This is an odd little children’s story, written by Max Trell. It supposedly tells how shoes were invented.
Max Trell was a well-known writer. Here’s some of what IMDB says about him:
Writer Max Trell’s serialized children’s stories ran in North American newspapers from the late 1920s through the early 1950s. His “Good Night Stories” told of the adventures of Knarf and Hanid, two shadow children who lived in Shadowland. Trell wrote for a number of cartoon strips as well and was one of the writers who replaced Dashiell Hammett after his departure from the strip Secret Agent X-9. He collaborated with several writers on the Prince Valiant comic strip and related books and authored several other books and screenplays over his long career.
I guess if you needed a bedtime story, you could turn to your daily newspaper, and there you’d find one. Here’s “When People Went Barefoot”, from 1947.
When People Went Barefoot
—It May Sound Like Fun But It Wasn’t—
By Max Trell
“Who first thought of inventing shoes, and how did they get invented? If you know, will you please tell us, Mr. Punch?”
Mr. Punch looked up from his book to see Knarf and Hanid, the shadow-children standing by the side of his chair. It was not unusual for Mr. Punch to be asked questions. But this was the first time he had ever been asked about who had invented shoes, and how they had got invented.
Fortunately Mr. Punch knew the answers.
He set aside the book and began.
“Long long ago,” he said, “everyone walked around barefoot. Now this wasn’t very pleasant although you might suppose it would be lots of fun.”
“I think it would be,” said Knarf.
Shook His Head
Mr. Punch shook his head. “You’d think otherwise if you had to walk back and forth over fields full of thorns and sharp rocks. You wouldn’t think it was any fun at all if your feet got cut and bruised. You’d wish mighty hard you had shoes. But of course in those far-off days no one even thought of shoes.
“Well,” Mr. Punch went on, “the people who lived then began to wonder what they could do to keep the thorns and the sharp rocks from hurting their feet. So they thought and thought, and then they thought some more. And finally one of them said: ‘We have a great many skins from all the animals we have killed. The skins are dry and tough. Let us lay our skins over all the fields and meadows, over all the hills and valleys. In short, let us cover all the thorns and sharp rocks and other things that hurt our feet as we walk, or run, or go about our work.’
Before shoes were invented primitive men often stepped on thorns
An Excellent Idea
“This seemed like an excellent idea,” Mr. Punch went on, “only there were hardly enough skins (even though the people had a great many of them) to cover more than the smallest part of all the field and meadows and hills and valleys and all the other places where there were thorns and sharp stones.
“And then, just as these poor people were about to give up ever being able to do anything, a very old and a very wise man said in a very quiet voice: ‘My good friends. Why must you try to cover the earth with skins to protect your feet? This would require more than a million, million skins. Why do not each of you take a tiny piece of these dried skins that you have, and wrap your feet in the skins instead?
“And that’s what they did. And that’s how shoes got invented. But what the name of that very old, very wise and very quiet man was who invented them. I don’t know. I wish I did. He was a wonderful man to think of something that seemed so simple to think of, but wasn’t.”
And with that Mr. Punch returned to reading his book, and Knarf and Hanid walked off, wondering if the story that Mr. Punch had just told was really true.
He really didn’t seem to be a fan of bare feet. It’s almost as if he was trying to convince kids how awful they were, even when they weren’t. He wrote another bedtime story, in 1951, in which he pooh-poohed them again when a Knarf (reverse the letters if you haven’t figured it out yet) is quizzed.
From “General Tin Tells of Inventors”:
Here Hanid, who thought this was rather a long speech for General Tin the tin soldier to make, asked him what more useful things he meant.
“Lots of them,” replied General Tin. “For instance, shoes. Who invented shoes?” He paused.
After thinking about this for several minutes Knarf and Hanid decided they didn’t know who invented shoes. “Who did?” they asked the General.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But whoever he was he was a wonderful man. Imagine having to walk around without shoes — imagine having to go barefooted all the time.”
“I like going barefoot,” said Knarf.
General Tim grunted in disapproval. “You wouldn’t like it on a cold rainy day.”
Not to get too deep on this, but in a way this is subtle propaganda to teach kids not to like going barefoot and make them “proper” adults.
A cold rainy day is the best time to go barefoot, because feet dry way faster than shoes do. Also, all you have to do is remove the sharp rocks and thorns from the footpaths near where you live – something people have always done, so you only have to worry about sharp rocks and thorns when you’re travelling futher afield. Duh.
I am truly not impressed by this writer’s logic. Or his patronizing attitude. I wish it weren’t still so prevalent.
These stories are really crude, but they can all be examined as part of Nudge Theory, which is basically the propaganda term for the study of propaganda. π Basically, the idea here is that children listen to authors way more than they do to parents, and in almost complete confidence. If an author says something that is seen to be true in a story or film, it becomes true in real life. This is because people have a hard time separating fiction from reality. This is why stereotypes and satires work so well – people see them and a part of their brain stores them away as something real, so every time they see that race or political party or religion they think of the satire before they think of the actual thing.
And, for the record, Mr Trell, I LOVE going barefoot on cold rainy days. π As long as it isn’t hitting my head it’s awesome. It makes me laugh that people are so scared of a little mud and water now. Those shoes they put on can’t be made dirty or wet, oh no. XD My answer to the ever asked question “what do you do when it rains?” is very simple. I just ask them back: “What do you do at the swimming pool?” It really throws them.
“Also, all you have to do is remove the sharp rocks and thorns from the footpaths near where you live β something people have always done”
Not even that. Thorns don’t bother people who have never worn shoes the way they bother us, think of the Seri running through cactus patches and over sharp stones!
I remember Captain Kangaroo reading this story – or one similar to it…
The bizarre implication of this story is, of course, that people back then were too dumb to wrap animal skins round their feet, something they had easy regular access to, rather than going barefoot because that is what we have always done and are suited by nature to do.