FOR MOTHER
(verse 1)
I remember springtime, when I was just a child
Going barefoot down the dusty lane
Picking berries that grew wild
I heard my mother’s lovely voice
As it floated on the breeze
“Get in here and get some shoes on
Or you’ll begin to wheeze!”
(chorus)
“Child you know you can’t go barefoot
Before the first of May
Or you’ll surely take consumption
And they’ll carry you away
And worsh them dirty berries
‘for you put ‘em in your mouth
Or you’re certain to be wormy
Like your cousins in the south!”
(verse 2)
Well, I listened to my mother
Cause I knew she would not lie
And I knew my folks couldn’t carry on
Without me if I died
So, I washed my wild strawberries
And got my shoestrings tied
And went to find my sisters
To play some ‘hoopie-hide.
(repeat chorus)
—Rita Speers
The topic of when to go barefoot was also an issue when I was growing up in the 1950’s. When I was in my 30’s I wrote this song about it for my Mother.
I hope you enjoyed Rita’s song as much as I do! Over the years I’ve heard many people say their mother made them wait till a certain date before going barefoot in spring of the year. And Granny was forever warning us about taking cold for not wearing shoes, a toboggan, a coat or even going out with wet hair. Actually she’s still warning us 🙂
Paul and I never wore shoes in the summer when we were kids unless we were going to church or town, but today I could barely walk to the backyard without wincing. Little Ira’s feet are tough already. He runs barefooted along the yard and the gravel like it’s carpet.
Last night’s video: Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers 19.
Tipper
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How lucky I was to come upon your wonderful site and read your memories and those of your readers! I experienced much the same feelings of pleasure and freedom, going barefoot – from many thousand miles distance, as a little girl in Northern Italy, being born in 1947. (Please excuse my English, as it is not my mother tongue).
For ten months of the year, I and my sister 3 years younger than me were typical urban middle-class children, always well dressed, often in white, with leather shoes and white knee length socks. We never went out unsupervised, and were well behaved (well, most of the time). But every summer, for two full months, July and August, we stayed in the village where my grandmother and aunts lived.
We arrived as smartly dressed, tidy and clean little girls, and had to stay that way till mom and dad finally would get back in town, after a couple of days.
As much as we loved our mother and father, we looked forward to the moment their car disappeared in the distance, for that was the signal that our summer adventure would finally start and we would be free to “go native”. At that time, in the Fifties, the most modern Italian city, Milan, and a Lombardy village were two worlds apart, albeit at a distance of only 50 miles. All local children went barefoot, with simple clothing, pants and a tee shirt for the boys and a plain short dress for the girls. As our parents left, granny took us upstairs in the old big house and rummaged around in a chest to get our “new” clothes. Once we were undressed, she gave us two short dresses, of the kind that our cousins normally wore in the summer as their only item of clothing.
So we said goodbye to our shoes and socks and were finally free to roam about barefoot just like all the children of the village ! Of course the first few days were not easy, as our sole were still soft, but before long we were able to go wherever our cousins went and enjoy the summer like all the village children. We bathed in a little creek nearby, were free to roam about in the fields, on the cows and sheep trails, and would only came back home for lunch and dinner, sometimes as dirty as the little pigs in the stay.
After a few weeks we could walk barefoot in the rocky fields, not only on the smooth paths in the woods. I still remember how the warm, soft sandy soil, and the occasional mud puddle, felt good between my toes, or how it felt, coming in from the sun-baked pavement, to walk barefoot on the fresh tiles of the church floor.
Please forgive me if I’ve been too long, and thank you for making me relive for a few moments the memories of my “free” childhood
Michela
Michela, thank you for sharing your wonderful childhood memories 🙂
Tipper, I, too, used to be a barefoot girl! Heading out sometimes, early in the morning, YEARS back running to the toilet or out to play. The dew would still be on the ground and this could and did cause me to have a painful “dew crack” between my toes. OUCH. I heard tell that if you went barefoot for a bit outside on the first day of spring, it would keep you from getting a bad cold all year. I’ve done that in the not so distant past, and I don’t get a lot of “colds” but I don’t think it helped much when it comes to seasonal allergies! Today, I am so tender-footed I think I could feel an eyelash if it were laying inside my shoe as I tried to walk. Sending love out to you and everyone of your precious family and sending up prayers for sweet Granny and the rest of you.
Somerset, KY got hit with a tornado but passed over me and mine. Not all were so fortunate and poor London, Laurel Co., KY had devastation.
I’m most always barefoot. I wear shoes outside in the cold weather, but I’m still barefoot in the house. My Dad is asking me daily, ” where’s your shoes?”
Now my daughter does the same thing.
