Verse 1 - Family History

I wanna tell you all a story ‘bout
A Harper Valley widowed wife
Who had a teenage daughter
Who attended Harper Valley Junior High
Well, her daughter came home one afternoon
And didn’t even stop to play
And she said, “Mom, I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA”

1968

“Mom! You’re home early,” said Christina Johnson.

Margaret ‘Maggie’ Johnson smiled as she came in the door. “Worried I might find you up to something?”

Chrissie laughed. “That’s it, Mom. The girls were about to come over and raid the liquor cabinet before we started doing drugs. I’ll have to call them now and make sure the guys don’t come over, too.”

Maggie laughed and looked in the kitchen cabinet that served as the liquor cabinet. “Well, you can cancel the girls, booze, and drugs, but don’t get too hasty about the boys. Maybe we can have some fun.”

“MOM!” protested Chrissie.

Maggie just laughed. “Mister Morton had court and Mister Jason was going out of town. They told me to take the afternoon off.” Maggie worked as a legal secretary for Carson and Carson, Attorneys at Law; Morton and Jason Carson were brothers. Around the office it was everybody’s habit to identify them as Mister Morton and Mister Jason.

“How was school?” asked Maggie. Her daughter was fifteen and in her final year at Harper Valley Junior High.

“It was okay,” Chrissie replied with a shrug. “Can I ask a question, Mom?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“How old were you when you started dating?”

Maggie rolled her eyes and smiled. “Why?”

“Mom!”

Maggie simply snorted and sat down on the living room couch. She pointed to an armchair and said, “Have a seat.” Chrissie sat down and looked at her mother. “Dating, huh. I was probably around your age, fifteen or so. It depends, I guess, on how you define a date.”

Chrissie gave her mother a curious look. “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, that can get a little complicated, just like everything else about dating and boys. If by dating, you mean two people boy-girl dating, then not for another year or so. Group dates, probably about fifteen.”

“Uh...”

Maggie nodded. “Okay, let’s take it from the start. I probably started looking at boys somewhere between thirteen and fourteen. I was in grade seven or eight, I guess. That was in the old school system.”

“The old school system? Not the school I’m in now?” Chrissie asked.

Maggie shook her head. “No. The old system had schools that dated back to World War One, maybe before. There was what we called grade school, which was grades one to five; middle school, which was six, seven, and eight; and high school, which was nine through twelve.”

“Oh, and I went to elementary school, one to six, junior high, which is seven to nine, and high school, which is next year, for ten to twelve.” Maggie nodded. “Why did they change?”

“The old schools were really old and falling down. The county decided to build new schools back in the Fifties. Anyway, I was in middle school, so I must have started noticing boys in grade seven or eight.”

“Noticing them? They weren’t around before?”

“They were around. I just didn’t notice they were different. Anyway, no way were your grandparents going to let me date boys when I was in middle school. That didn’t happen until I got to high school. They let me go on group dates when I was a freshman, your age now.”

Chrissie looked confused. “Freshman?”

“High school is supposed to be grades nine through twelve. Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. Right now, you’re in the ninth grade, so you’re a freshman, but it doesn’t mean as much since you aren’t actually in high school. Next year, when you go to Harper Valley High, you’ll start there as a sophomore. Don’t worry, it will make more sense then.”

“Is that when you met Dad?”

Maggie smiled. “No, not then. I met him the summer between my sophomore and junior years. Before then, I simply went on group dates, you know, where a bunch of us girls would go to school games or dances and meet a bunch of guys. Your grandparents weren’t going to let me go on real dates until I was a junior, grade eleven.”

“What was Dad like.”

Maggie smiled. “He was just a dreamboat.” She grinned at her daughter. “I think you kids would say he was hot.”

“Oh, God! Gross, Mom, gross!”

Maggie laughed. “Hot and sexy!”

“MOM!”

Maggie just laughed, even as she remembered...

1950

“Hi,” said the tall guy.

“Hi,” said Maggie McSorley. She’d never seen the tall student before, but he was very big and very, very cute. “Are you new here?”

He nodded. “I just started here today. What’s your name?”

“Maggie. Maggie McSorley. Who are you? It’s late in the year.”

“I’m Tommy Johnson. We just moved here. Dad got a job, and we couldn’t wait until the end of the school year.”

Tommy Johnson was very easy for Maggie McSorley to talk to. He was so cute and dreamy she almost missed her first class, and she made him promise to meet at lunch. Then, after almost missing her first class after lunch, they met at the end of the day before Maggie had to get on her bus. By the end of the week, she was totally smitten with the boy.

That Friday, she asked her mother, “Mom, when did you start dating?”

“Meet somebody interesting?” Mary McSorley asked. She didn’t wait for her daughter to answer but replied, “Probably your age, sixteen or seventeen. Who is he?”

