the pecking order for the year. This was done by fist fighting. The local boys would challenge each other to fight after school and while the others watched, the winner would soon be determined, and a later handshake settled the matter of which one was boss at least until a new challenge was presented. Until the kids from the rented house arrived, all fights were fair and square with fists only. The new boys from the rented house had not heard of these unwritten fairness rules and fought to win at any cost, being inclined to use dirty tactics like kicking, hair pulling, using any handy weapon like a stick or lunch pail. If it became obvious that one of them was losing, his brothers would wade in to the battle. Soon the newcomers were kings of the schoolyard.

By October a kind of peace settled in that lasted until Xmas.

NEXT---The Christmas concert

Example of Vallee's altered poem (censored)

Oh she jumped in bed
and covered up her head
and swore I could not find her
I knew damn well
she lied like hell
so I jumped right in behind her
The white of an ---
------ ---- --- ---
--- ---- ---- ---- ------ -----

Going to the movies

To avoid being late, the two of us boys had gone directly from our saturday job to the new movie house in town. It was February 1948 and cold as hell. We lined up in the bitter cold and were the first ones in. We selected prime seats in the center of the theatre.

Mord Millard, the owner of the drugstore, justice of the peace, and multiple property owner in town must also have been a visionary in entertainment. His new movie house was an instant hit with the townspeople and surrounding farm families whose previous mechanical entertainment had consisted of the radio and a crank-up gramophone. Tickets were .15 cents for the movie, news reel, cartoon and previews. On Saturday the same price got you TWO full features. Usually, a cowboy and a musical. For another .10 cents you could splurge and get BOTH popcorn and a soda pop! While the total price of .25 cents equaled an hour's work at our Saturday job, we felt the 41/2 hour's entertainment was a good buy.

We settled into our seats, munching popcorn and soaking up the welcome heat in the movie house, oblivious to all the movement of people away from us. Finally, we noticed that despite the empty seats around us, a lot of people were standing at the back of the theatre. About that time, Mord himself came down the aisle and up our row of seats. He told us in no uncertain terms that we had to leave his theatre NOW.

Our job that Saturday had been cleaning the pig stye for a local farmer. While we had become accustomed to the head clearing odour clinging to our boots and clothes,(it was like a combination of ammonia and mustard gas) even seasoned farmers, some pig farmers themselves, were complaining as the heat brought out ever stronger smell.

While we never saw the movie, Mord did give us back our money and allowed us to keep what was left of our popcorn and pop.

Next---The Rented House

You cannot make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear

Irish proverb