Here’s another comic from the strip Grandma by Charles Kuhn. Some how it seems that the previous barefoot comics we’ve seen from this strip, here, and here, have a bit of a negative take on it. Today’s strip is no exception.
Grandma, May 19, 1951
[Click for larger, more readable version.]
I suppose it’s clever and thereby funny, but kids all knew back then that springtime would be a bit oochy, but then the your feet would quickly toughed up for a summer of barefoot fun. They looked forward to that.
When I was a kid, we did NOT know that our feet would toughen up. At least I didn’t. When I was younger I didn’t think about it, but when I started noticing how tender my feet were in the spring, I started wearing shoes at the cottage, at least whenever I had to walk on gravel. This is 1970s.
I guess there’s a lot of lore that gets lost. Also, some people’s feet are more tender than others – I remember other kids not being bothered by scrapes that would have given me a sensory meltdown, and I had no idea how to deal with that at the time (I do now).
Yeah, I’m sure it depended on where you lived, and when you lived.
When I grew up (1960s, Chicago-area) we didn’t really know it either. I suspect the right times/places were more like the 1950s in the south or 1930s in the north. And obviously places like West Virginia knew it better than others (before FDR’s New Deal and rural electrification those places were horribly poor).
Love that Grandma! -TJ
It’s possible that the comic is actually making fun of soft-foots, but experience says probably not.
I never went around barefoot as a kid. But now I do for some hikes and runs. Yesterday on a barefoot hike, I met an older couple who noticed I was hiking barefoot. I told them how much I enjoyed it — except for gravel! At which point the woman said as kids growing up in Montana, they used to run around barefoot on the gravel roads all the time….
I once tried using stilts like that barefoot and found it terribly uncomfortable! They are really made to be used with stiff soled shoes.
It’s so much easier to just go barefoot. (Cinders?)