I already said I went barefooted when I was a kid. After having this happened to me, I compromised when I was about 12 years old. I was barefooted while driving and plowing with our gas powered tractor when I ran out of gas in the middle of a briar patch. This was years before cell phones, heck we had only had a house phone for a very short period of time, I had to walk through the briar patch to go home and get more gas. After that I would at least hang a pair of old shoes on the tractor. I haven’t seen anything about us country kids usually having at least one sore foot at all times- many times from sticking a nail it, just tie a kerosene soaked rag around it and go on. It was double u tuff when you had both feet sore at the same time. Some have mentioned hot asphalt, in my time it was hot tar and gravel roads, the roads would get hot enough for the tar to get hot and begin to melt. It sure did feel good to stick those hot feet in a cold creek.
Sweet memories!
And such a sweet photo ! Baby feet are just the best !
Precious little baby feet…so sweet
My mama always made us wear shoes till the first day of summer. Then we went barefoot all day long. It’s funny because she still gets on me for not having on a jacket or a hat when she thinks it’s cold. I am 64. My kids always went barefoot in summer. Last year, with all the droughts and tiny yellow jackets everywhere, it was a little bit dangerous to walk in the yard barefoot. I hope we get enough rain this year to combat the droughts. We sure are getting enough wind. My neighbors tree was laying uprooted in his yard this morning. I am praying for all those who had bigger storms than we did last evening.
Aww, babies’ feet are so sweet! My 98 yr old Mom still tells me that her parents would not let her go bare footed or take her long underwear off until the Dogwood trees bloomed. She said she would burn up with the long underwear on. I was never allowed to go bare footed at all, inside or outdid the house. My German/Dutch Dad was a perfectionist & a clean freak & couldn’t tolerate errors. Mom wouldn’t have cared if we went barefooted but she always adhered to his rules. If he caught us without shoes, we were harshly scolded & he would ask us, “do you want your feet to look like Little Abner’s?” We didn’t know who Little Abner was & thought he must be a friend of Dad’s. Also, Dad said you could step on glass, a nail or bees & he said, “Who wants to have nasty feet when you have shoes?” And he would sometimes wake us kids up at night and ask where our shoes were-one pair better be set by the side of the bed neatly because he said if the house was burning you don’t have time to hunt shoes. And so it was with my Dad. I’m 73 now & still never go barefooted in the house or outside. It is that much ingrained in me from Dad. My cousins always went barefooted & they could run in gravel & I would marvel at that. When Dad was at work, I sometimes would sit next to clover & run my feet through the cool clover & enjoyed that for a few minutes. I sure longed for the freedom other kids had. My Dad was also physically & mentally abusive to me, my sister & Mom, but not my brother. We lived a privileged life as far as money, a fine home & new Cadillacs & fine clothes, but I would have traded it all for a home that I was not scared all the time & abused.
I love the imagery of Ira running barefoot outside—I remember when I could walk or run on gravel without any pain at all, now a little pebble that has worked its way into my home via the bottom of someone’s shoes and I inadvertently step on it barefoot starts me hollering lol. I recently watched some of your very old videos (I had thought I had already watched them all, but I either had not or I forgot them) In one you were wading in the creek stacking rocks according to size and just overall enjoying playing and relaxing in the creek—how blessed the girls grew up with and now the boys will too have the joy of having a mother/grandmother who does not mind getting wet and or dirty just playing in the creek with them….do not know who is the most blessed, you because you enjoy simple pleasures of nature surrounding you or the boys because they have you leading the way
Gaylia, you are very kind. Thank you 🙂
Mama wouldn’t let us go barefooted until May Day, either. We only wore shoes to church and the store (flip-flops). We couldn’t go out with wet hair and you had to stay away from windows when it was storming! We also unplugged everything in the house when it stormed!
when i first moved to the city i could run along the gravel on the sides of the road, on the hot asphalt or out in the snow or wherever barefoot but now its hard…but its one of the things i been working on…toughening my feet back up…amazing what city living does for someone who once was a country girl…
I enjoyed Rita’s song. May 1st was the day we could finally take off our shoes and socks and feel the earth under our feet. You would have thought it was a holiday because all the kids talked about it at school and when the last couple weeks of April came around the countdown began. Wonderful childhood memories!
Oh sweet baby sweet! Little Ira!
I never went barefoot, I went barefooted. Barefoot means you’ve taken off your shoes and are walking around without them. Barefooted is when you haven’t seen your shoes since the first of May.
Love the photo of little feet. We always talked about hearing the “pitty-pats” when little ones were in the house. It’s been a while. It’s funny how anxious adults get for a baby to walk then the baby just goes everywhere and needs following.
I always heard you could go barefoot when you saw the first butterfly. I didn’t go barefoot outside much as a child because our chickens ran loose. I couldn’t stand to step in chicken poop but loved to walk in soft mud. We heard the same warnings as Granny said and washed/ rinsed berries, etc. my grandkids go barefoot and wear shorts year round. Great poem too. Thanks.
