When I was a barefoot boy … (continued again)

By Bill Shepard

When I was a barefoot boy, my world got bigger, and meaner, and I got bigger and meaner, too! My Mama would often say to me, “Bill, son, you are as mean as you can be!” I bet I heard those words a hundred times when I was a barefoot boy! Once, Mama slipped up on me and some of my buddies where we were hiding behind my dad’s car shed and smoking rabbit tobacco. I knew I was in a lot of trouble when Mama used her favorite words, “Bill you are as a mean as you can be!” Mama’s words were always followed with action! Mama knew how to use a limb from a plum tree, or any other kind of tree, better than anybody else! Sometimes, after I had won some of my friend’s marbles and they would complain to their mama about it, and my Mama would go into action! It seemed there wasn’t much a boy could do that wasn’t mean!

Bill Shepard

Bill Shepard

We didn’t have a church on the mill village when I was a barefoot boy. I suppose we were looked upon as sort of “mission field!” I remember when some folk from a church in another part of town came to the village and started a Sunday School. They used an empty store building that was owned by Mr. Less Lee. Mr. Lee had built a new building in another location near the village. Every Sunday afternoon the children from the village would gather at the building, (we called it church), to hear the teacher talk about God, Jesus, and Heaven, and she always followed with, “You must be good and not mean if you want to go to Heaven.” She said we shouldn’t play marbles for keep, shouldn’t smoke rabbit tobacco, shouldn’t go to the movies, or drink coca-cola, called “dope” in those times, nor go to the wash hole without their mama’s permission! There wasn’t much a boy could do that wasn’t wrong! She said that even if we were mean, Jesus still loved us!

I reckon that I have to admit that as much as I loved my teacher and the stories she would tell, the main reason I went to Sunday School was to get the big bag of fruit and candy she would give us at Christmas! The thing I didn’t like about going to Sunday School was that Mama would make me wear shoes, even in the summertime! Of course there were times that I went barefoot anyway!

Some of my friends on the village didn’t ever wear shoes and their mama’s didn’t care. They went barefoot in the wintertime! They went barefoot to church and to school, that is, if they went to school! There were no compulsory school laws when I was a barefoot boy. I envied my buddies who didn’t have to wear shoes, and didn’t have to go to school, and didn’t have to hide when they smoked rabbit tobacco and could go to the wash hole anytime they wanted to! One of my friends would begin school each year but he would quit after a few days. He never did go higher than first grade! Some said that he stayed in the first grade until he was old enough to work in the cotton mill! I would not have gone to school myself if Mama hadn’t made me go! Being in school all day was bad enough but wearing shoes added to the misery. When I got older, I was glad that Mama made me go to school.

Did you ever wear Brogan shoes? If you did, you know why I liked to go barefoot? A pair of Brogan shoes sold for .98 cents at BC Moore’s on the Square in Darlington when I was a boy. They were made of hard leather uppers and thick leather soles, and hard rubber heels! It was almost impossible to wear a pair out! To get a new pair you had to outgrow the old ones! I had two older brothers so I always wore the ones they had outgrown. By the time I got them, they were beginning to show a little wear!
By the time I became a budding teenager and I began looking at girls in a different way, wearing shoes to church and school became different also. I remember my first pair of solid white dress slippers that I wore at Easter and how proud I was to have them. I will share that story next time!
The lines below are from The Barefoot Boy, by John Greenleaf Whittier:

“Cheerily, then my little man,
Live and laugh as boyhood can!
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cell of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod.
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground,
Happy if they sank not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin,
Ah! That thou couldn’t know thy joy
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!”

Mr. Shepard is a native of Darlington, S.C., and a current resident of Piedmont, S.C. and author of “Mill Town Boy” and “Bruised”. He has been sharing his tales of growing up in Darlington for decades, and we are delighted to share them each week. His mailing address for cards and letters is: Bill Shepard 324 Sunny Lane, Piedmont, S.C., 29673 We love our barefoot boy!

Author: Jana Pye

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