A Really Big Shoe

Today is the (supposed) anniversary of the (rumored) incident involving Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev hammering for emphasis with his shoe during a diatribe at the United Nations in 1960.

I was 5 years old at the time, so I don’t remember many of the details, but it did make a significant impression on me that a guy could get so much attention by taking off his shoe and banging it on a hard surface. When I tried it at the dinner table, I found out the rumors were true!

Did the incident really happen? Accounts differ. Some say he merely waved the shoe while pounding the desk with his fist. Others note that he couldn’t have removed the shoe while sitting at his U.N. desk, because the desk was too small for him to reach under there and he was too fat to bend over while seated. One account claims the shoes were new and painful, so he took them off before sitting down. When he got wound up and wanted to drive home the point, he noticed a shoe nearby and took advantage of the situation. A crime of opportunity.

Khruschev’s tirade was the most famous angry thing (possibly) done with a shoe up to the Richard Reid “shoe bomber” incident in 2002. In both cases, there is no video evidence to verify the incident for future generations, though You Tube is full of attempts to re-create Khruschev’s rant.

Whether or not it actually happened, for Cold War kids like me, the bogeyman became an angry old bald man banging his shoe, telling us the kids will become Communists and shouting “We Will Bury You!”. And now I have become an angry old bald man whose feet hurt. Coincidence? I don’t think so!

Describe your favorite pair of shoes.

115 thoughts on “A Really Big Shoe”

  1. my birky arizonas are the old standby. i am lucky because i wll be able to reorder these when they are worn out. i tend to be a person who likes to keep shoes as a part of my life longer than the shoes had in mind. i wear them out and then thanks to ebay i have the option of going online to find the sme shoes in good shape years after the design has gone by the wayside. my born mules were discontinued 10 years ago and i am down to my last 2 pairs. they don’t show up on ebay any more so its time to move on. converse all star hightop basktbal shoes from the 60’s wer a favorite andnow ar enjoying a rebrthas chuck taylors but at 85 dollars a pair i am turning ito my dad again. nickle andy barys are 50 cents and tennis shos are not supposed to be 80 dollars.birkys are now 100 dollars a pair so when i see the on ebay or at sams cluyb ro 40 bucks and snap up few pairs in antiipation of wear to come to the heels and soles of the pair i am currently abusing. nakia was a hot.a leader who was not the gentile grey suit the world expected. stalin ad tobe a ough act to follow and nicky did i in hs own style. i saw an artcle recently where whil he was visiting he wanted to see disneyland and they wouldn’t take him. hey wanted him to go see a factory or something and he had his own agenda for this tour. sounds like the houseguest from hell. but shoes are something we all have in common. bang away nakita bang away.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This is a question that is timely and somewhat sensitive because my feet have been hurting lately. It is to the point that a visit to a podiatrist may be in order. Recently my favorite pair of shoes are the ones that don’t hurt. Today that means a pair of soft, slip-on tennies I bought at Herbergers. I love those shoes.

    Saturday, while canning tomatoes and tomato soup I was on my feet nearly all day. My New Balance Cross Trainer shoes were my favorites that day. Several weeks ago when we had our Open House at work I wore my black clogs. I thought they would be comfy for such an event. So when I got dressed in the morning they were my favorite shoes. By the time I got home that night they had fallen on the list to LAST PLACE as my least favorite shoes because my feet hurt like crazy.

    When I was 19 (1972) my favorite pair of shoes was a pair of boots with platform soles and laces that criss-crossed all the way up the front. They accentuated my slim legs and looked fabulous with a short, short mini-skirt. VERY stylish, but excruciatingly painful to wear–“but so worth it,” she thought, “just to look this good.”

    That is SO 1972.

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    1. my ciropractor has a peanut btter jar fullofgolf balls on his des for self nduced foot massage.they work great. try it out.
      i see more tha a few women out there in 2012 with heels that get those legs and physical atributes lookin good. itis apreciated but man does that look painful.
      you know what. i wore platforms in 72 also

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      1. Except the legs changed! They are now riddled with vericose veins and extra “muscle”—ahem. Plus I’d rather not wear a mini skirt anymore either.

