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to Specific Childhood Experiences
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.
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