Though I spent most of my boyhood Great Depression years walking through summer barefooted except at Sunday school, I enjoyed some store bought shoes sometimes.

We lived on a macadam street and it had lots of cracks that somebody filled with tar, which got a little soft and runny on hot summer days and I could make neat impressions of my toes and heels.

And lots of times my brother and I took a stick and gouged out chunks of warm tar and chewed it. It was not as good as chewing gum but it was free.

And though my little sister ratted on us and Mom made a disgusted yucky face and talked about the horses that pulled wagons and didn't care where they dropped banure, which was her word for road apples, we never caught any terrible molly grumps.

We did have to wear shoes in school and in the fall we got in the streetcar with Mom and went to Gallenkamps shoe store with some vouchers she got from somewhere. My brother and I each got some black moccasin-toed pebbly surfaced oxfords-- I loved them. And polished them every morning walking to school till the soles wore out.

Then Dad bought some rubber soles for ten cents, which he glued over the holes. They worked pretty well but the glue gave up pretty fast and the soles flapped up and down and sounded like birds taking off.

One year Dad got some money and bought me a pair of high top 8-inch boots that had silver clips that secured the buckskin laces at the top. I loved those boots and used them to get the job as kickoff guy when we played ragtag football at Holy Redeemer playfield.

Sadly the soles wore out and Dad took them to a shoe repair shop near the old Rose Theatre on Lombard Street to get them resoled.

Each day or so I went over to the shop and I could see them on a shelf by a sign that warned that shoes left over 30 days would be sold.

And each night I asked my Dad about the shoes but he was always drunk so I asked him in the mornings and he promised he would get them back to me.

Well, he didn't do it and one day I looked in the window and they were not there.

Was I disappointed? Of course.

But I got over it. I still had my feet.