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      2. I think it’s one of the BBC bylaws that no miniskirts are allowed, unless worn by someone’s daughter.

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      3. Oh, you’re right, that would be unBlevinslike, wouldn’t it? I must be thinking of my other book club. Pardon.

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  3. I have never had a favorite pair of shoes. I have an oddly shaped foot, there is a technical name with its own acronym for it. Very high arch, wide in he front, narrow in the back. My HS girl friend’s father owned a shoe store and was convinced he could find a shoe that fit right. So he fully measured out my foot with this fancy toy he had and said that nope, no shoe would ever fit my foot. The very high arch is the issue. Modern soft shoes, a good pair of athletic shoes, have been wonderful for me. But I basically just buy a pair of shoes that are too much too big in the back to fit my front.The very high arch is the issue. All been quite manageable if I do not even try to put on a non-tie show or boot. My foot pains are from arthritis and FM. And guess what. Turns out my odd foot is common in FM. This disease is so much fun. It explains everything.

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    1. We might have similar feet. When I was just a little kid my dad always told me I had feet “like gunboats.” I didn’t have the slightest idea of what he meant. But I knew what my feet looked like, so I was always hoping to see a picture that looked like my feet so I would know what a gunboat is.

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      1. No idea. An expression of the time. My mother was full of those common banalities of that era. Another military term of the time, and lots of the were now that I think about it–battle axe for an old shrewish woman makes no sense to me

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      2. We had a cow my Dad used to call ‘You Old Battle Ax!’

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      3. Just did a bit of searching on battle axe. Not a single place really knows the origin of battle axe as ascribed to a woman. One source suggests it was by George Ade. I think it predates him. All agree it applies to a large older domineering, perhaps large woman, which is exactly the way it was used in my childhood. I could not find a single one that mentions a lesbian association.
        It has always intrigued me because I could never see the logic of the association. I used to work with a couple men who would call their wives “the war department,” which drove me out of the lunch room, since both had quite nice reasonable wives, better people than the men were. Anyway, maybe its that kind of dumb male logic.

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      4. The new IT guy called my computer a cow yesterday. He said, to my computer, “You COW!” He might need to go to sensitivity training.

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    2. I have struggled with the word cow in my novel, and I use it very often. “Cow,” at the time of the setting of the book if not now, was pretty much female, but “cows” is not. On our farm it was always that way but when people came to visit, they used the word “cow” as any bovine animal. I think the insult term “cow” used that way is a female reference though.

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      1. Drove through Spring Valley today; on the side of a building, in very large letters, it said “BATTLE AX” ‘The largest plug of tobacco available for .10 [cent symbol])

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  4. I would love to comment on stylish women’s shoes. Okay I will. No I better not.
    When I was in about fourth grade, FLAT FEET was the great enemy of Americaeven before the Nikita and his shoes. The communists would roll right through a nation of flat feet. Men frequently failed the draft for flat feet. In school we all had to step in a narrow tray of water (disinfected) and then step on paper towels. Doctors and nurses would look at our footprint and decide if we had flat feet. If you had flat feet, it was sort of un-American. My sister did. So my broke parents had to buy these false arches for her to put in her shoes to build up her arches, keep her from have a bad foot as an adult, and prevent a life of pain. She wore them for a year and my mother decided they were silly. My 70-year-old sister was a gym teacher and has for the last 30 years or more walked 5 miles a day or more at such a brisk pace I do not see how it is not a run. I have not heard a whisper of the term flat feet since about 1960.
    My foot print, by the way was just fine.

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    1. My maternal grandfather, in Germany in early 1914 for a short visit to collect his mother and remaining three sisters and bring them to Minnesota, was drafted into the German army briefly and was discharged after a few weeks due to flat feet and not being able to march. He quickly left and returned to Minnesota. I probably owe my existence to his flat feet.

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  5. The best $10 I ever spent was at the general store in our little town in northern Wisconsin. The $10 bought me a pair of ersatz Krocs. I have worn them–with delight–every day of the three summers since then. They don’t weigh as much as a pair of socks, are comfy and are so easy to slip on. They do, alas, have shortcomings as a snow boot.

