I don’t know if other people have a shoe history, but I do. I also have a purse history, but that’s a blog for another day. My shoe history started when I was just a wee girl, I mean little. I didn’t like shoes, didn’t want to wear them, and I didn’t see the use of them. My mother would put them on my feet, and I would peel them off. Barefoot was better, I thought. Why wear shoes when the grass between your toes felt so good? It seemed such a waste.
In elementary school I walked about a mile to school, so wore overshoes and recall my mother wrapping Wonder-Bread clear plastic bread wrappers around my legs and stuffing newspapers or catalogues pages into my overshoes to keep my feet warm and dry.
When I became a teenager, my mother began to focus on the health of my feet. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with my feet, but she loved black leather oxfords. It might have had something to do with the Great Depression, and I remember her saying, “Healthy feet, Gail. That’s what you need, that’s the goal. When you are sixty-five, you will thank me.” At this point, I had at least fifty years to go to appreciate healthy feet. She showed me pictures of deformed feet and made me believe that I was on the road to all kinds of deformities with corns, bunions, hammertoes, or nail fungus. The photos were scary, and I didn’t want them at age fifteen or at age eighty. I still don’t want them, and luckily, I still have no foot defects, but certainly don’t attribute my healthy feet to black leather oxfords.
My high school friends all wore princess-like shoes with buttons and bows, cute as a kitten, and had several pairs in a variety of colors and shapes. I pleaded for similar shoes, but the field marshal held her ground, “No, you’ll be sixty-five before you know it and you will be glad to have healthy feet, black oxfords for you,” and she’d pull out the pictures, proving her claim. You didn’t cross the field marshal, so I complied and wore black oxfords.
When I started college, I ditched the oxfords and discovered sandals, after all, I was in Texas and the weather was mostly warm. I never looked back and I became a sandal girl. I could slip them off easily, eliminate socks from my wardrobe, wiggle my defect-free toes, and be happy. Then I joined the Marine Corps. It was back to black leather oxfords, alternating with black high heels, shined to a gloss.
Now, I’m in Montana and the whole shoe history thing is coming back to haunt me. The cowboy insisted that I needed something other than sandals, and asked, “Where are your Pacs, Gail? That’s what you need. We need to go shopping.” For some reason, he thought my sandals were impractical in Montana snow and he refused to carry me from house to the big red pickup just to keep my feet warm. And socks with sandals don’t exactly fill the bill.
My feet had become a little cold, so I finally agreed, not really relishing the idea of boots, because they were sure to resemble black oxfords, but he was right, I did need something a little warmer than my several pair of sandals. So, off we went to Billings to check out their boot offerings. I warned the young shoe clerk about my shoe history, but she was intrepid and brought out pair after pair. Hurrah, I found some, not black, not leather, no plastic bags and we left the newspapers behind. Cowboy Bob said ,“You are pretty well rigged out, so why don’t we slide those snowshoes on, and hike up the hill.” Oh, dear, what have I gotten myself into?
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