I was born in post shoeless society. I always had a pair of shoes/boots growing up and took it for granted in my younger years. Certainly, I had heard the stories from grandparents and uncles/aunts about being of a certain age or having too wait till a particular time of year to be given a pair of shoes by struggling parents. It was only after a young man who had been raised Old Order Amish came to work for us told me he got his first pair of shoes at 10 years old when he plowed a team of six Belgian horses (larger than Clydesdales) I started to realize not everyone was as fortunate as I had bee coming along. He said that was “par for the course” for most Amish boys. The shoes were a necessary protection not from plowed dirt, but from being stepped on by hooves nearly as large as a bucket.
I also have a friend who I have known all my life who never wore shoes. Every time I every saw him growing up, he was barefooted. Even as an older teenager I had seen him ride an offroad motorcycle shoeless lots of times. As it happens sometimes, we grew up and didn’t see each other as often. It had been at least ten years since I last saw him when we crossed paths on a job. By then he was in his late 40s and he was “shod” (wearing shoes). I was taken aback and I asked him when he started wearing those. He explained that in the last ten years or so had sometimes taken a job in a nearby city and that some of those businesses “would let me in without shoes, so I bought a pair”. LOL
I hope everyone stays dry and dodges the storms. We have had our share of rain this past week here in northwest Alabama with more on the way.
God Bless,
Oh, the joys of going barefoot in the summer, I still hate shoes and don’t wear them in the house. When your feet get used to going barefoot, rough ground and gravel do not matter.
My mama thought that hard bottomed shoes were best for a baby learning to walk but my pediatrician disagreed and the shoes came off!
I love the verses in Rita’s sing she wrote. It reminded me of my mom telling us kids the same about wearing shoes and washing berries, cherries and apples we had growing in our yard before we ate them. Tipper when you said Granny still tells y’all that, I had to chuckle because my mom did the same up until she passed. I do the same with my grown daughter and granddaughter. Some things mothers say are just passed on for generations.
I remember playing outside barefoot when I was little and thought nothing of it. Today, wouldn’t step out the front door without some sort of footwear. lol!
My younger brother and I rarely wore shoes in summer. I don’t know how we stood walking on the hot pavement. Our great-aunt Rose lived in the same town we did for a few years. We loved going over to visit her. I remember one summer in particular when we visited her with no shoes on. She said “If you keep going around barefoot, you’ll end up with big clodhoppers like me.”
I wonder if that is true. I now wear an 8 1/2 shoe.
Summer in the 60s is full of wonderful memories.
We never wore shoes on the summer when I was growing up. We had a gravel road to the little mom and pop store down the road for many years. the gravel was nothing to us! One day the County put down some tar and oil to combat tje dust from the road. In the heat of tje simmer it would bubble up. Even that didn’t prevent us from going down the road on a errand like getting cigarettes foe my dad (yes we could do that back then). To get the tar off we our feet before entering the house, we washed the down with gasoline and rinsed with a hose. So dangerous! PLEASE don’t ever do that! I’m surprised we all made it to adulthood!
For us, it was Easter. Well, after we got our pictures made in our Easter dresses and socks and shoes…then we were free to go barefoot! It gave us kids one more reason to look forward to that day and the satisfaction of going without shoes lasted a lot longer than the candy in our baskets.
I still run barefoot around the house and in the yard where it’s not too rough. When I was little, I didn’t wear shoes at all in the summer, thus I stepped on a lot of honey bees which was pretty painful for a 5-8 year old little girl. My husband is a real tender foot and can barely walk in the house barefooted. I love the feel of the grass and ground on my feet and when I work in our garden I’m barefoot a lot of the times.
I remember going barefoot as a boy. It felt so natural and free. Shoes just felt so heavy on my feet. About the time I was finishing up elementary school I grew out of barefoot summertime. Now shoes are a must for outdoor activities, but while I’m accustomed to them, they still don’t seem natural and free.
Can definitely relate to that song. I lived on a farm and went bare foot most of the summer. We helped the farmers put up hay and I did it with no shoes on . But now that ain’t gonna happen. Memories of my childhood thanks for bringing it back to me .
God bless you.
When I was kid growing up, I was always trying to slip around and run barefooted on the warm days by this time of the year. I never went to “grammar “ school barefooted but we had a few children that did come barefooted. I envied them, I didn’t realize it was because of them being poor and not having shoes. Even now at 71 years old, I am always barefooted all year long when in the house, it has nothing to do with trying to keep the floors clean.
I was reading the old March 2013 blog about “arsh” taters. At my work at Michelin we had a bald head man the had a lot to do with activities for the employees that was known to all by the nickname of “Tater”. He has retired but was recently honored at our 50 year anniversary. The man that took his place and could pass for Tater’s brother has been tagged with the nickname of “Tater Tot.”