    I also dearly loved the hiking shoes I bought for my Superior Hiking Trail assault. Those were rugged Italian hiking shoes (Vibram, Gore-Tex, etc) sold at a reasonable price by Cabelas. They were perfect for walking in rough or wet or weedy places. For a variety of reasons, I can’t even get them on now, but those shoes sure carried me to some great adventures. If I just think of them the memories come rushing in like a flooding river.

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    1. I have a pair of Crocs. I bought them at a discount shoe store and I don’t think I paid full price. I use them for quick trips outside and don’t wear them inside to avoid tracking into the house. They certainly aren’t for winter use and even in the summer they don’t work very well on wet grass due to the holes in their sides and toes.

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    2. I have a pair of sandals made by Crocs, most comfortable ones I’ve ever had, like walking on air. I wear them all summer, and hope I can find replacements.

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  6. Good morning to all,

    It’s good to be back on the trail after being off for several days while away from home. I am not too picky about shoes and just wear whatever I find that seems to work and doesn’t cost too much. I am fond of the Muck Boots I wear for gardening. They are normal shoe size, not boots, and have a rubber outter covering with enough support built into them to make them good for wallking. I leave them in the garage most of the time because they often get kind of muddy from being used in the garden. I do sometimes wear them around town. Our local Post Master got a little upset when I forgot they were muddy and tracked a lot of dirt into the post office..

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  7. I usually garden in flip flops, or no shoes at all if the terrain permits. I used to wear tennis shoes, but they kept getting dirt in them whenever I was digging. The flip flops shed dirt easily and can be rinsed with a garden hose.

    Moccasins are a good choice for most of the year. I used to have a favorite style of driving mocs made by Minnetonka that I would buy at the State Fair when Minnetonka had a booth in the Coliseum. They were a sort of plain design in a buff color with a leather lace tie and a nubby non-slip sole. I think I wore out about five pairs of those. Minnetonka no longer appears at the Fair, though, at least they haven’t for the last two years. I looked.

    One of my gardening books recommends recycling leather shoes as fertilizer. You can take off the leather uppers and bury them near the roots of a plant – apparently roses like this a lot – and they will slowly deteriorate and release food to the roots.

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    1. I almost never go without socks and would need to shed the socks to wear flip flops. I don’t know why I think I need to have socks on at all times, but that’s what I have always done. I am told it is not stylish to wear socks inside Crocs which is what I do..

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  8. My current favorite shoes are a pair of custom Converse high tops (you can design your own on their website, http://www.converse.com). They have black bumpers with red stripes, red tongues, black laces, plain black on the inner side and gray skull-and-crossbones argyle pattern on the outer side. Converse isn’t offering the argyle anymore, so mine are indeed one of a kind, and I’ve worn/loved them almost to death. When I was in library school, Doc Martens had a vegetarian line, and my favorites were a pair of 8-eyelet boots in black and white paisley fabric. For a while I was “the one with the cool boots”, and I must say they wiped the floor with the woman who thought it was daring and funky to wear two different colored socks every day.

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    1. There is a member of my family that likes very stylish and unusual shoes. She might like the looks of your Doc Martens, Crow Girl. She always tries to buy them on sale at a reduced price which is still very high from my point of view. I guess I am another one who remembers the much lower prices from many years ago and think of shoes that cost close to $100 or a little more as very expensive.

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  9. My favorite pair of shoes in high school was a pair of Beartraps platform dress shoes that made me almost 6 feet tall. I only had them briefly, since I left them in Decorah IA when I played my bass clarinet in the Dorian Music Festival at Luther College when I was in Grade 10. My daughter loves her Uggs, even with her flat feet. I tell her she will live to regret them later in life when her feet hurt, but does she listen?

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  10. For some reason I’ve always worshiped red shoes. When I was four or so I had a pair of red “alligator” MaryJanes… in college it was red boots, a Frye knock-off. I still miss the pair of red suede moc style ones… and a pair of red sandals that I wrecked by dancing on gravel at step-son’s wedding. Ah, well – looking for the next pair of red shoes.

