It seems we
all take for granted the little things in life never once thinkin about what
it’d be like to do without.
Hard times
were a way of life back when I grew up and my parents had it even worse. Folks
made do the best they could with what little they had. Just having food on the
table, a bed to lay our head or somethin that we don’t even think twice about
today, a pair of shoes on our feet was worth so much more. God’s blessings are
poured down on us every day and we don’t know how fortunate we really are. If
folks had to live like that today they’d never make it.
My parents
grew up in a different time and learned to appreciate even more so, the little
things in life. They raised us six young’uns the same way. My mama always said,
“be happy with what ye got, there’s lots of folks got less.”And she also said,
“all the finery in the world won’t bring ye happiness.” I came to find that out
over time and sittin down to milk and bread for supper was a feast compared to
some, or getting a new pair of shoes when school started in the fall. I’m a
simple person and it doesn’t take much to please me.
We went
barefoot through the warm months so much that we had trouble gettin used to
shoes when school started. Our feet were as tough as a pine knot and rusty as
could be at the end of day. But we knew to scrub em clean before we crawled
under mama’s clean bed clothes or she‘d skin our hides good. When we got a pair
of new shoes we wore em plum out or handed em down to the next one when we
outgrew em. That seldom ever happened.
My mama told
how she went barefoot not only in the summer but even after the frost. Her
daddy worked hard to keep em fed and put clothes on their backs. She came from
a family of ten young’uns. Back then they had big families and lots of mouths
to feed.
She talked
about walkin to catch the school bus on cold, frosty mornings and how cold her
feet would get. When the bus finally came she’d jump up the steps fast as she
could and sit in the seat with one foot propped on top of the other just to get
em warm. She’d rotate em back and forth till she got to school.
When her daddy
finally worked out enough money to get shoes, he’d buy for the ones that needed
em the most and the others had to wear what they had till he earned enough at
the sawmill. He’d cut a slim, straight stick and measure their feet with it and
carry it with him to buy the shoes. All the others that had to wait their turn,
he’d take a hammer and tacs and put the soles back together the best he could.
He’d try to fix em so the tacs wouldn’t come through to their feet and keep the
soles from flappin. He’d even put cardboard in between the shoe and the sole.
She said, sometimes the tacs would work their way through to their feet but
they weren’t about to tell their daddy or mama cause they had enough to worry
about.
Back then
shoes were a luxury and they were tickled to death to get a new pair even if
they were brogans as my mama used to call em.
She said some of the other young’uns that were
always blessed with new clothes and shoes made fun of em. It really hurt her
bad and one evening when she got on the bus to come home, this one boy that had
been makin fun of her for a while with his sniggerin and laughin met his match.
She’d just got a new pair of brogans and she pulled one off and almost hammered
his head through the floor of that bus. The bus driver had to pull over to get
it stopped. She said what she was scared of the most was that she’d ruined her
new shoes. When she got off the bus she looked em over good and decided that it
only helped to wear em in. Needless to say, he never did speak to her anymore .
She said he dodged her every chance he got.
It broke my
heart when she told that story and now when I look back I realize that was one
of the reasons she and daddy both worked so hard to give us more than they ever
had. Along the way they taught us to appreciate it too, and never make fun of
the less fortunate.
We may not
have had the best of shoes or clothes and sometimes my brothers wore their
britches with holes in the knees to school but one thing’s for certain, they
were clean. My mama always said, “rags are honorable but there’s to much soap
and water to go dirty.”
She sure
learned early on in life how to patch a pair of britches to last. Of course,
having so many brothers and then four boys, she didn’t have a choice. Even in
later years folks brought their britches to her to patch em. She couldn’t turn
anyone down. Mama had a soft heart for people cause she remembered her raisin.
And she always said, “be proud of your raisin.”
She always got the Sears and Roebuck or Spiegel
catalogs in the mail and every year and they had big back to school sales. She
called em the wish books cause we’d look holes in em. She ordered a lot of our
school clothes on time and made a small payment every month. She couldn’t
afford to order much. We mostly wore hand me downs and since I was the oldest
my hand me downs came from girls close to my age that lived in the
neighborhood. That was after they found out it wouldn’t hurt our feelings none.
Most people worried about that back then. When I grew out of em I passed em on
down to my one and only sister.
One year I
found a pair of the most beautiful, yellow sandals I’d ever seen in my life in
the Spiegel catalog I wanted those sandals so bad that I could taste it. Mama
didn’t mind ordering them but wanted me to have something that would keep my
feet warm with frost fast approachin. All of my old shoes were worn out and
there’d be none to fall back too. I kept on till she ordered em and I’ll never
forget the day they came. I put those sandals on and pranced around like I was
Cinderella.
Sure enough when cold weather came, I was in a
mess. We had to dig out a pair of my best, old shoes and take em to the shoe
store in town to see if the well known shoe repairman could do anything with
the soles. That man was the best at making shoes look like new of anybody I’ve
ever seen. He put the soles back together like new. I wore em till mama got her
bill paid down some. She ordered me some warm shoes to do me the rest of the
school year. I certainly learned my lesson. Pretty is as pretty does.
Needless to
say, that shoe repairman was a God send. There’s no tellin how many shoes that
man has fixed over the years.
He also had
big racks of new and like new shoes. Daddy bought all of his from that little
store. He claimed that was the only place he could find any that fit. Daddy
liked his shoes a size longer. We all called them Clod Hoppers. I’ll never
forget one summer after he’d grown older and was showin his age, we talked him
into getting some men’s sandals. We told him they’d keep his feet cooler. We
never dreamed he’d love em so much. He was comin in the front door one day and
there was a step up ye had to make to get in the door and he stumped his toe
and almost fell flat on his face. We tried not to laugh till mama said, “them
Jerusalem Cruisers are gonna be the death of ye yet.”
Of course he
and mama wore theirs till the soles fell off tryin to keep us in shoes.
When I look back on the many times I ran
barefoot and stumped my toes nearly off, it brings joy to my heart and makes me
wanna do it all again. There’s nothing that can compare to bustin a big mud
hole wide open, even if we knew we’d get the toe itch. But as my mama used to
say, “there’s nothing like being grateful for shoes when ye got none at all and
ye feet feels like a block of ice.”
© Susie Swanson, 2016
