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As promised, the fourth verse in the song told an awful lot about the goings-on in Harper Valley. Maybe you’d like to learn more? Enjoy!
This chapter is short, but it was a decision made by the structure of the song. The third verse has Mrs. Johnson going to the PTA meeting in a miniskirt with her daughter in 1968. That means I had to use the previous chapter to bring Mrs. Johnson’s history forward almost two decades. In a different format, I would have split that history more evenly into two chapters. Sometimes that is just the way it works out. Don’t worry about it. If you take a look at the lyrics, you’ll find that Verses Four and Five should be a lot of fun.
Minor discontinuity in Verse 2. Fixed. Thanks to blobbo for catching it and letting me know.
I posted a blog entry asking for assistance with suburban towns in NJ last night. Inside of twelve hours, I had thirty responses, most of which were extremely helpful. (One not so helpful informed me I could find out on Google. Never would have thought of that. Oh well.) Anyway, many, many thanks to all the readers. This is a great community.
We get into more ancient history for Maggie Johnson. One note - In the 1950s, new baby formula mixes were coming into widespread use. The brand names of Similac and Enfamil are still being sold. A major factor in formula sales was the marketing push that baby formula was better than breast milk. It would take decades for this to be disproved. Another reason baby formula became so popular was that it was considered upper class. Only poor people fed their babies breast milk. If you were wealthy, or at least middle class, you used formula. On the plus side, widespread use of baby formula allowed millions of women to reenter the workforce after giving birth. Employers were not going to allow their female employees to spend lots of time away while nursing their children. Eventually this would change.
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