    I’ve always loved shoes – when I was a kid I would even look under public rest room stalls to see what shoes were being worn by others. I have ‘way too many shoes, but justify it by the fact that my feet are one part of me that have stayed skinny. (I even check thrift shops, because there are sometimes pairs that are barely used – someone must have gotten them home and they didn’t fit or something.)

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    1. I have a pair of red ballerina flats that I used to wear a lot. At one point I had them resoled and the shoe repair guy looked at me like I must be insane to want to fix them – they were so worn they had sort of molded themselves to my feet. Yeah, I get attached to shoes.

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      1. I can’t believe YouTube doesn’t have this one…

        Oh, Papa won’t you make her a brand new pair of red dancing shoes
        Make them with the love that only you know how to do
        Make ’em soft, make ’em light
        You can make ’em just right
        Then she’ll dance with me all night.
        Papa won’t you make her a brand new pair of shoes.

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      2. I keep shoes on my desk. Actually they are baby shoes. I put a pair in my cube to remind me (and others) that we are not just bureaucrats but people whose job it is to help keep babies healthy. Not being content with one pair of booties I hit garage sales and now own zillions of baby shoes. I keep them in a drawer and switch them off periodically mostly on a seasonal basis. There are lots of holiday booties-I think the Thanksgiving turkeys are the coolest.

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      3. Beth-Ann – I love this… I can’t resist some baby shoes, and I’ll buy them and then try desperately of some baby I can give them to… i.e. friends’ grandchildren, one of whom now owns her first pair of espadrilles. 🙂

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      4. I don’t need to tell those who mourn TLGMS that the ultimate song on this topic is probably the Chenille Sisters’ song “Girl Shoes.” A classic. But a classic that doesn’t exist anywhere on the internet at the moment.

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    2. I had a streak of about 10 years where my tennis shoes were always red – I was fond of a line of high-top leather tennies that Reebok had that came in a bright, fire engine red. Miss those shoes…

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      1. i had those too . i wore out the first pair and bought a second pair that is in a box somewhere in retrievable condition. i look forward to rediscovering them someday. women in red shoes let me know i like their soul. even uppity women. if they wear red shoes there is a soul in there worth knowing. guys who wear red shoes are really fun guys. without exception. i believe that red shoes could be used as a form orf therapy. you can not possibly feel depressed with red shoes on. the same can be said for red socks by the way. a little more of an understated proclaimation but a hallelujah just the same. put red footwear on and smile a little each time you look down.

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      1. I get a feeling of nostalgic happiness from it. There is a sense of a female archetype – a stage when a girl looks at her mother and sees in her the ideal female. I remember looking at my mother and hoping that I would one day be as lovely and graceful. This song brings that feeling back for me. I remember feeling proud to be grown up enough to wear a certain pair of shoes but still young enough to have my mother ride the bus with me. I think it’s nostalgic more than sad.

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  11. Another thing I love is Espadrilles – the little cotton canvas “skimmers” with the rope soles. Used to be able to find them everywhere, now there are mostly these 5-inch high heeled wedge ones – what, do I look like I want to break my neck? Found a version of black flat ones the last two summers at Target, but I’m looking for, of course, red.

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  12. I am mourning the loss of regular sandal weather and not quite ready for having to wear socks on a daily basis – buh-bye favorite black sandals..that said – my favorite shoes-with-socks currently are a pair of patent leather clogs (black with a floral pattern, sort of like wearing shiny black lacquer fancy boxes in clog form) – super comfy. Thinking I need a second pair in brown. I also have a favored pair of plain brown ankle-high boots that I was stunned fit onto my high-instep feet – I’m sure the wide size, square toes, and European brand allowed that to happen (best part was I found ’em on clearance). I had a pair of black suede shoes that were wonderful – bit of a heel, but still comfortable for the likes of me who doesn’t usually wear heels, sort of a modern spin on an older 40s style…post baby I could not wear them. Sorrow.

