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- Miss Smith and Miss Jones
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- Susan Kottler
My kindergarten and first grade teachers were lovely women and half the faculty of our elementary school. They also lived together.
In the past our society was much less focused on sexuality. Same-sex couples lived in rural America, and might have been referred to as "the boys on the farm up the hill" or "the girls who live across from the post office." Occasionally someone would wonder about a couple, "Why didn't either one of them ever marry?" but there seemed to be no ready answer to the question.
I remember "Miss Smith" and "Miss Jones" fondly.
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Piece Description
My kindergarten and first grade teachers were lovely women and half the faculty of our elementary school. They also lived together.
In the past our society was much less focused on sexuality. Same-sex couples lived in rural America, and might have been referred to as "the boys on the farm up the hill" or "the girls who live across from the post office." Occasionally someone would wonder about a couple, "Why didn't either one of them ever marry?" but there seemed to be no ready answer to the question.
I remember "Miss Smith" and "Miss Jones" fondly.
Transcript
A few streets away from where I grew up there was a well-kept Cape Cod-style house with pretty curtains in the front windows. My forty-something kindergarten and first grade teachers lived there. I'll call them Miss Smith and Miss Jones.
"Poor Miss Smith and Miss Jones," said the ladies in town. "Neither one could get a man."
The concept of the old maid schoolteacher was well-known. “Boston marriage” and "lesbian household" didn't appear in our small-town lexicon.
Not only did Miss Smith and Miss Jones live together, they also worked together in a four-room schoolhouse where they presided calmly over classes stuffed with baby boomers. Miss Jones was tall and thin, with graying dark, curly hair, and a kind manner. Her kindergarten classroom was separated by a wide, oak-floored hallway from Miss Smith’s first grade. Miss Smith was a little scary to us. She was a solid woman with wav...
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