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Memories of a wartime girlhood follow. During the war, girls’ and womens’ stockings, like gasoline, tires, and meat, were rationed.

I was in the eighth grade of a Catholic girls' school at that time and we were taught in no uncertain terms that God was on our side. And the good sisters wouldn't lower their standards for anything. They still insisted that we wear long hose. To show a bare ankle would have caused so much sin in the community that you could even kill each other getting the hose; anything so long as you didn't turn some man on with a bare ankle. So our mothers would go downtown and stand in line so their daughters could have long hose and not go to hell or cause some poor man to go to hell for getting turned on by our bare legs. Isn't that something?

Quoted in Archie Satterfield, The Home Front, p. 184.

This site was updated on 29-Mar-24.