About
April or May, I would start “going
barefoot”. The weather was warm and sometimes hot by then and
having no shoes on helped us to stay a little cooler and I have
always enjoyed the feel of different textures on the soles of my
feet. Once I started, I wore shoes only on special occasions. The
bottoms of my feet would get so calloused that I could run on gravel
and not get bruised.
Early
one summer (I thought summer started around
the end of April because of the heat) a
friend and I decided to walk the railroad tracks to a small creek.
At that time a creek that small we called a branch. We had already
started “going barefoot” but our feet weren’t as tough as they
would get later in the summer. In walking railroad tracks there are
two surfaces that are reasonable to walk on. One surface is the cross
ties that the rails are on. The other is the rock that is between the
cross ties. Being barefoot and our feet not calloused, we walked on
the creosoted cross ties. We had a nice walk to the creek and enjoyed
our stay there, but by the time we made it back to the house the
soles of our feet were burning. We had chemical burns the soles of
our feet from walking on the creosote. I have had my skin burned by
the sun many times in my life, but that is the only time the soles of
my feet have been burned.
We
didn’t start school until sometime in the middle of September and
we got out sometime in April through the fourth or fifth grade. We
went only eight months out of the year so the children could help
their parents with the farm crops. For the first and last part of the
school year we were allowed to attend school “barefoot”. It was
nice feeling the dusty ground and grass with the soles of my feet as
we ran around the play ground.
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