Or, as we used to say "Barefoot boy with shoes on..." I always went barefoot in the summer time. I remember neither when I began nor when I stopped. I do remember starting too early in the spring when the ground was cold and deciding to wait a bit. My feet became tough as leather and I was able to run barefoot on gravel, through thistles and even in alfalfa stubble.
There was a time I impaled my barefoot on the tine of a pitch fork. That barely slowed me up even though I'd never heard of a tetanus shot.
When I was ten years old we got running water; a bath instead of a path. The workmen laying the pipes made the assumption that I was barefoot because we couldn't afford shoes. But, I had shoes, I just did not want to wear them if I didn't have to. I always wore them on the rare trips to town. I sure didn't want those sophisticated town kids thinking I was more of a bumpkin than they already did.
Now my feet are so tender a trip a few yards to the mailbox is a challenge. Maybe, maybe next summer I'll go barefoot again.
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