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  13. Shoes, in my book, are nothing more than a necessary evil… give me bare feet any day! A trail of naked footprints wandering in the snow around my house is nothing unusual. But, alas, even I will concede that I must conform at times. I settle for clogs in those instances… been wearing them since my college days.

    I will say there is one shoe that is the exception… one that talked it’s way into my life (although I tried to ignore it for a while). It was on a trip to the Virgin Islands 7 years ago when we were first introduced to each other… a pair of running shoes that was offered up to a friend planning to walk the cinque terre in Italy. My friend resembles a mighty amazon woman and, much like Cinderella’s step-sisters, the shoes did not fit. Turns out, I was the lucky recipient of the glass slipper that day. But these shoes came with a history of having run the Boston Marathon (maybe not as good a fit, me and that shoe, as I thought).

    I strapped those sneakers onto my backpack and headed back to Minnesota, where I proceeded to find a dark corner on my closet floor to house them. Did I know they would sit there and incessantly nag me? I did not… or I may have never taken them in. But they did! Quietly at first, I heard a tiny voice protesting from the closet “… but I ran the Boston Marathon! What am I doing here?” The nagging grew over the next several months and finally wore me down to the point of placating the shoes with a promise of a short walk. I never break a promise, the shoes never let up, and I’ve been a runner for nearly seven years now!

    By the way, Barb… I just took ownership of a new pair of pretty red sandals of my own. I hope I’ll be able to wreck mine by dancing as well!

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    1. Many years ago I bought myself a sweatsuit and a fancy pair of New Balance running shoes thinking I could turn myself into a runner. It never happened! Perhaps if had gotten a pair of shoes with some kind of running heritage it would have made a difference though I have my doubts.

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  14. I need to get back into my heels.

    They were largely abandoned when I had a toddler to chase about, but now that the s&h is just about my height, I need to start wearing them again because a) I like them and b) he is self-conscious about his new height and slouches to not be taller than I am.

    I love my black leather ankle boots with the 1.5″ heels. They are warm, cosy, nice to walk in and I think they look nice on my dainty little feet. Platforms are my enemies. I have a short, narrow foot and smallish ankles-those things always look like boxes on the ends of my legs that could snap right off.

    I also love vintage shoes and have a lovely pair of grey and black spectators from the 30’s that need a dress made to go with them. Ditto the brown alligators from the 50’s.

    Now if I could just get the life that goes with my shoe colllection…..

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  15. My wife has 40 pairs of shoes in her failed attempt to find that perfect pair, that would be slim black leather pointed-toe high heels that give her a firm safe footing with her lupus-ravaged walk and are comfortable despite what the steroids, other drugs, arthritis and time have done to her feet. She’s still looking.

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  16. It might be appropriate to mention my moment of great shoe humiliation. There comes a time in the development of most teens when they regard their parents above all as sources of unbearable embarrassment. This time is usually marked by a great deal of eye rolling and sarcasm, with the teen occasionally trying to disown the parent in public situations. I know some of you know what I’m talking about. This would be the time of your life (as the teen) when you would be somewhere with your mom and she would spit into a Kleenex and wash some bit of schmutz off your face (while three of your school classmates were watching in horror).

    My mom and I were doing the family grocery shopping. At the checkout counter when they totalled the bill we found that Mom was about 30 cents short. She picked me up and plopped me on the counter and went fishing in my “penny loafer” shoes, finding a bright quarter in each, and in that way we paid our way out of there. But oh the shame! Moments like this keep people like Jacque professionally busy!

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    1. At the fine dining establishment we went to last night there was an adoptive Korean teen-age girl, which made me think of someone on here (ahem). All her petite olive-skinned sloe-eye beauty was directed at telling the whole world with every inch of her body how disgusted she was with her mother. I looked at my sweet happy grand-daughter and thought, that’s here in about 6 years at the most.

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      1. I hereby resign keyboarding. I cannot type “her” without it coming out “here” Every time. But then all my “here’s” come “her.” Darn it.

