Jump Start My Mind
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 09:42AM | Lynn Sometimes it is difficult to write on demand. That's why, like most writers, I carry around a little notebook. When I get a "bright idea," I attempt to drop everything and make a note. If I'm driving, I sometimes pull off the road to jot down inspirations.
The difficulty of blogging is my desire to post something informative, historical, educational, or humorous in a way that might reach a general audience. Just beginning the first sentence of a blog may take an hour of thought.
This summer has been full of interesting trips to meet wonderful people from all parts of the world (at conferences) and people where they live in West Jefferson, Boone, Blowing Rock, Manteo, Morehead City, Durham, Sparta, Raleigh, Wanchese, Columbia (NC), Asheville, Creston, Rockwell, Charleston, and Columbia (SC). People are my favorite subjects. That's not to say that I don't enjoy writing about interesting places, pets, and gardens. It's just that folks who have done amazing things, lived when there was no electricity, know how to play a fiddle, have danced the flatfoot, have designed sustainable lifestyles, write poetry, or practice blacksmithing fire my imagination.
So, bright and early this morning, I decided I'd write a blog after I read the newspaper. Lo and behold, Craig Wilson's column in USA Today (Wednesday, August 19, 2009) jump started my mind. Had I not read Wilson's column, I may have never thought about writing about going barefoot (his word). In West Columbia, South Carolina, all the youngsters went "barefooted." Wilson points out his enjoyment of going barefooted has extended to adulthood.
In my day all youth were expected to go barefooted during the summer inside and outside. I recall putting on shoes to go to the grocery store, for travel downtown (mostly movie theaters on Main Street), and to church on Sunday and Wednesday night. My mother resisted purchasing shoes that might sit in the closet. Ownership of footwear was doled out like the quarter I put in the offering plate during Sunday School each week. The trip to the shoe store in May generally consisted of the purchase of one pair of Keds for about $7.00.
Since I received a new pair of patent leathers or white pumps for Easter Sunday, I was expected to make them last until the last Sunday before Labor Day. My mother never let me wear white, beige, or patent leather shoes after that time. It was perceived by everyone (even poor people) as being tacky. One September my white shoes were deemed perfectly wearable. On good advice, my mother had them dyed black at the shoeshop for $2.00. The professional dye job convinced me that the shoes were "really" black, even though I had "white" indelible in my mind.
Therefore, on those long, very hot summer days, I jumped out of bed in the cloying South Carolina heat and humidity barefooted. I sometimes remained unshod a few days at the time. I ran next door to Marianne's or rushed across the hot asphalt pavement of "B" Avenue to see my friend Gale. They too, were barefooted. After all, how else would a kid climb a tree, play baseball in the front yard, or ride a bicycle? On demand, I slipped into my Keds for a ride to Webb's Market. My mother might remain in the car while I ran in for a loaf of bread. By the time I was ten, I was riding my bike the mile to the market, parking it at the back of the building without a chain lock and purchasing the bread---barefooted and all. I still recall the coolness of the gray concrete floor as I walked through the door.
In the 1980s I worked in New York City for a high-brow group. It was not unusual for people to ask me if people were "still going barefoot (that's Yankee for barefooted) in the Carolinas?" The tone was as though everyone in the south owned no shoes. I couldn't imagine how they thought business, fashion, research were carried out. I had visions of bankers in suits with no shoes and all my high falutin' fashion-minded up-scales associates, dressed in Ann Klein and Gucci with no shoes. That's when it hit me that the New York "folks" I associated with had never been south. They didn't have a vision of us "crackers" involved in business or fashion---southerners were viewed as farmers. Little did they know that at that time farmers were among the wealthiest group around.
Jumping ahead a few decades, I may still be found in my own backyard sans shoes. During a summer day, a fall day, or a day in the dead of winter, I may pad around BAREFOOTED. I have decried every warning from my Yankee husband of 26 years that I might step on glass, drop a pot on my foot, or even step on a nail. "You'd better go inside and put on some shoes," he says.
"Fat chance of that," I think. But, I must admit, that sometimes holes for new plants don't get dug in a timely fashion, because that is absolutely one thing that requires me wearing shoes. In the concrete-hard clay in my yard, to jump on top of the shovel might break my feet.
Wilson's research led him to find that there is a Society for Barefoot Living. I'm not bothering to go to their website, because I need no further inspiration for walking down the driveway, cutting roses, taking out the garbage, sweeping the porch, cooking dinner, or reading books to my grandchild barefooted. I do promise that I never cut the grass barefooted. Actually, once I passed the age of 12, I never left my yard barefooted again.
Reader Comments (3)
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