I am thankful I’ve achieved one of my life goals! I got Keds! All the snooty kids wore Keds when I was in school. Since there were five of us to shoe, Mother showed no interest in putting us on our path to snootiness. When the guy at the shoe repair shop gave her notice that shoes were beyond repair, she’d bring home a new pair, sized by the pencilled imprint of the lucky kid’s foot. She always went prepared, just in case. We were a one-car family and there was no possibility of a special trip just for shoes. We were whatever she brought home. There was no chance we could claim ugly shoes didn’t fit. She knew what she was doing.
Sometimes, one of us tripped Mother up by having a major shoe malfunction resultingin shoe acquisition that couldn’t be put off till Thursday, Daddy’s payday and her scheduled trip to town, in that miserable situation. On more the one occasion, she made a panicky trip to the dry goods store in Cottage Valley and bought the only shoes available. We hated these crummy sneakers, or “Tennies” as we called them, the ugly, red-headed stepchildren of Keds.
Girls got a style somewhat reminscent of Keds, usually white, wide in the arch, just right for duck feet. Bill got hightop, black basketball shoes with a white basketball on the ankle. Naturally, we had to wear theses lovelies till they fell apart. Mine were always dirty by the time I got to school, even if I were lucky enough they’d just been washed, and frankly, they weren’t washed that often.
My brother Billy got off the bus in one shoe after school one afternoon. Mother exploded. “Boy, where’s your shoe?”
He wasted some time trying to explain and she wasted more trying to make sense of the story. Finally, she got down to business and hauled him back to school to retrieve it from deep in a mass of brush on the wrong side of a hurricane fence. Undoubtedly, he’d pushed it deeper in his rescue attempts. Eventually, they showed up at home victorious except for scratches on her forearms and a tick or two.
Good post!
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Love the tennis shoes & they will match with everything!
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http://www.fashionnotfear.wordpress.com
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Lvd the post💜👟😁
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Thanks.
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Congratulations on your shoes! I love the story so much. Your mama she is so tough and wonderful
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She is that!
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🙂
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Each and every time I see a shoe on the side of a road or hanging on a branch I wonder who and why put it up there and what the consequences were…
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I’ve always wondered about that. On a sad note, when a pedestrian is hit by a car, it knocks their shoes off, but surely not every shoes on the side of a road isn’t an accident.
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I didn’t know that…
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Boy, can I relate to this post!! No sneakers, for us, though. We were bought some ugly shoes that were “made well”, but not exactly what was popular and in style and then we didn’t get them until a month AFTER school started and had to start school in our old shoes….oh well…your ending was great. Loved it. Great post, Beth. 😉
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We had to get well-made ones when Mother could manage it for fall and winter. Sometimes got shoes for Chrismas. Saddle oxfords and leather shoes with plenty of room to go. Closer to summer, if we had to have new ones, we got tennis. We never had more than one pair. Flip flops in summer.
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I always had to wear the practical shoes too as a child. Unfortunately it left me scarred for life. I am now a hopeless shoe a holic.
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I am shoe fussy. They have to feel good. I like blue and red.
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I love your new shoes Linda! When I was a kid we had to wear clumpy, ugly ‘sensible’ shoes. I remember one pair I had with two straps across the foot with buckles on, which were particularly hideous, especially as on both shoes the buckles went the same way, so one did up on the outside and one on the inside!
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Mother meant for ours to last. She bought them plenty big
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I’m glad Billy got his shoe back in the end. It’s no fun having to hop to school.
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He was a pretty good hopper.
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LOL! We had to wear the white “tennies” too. Never did we get the coveted Keds or Buster Browns!
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Me either. White was the worst color. Remember when Red Goose came with a prize in a Golden Egg? Never got those either!
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I forgot about the golden egg! LOL!! Red Goose!
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For snooty kids, only!
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Absolutely! LOL! I certainly wasn’t among those!
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I wonder if all boys lose a shoe fro,m time to time. I’ve lost three. Two I got back before needing to worry about what else found them.
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Did your mama offer to skin you alive?
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The only one I lost, lost was as an adult. LOL
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Too bad, can’t blame anyone else. Wonder about those shoes always seen on the side of the road.
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Seriously. Of all places to drop one…
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My older cousin got busted by shoe loss back in the early ’60s. She was riding around in cars with boys and kicked a shoe out at the gas station. The gas station gave it to her dad with a tale what she’d been up to. Boy was she in trouble.
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Hahahahaha!!!!
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It was rough trying to get by with anything then. Bad girls had it rough!
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That’s a lot of fond memory from shoes! Mother was always right in scenarios like these.
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No arguing. She called it “disputing my word!” I never had the nerve to push after that!
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Sounds familiar. We had to wear brown oxfords. Part of the uniform of St. Mary’s. Those damn shoes never wore out no matter how many square corners we made. They were so strong my mom could pass them down, ugh. After school we wore the same sneakers as you. :o)
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Didn’t you hate them. After school and summers we went barefoot when the weather was decent.
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To tell you the truth, I was a Tom Boy and actually talked my mom into getting me the high top black sneakers with the ball on the side. I loved those sneakers. :o)
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I would have loved the black ones. I just hated the ugly girl style.
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