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  17. I had two pairs of favorite shoes when I was a kid: a pair of saddle shoes and a pair of hornpipe shoes, both from my favorite uncle’s shoe store in Dublin. I’m guessing that you all know what saddle shoes are, but you may not be familiar with hornpipe shoes. Mine were black patent leather with a silver buckle in front just like the ones in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkI_CBZeAFw I loved those shoes despite the fact that I couldn’t dance a lick, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Neither shoes were common in Denmark.

    As an adult I’ve developed a bunion on my right foot. This makes it difficult to find shoes that don’t hurt my feet, and having had my right knee replaced with a one made of titanium, I no longer wear heels. From when the snow melts in spring to when it returns again in winter, I live in sandals. I attended a wedding a couple of weeks ago wearing them. My favorite sandals are Earth Shoes with a negative heel, stretches the calf muscles in a comfortable way. Couldn’t find a pair last year so had to settle for a pair of Mephistos which should last another couple of years, at least. No socks.

    My favorite winter footwear are my Steger Moosehide Mukluks; soft, warm, comfy, and pricey, but worth every penny. I’ve worn them 15 years or so, and may have to replace them within the next year or two.

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  18. I hang onto shoes too. My first pair of Birks were Floridas (I think – the ones with three straps instead of two). I bought them in 1987 and wore them until they were cracked in half across the soles and large chunks were falling off of them. I stopped wearing them regularly a couple of years ago but I still wear them when I’m working in the kitchen – like slippers with arch support. The heels are worn down which seems to make the arch higher and feels so good. My second and current pair are leather Arizonas. I’ve had them for a few years but just started wearing them regularly last year. I’ve already worn the heels down. I’m going to have to find a new pair, like tim, so that I have them when I need them. I need to have a very high arch. Lately I’ve been having trouble with my right foot related to having high arches. Runners stretches really help.

    I wore Swedish clogs for years before Birkenstocks. I still have a pair that I like to wear. They help make me a little taller. I also like to wear flip flops but I need more support for my right foot these days. I try to wear New Balance walking shoes at work and when going for long walks. I use my hiking boots for mowing the lawn due to the hill and the need for good support around my ankles.

    I have a pair of ankle-high Minnetonka moccasins that I used to wear a lot. I had them sew heavy leather soles on them so they wouldn’t wear out. I got a strange look there too, Linda.

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    1. Wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve gotten that look when I’ve tried to have something fixed instead of buying a new one.

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  19. How could I not mention my cowboy (or should that be cowgirl?) boots my dad brought home from the U.S. I was about 9 years old, and the boots were light brown with pointy toes and with a white star on the outside of each boot. In the middle of the white star was a red stone (probably colored glass). I was the envy of every girl in Stubbekøbing because of those boots and I wore them everywhere. Had my mother let me, I would have worn them to bed.

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    1. I would’ve killed for cowgirl boots when we played Roy Rogers all the time…

      I have a secret that I can let out here… I would take a brand new pair of shoes to bed with me, keep them up by my pillow.

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      1. I loved the smell of shoe stores. Remember when they had x-ray machines so you could see your toes? Don’t know how many times I’ve had my toes x-rayed, but it was a lot.

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  20. I have a pair of tennis shoes that have cowboy hats and cowboy boots and ropes and stars appliqued on them. A friend told me they looked like the sort of thing you would wear when you were a kid and your family went to the Black Hills on vacation. I liked that thought.

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  21. Anyone else have a memory of Keds tennies being what was in to wear for girls in the mid-sixties? With pantyhose…

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  22. All day I have been thinking of the Bobs song “My Shoes” – and darned if I can find a good video of it to link to. Dang it. I’ll just have to hum to myself, “…my shoes are…on top of the world…my shoes are…(bamp bamp bamp badda bamp bamp bamp)”

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  23. WOT…when I got home today three of my neighbor’s chickens had escaped and were wandering up the avenue looking for something good to eat.

    That reminds me…I think I might put Chicken Run on my Netflix queue.

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    1. i was in a little big man frame of mind earlier. might get ot it soon.
      i just saw dustin hoffman is going to read jerzy kozinskis being there for the new audio craze they say is out there.

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