“He’s a new guy at school. His family just moved here from California and he’s a year ahead of me.”

“What’s his name?”

Maggie smiled and sighed. “Tommy Johnson.”

Mary rolled her eyes; her daughter had it bad. “Okay, time to remember what we talked about last year after you had to take Health class.” She motioned her daughter to sit down at the kitchen table with her.

1949

Maggie would remember Health class simply for the fact that it had been so confusing. None of her classmates had been any more understanding, and she had heard from some of them what the boys had been told.

The boys had been taught the class by one of the gym teachers, Coach Campbell. He had told them there were three rules:

1. A boy needed to maintain his purity, so that he would be able to ensure the safety of the young woman who would one day marry and bless him with children.

2. He should never ever commit the unpardonable sin of abuse because he needed all his vital bodily fluids to compete on the sports field. Abuse was not defined.

3. There were coin-operated vending machines for foil-wrapped rubbers in the men’s bathrooms at the Valley View Drive-In, the Esso truck stop south of town, and a variety of gas stations, bars, and restaurants.

The girls were taught by the school librarian, Miss Crumkin, a fifty-seven-year-old spinster who lived in a home she inherited from her parents and that she shared with three cats. She gave the girls several rules as well.

1. All men wanted it from women. What it was wasn’t specified, but all men wanted it.

2. Holding hands with a boy would lead to disease.

3. Kissing a boy would lead to pregnancy.

4. Worst of all, holding hands or kissing would result in the girl becoming a ‘loose’ or ‘fallen’ woman, something to be avoided at all costs.

That was the part that she understood the least. She had seen her mother and father holding hands and kissing many, many times. They frequently walked down the street holding hands, and she had seen her parents kissing, sometimes even in public, but Mary McSorley was not what anybody would call a loose, fallen woman! She was a good mother, a good wife, took her family to church every week, and volunteered with the school and church.

When Maggie explained all this to her mother, Mary sighed and shook her head. Health class was not going to teach her daughter about the birds and bees, so it would be up to her. She stood and grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter and said, “Come on. We need to talk about this upstairs.”

Maggie followed her mother up the stairs and down the hall to her parents’ bedroom. Mary sat on the bed and patted the bed, “Sit here. We need to talk about sex.”

“Sex?” What was her mother talking about, and what was the banana for? Was her mother hungry? Maggie sat down next to Mary and heard the bedsprings squeak.

For the next forty-five minutes, Mary told her eldest daughter exactly how humans had sex and what was involved. She didn’t hide behind euphemisms or cute expressions but used real words for real body parts and real activities. Maggie couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and then it got stranger. Mary pulled open a drawer in her nightstand and reached inside. She came out with a small flat square. She tore it open and explained that inside was a condom, colloquially known as a rubber, that went on a man’s erect cock and kept a woman from getting pregnant. Then she took the banana and showed her daughter how a rubber went on it.

Afterwards, Maggie went to her own bedroom with an expression of shock. Mary peeled off the rubber and tossed it in the trash, and then peeled the banana and ate it. After that, she took another couple of foil packets and carried them over to Maggie’s bedroom and knocked on the door. Maggie opened the door to find her mother handing her the packets and telling her to put them in the bottom of her purse, ‘just in case.’

It took Maggie a few days to process what her mother had told her, but certain things suddenly became clearer. When she sat on her parents’ bed and then got up, she heard the bedsprings squeak. Later that night, after she went to bed, she heard those bedsprings squeaking rhythmically for almost half an hour. That was when she realized her parents were having sex, making love, or fucking, all expressions her mother had used. Then, over the next week she heard those bedsprings squeaking almost every night. Saturday, in fact, right after dinner her mother and father went upstairs, and she heard the bedsprings squeaking. Then her parents came back downstairs wearing their pajamas and robes. Later that night, when they went to bed, the bedsprings began squeaking a second time.

It really became obvious to her a few weeks later. Her parents had gone upstairs right after dinner and came down forty minutes later smiling and wearing their pajamas and robes. Her father sat in his favorite armchair and her mother sat on his lap, and they snuggled together. They watched television on the little black and white television and then sent Maggie’s sisters up to bed. From where they were sitting, they couldn’t see Maggie, but she could see what they were up to. First, they began kissing, and not just little pecks either. No, Mary and Sean McSorley were kissing with open mouths! Then Maggie watched as her father slipped a hand inside her mother’s robe and Mary moaned quietly. She slipped a hand into his robe and he got a happy expression on his face. Their hands began moving and then they stopped. Maggie hid as her parents got to their feet and went up the stairs, with Sean rubbing Mary’s bottom through her robe and pajamas. Two minutes later, the bedsprings began squeaking again. That was also when Maggie began noticing that her father would often rub her mother’s bottom whenever he thought their daughters couldn’t see him.