A Long-Time Fad

When I was a teenager in the early and mid 70s, staying barefoot on errands and events like county fairs and such was a fad, not common but frequent enough that one saw kids and sometimes adults in public without their shoes on. Such cheerful souls would stroll shoeless to the neighborhood market or into the grocery store or the library. Even the famously classy Jackie Kennedy Onassis was seen shopping barefooted in Italy. Bell-bottomed jeans could hide your feet for errands, and if you wore regular jeans or shorts, well, your feet could run but they couldn’t hide…

The fad endured through the 80s and petered out in the early 90s, though it seems to be returning now in the mid 10s. Needless to say, I enjoyed the fad and liked to keep it going over the years.

In my small hometown, my cousins’ gift shop carried LPs and 45s, and around the corner was the library, City Hall (where the water-sewer office was located), and the newspaper office. Down Fourth Street, past other shops and the electric company, was the post office. Sometimes I volunteered to drop off my parents’ utility bills and to pick up a newspaper. One summer morning I found an excellent parking place in front of City Hall and with a contented sigh, I walked around barefoot. The sidewalks felt warm and smooth beneath the thump of my heels, like our back porch, and the sensations of sidewalks alternated with cool floors and low nap carpets as I made my leisurely way.

On another, lazy high school day, I left my cousin’s store with a new record. Outside, I encountered a fellow student whom I didn’t care for much, and whom I just didn’t want to see that day. Fortunately he stood away from the store and looked toward the street, apparently watching for someone. I was able to stroll silently behind him on tiptoe and down to my car. Who could manage such a furtive maneuver while wearing flip-flops?

Because I’m not entirely (or even very) self-confident, I noticed when other folks skipped their shoes; their happiness (or laziness) validated my own. For instance, I remember leaving our local IGA as an acquaintance was heading cheerfully into the store. She was dressed in her cool top and jeans and carried her purse, but her feet were bare. I assumed she had one of those pleasant moments when she was already shoeless at home and decided to just stay that way for other tasks, in this case, a trip to the supermarket

A hometown friend loves to remember walking to our small downtown without her shoes, and watching where she walked, so that her fond hometown memories include cracks in the sidewalks, the black streets to dash across, and the places lawn grass encroached upon the warm concrete.

(Somewhere I read that going barefoot improves your eyesight. You have to watch where you’re going …)