In the late 1930's, in the San Joaquin Valley in California, where I came from, going barefoot was a summer treat for many children. You could go to grocery stores, any restaurant, shopping with your parents, or the show/movies. There was, however, a definite distinction between children's and adults' behavior in regards to wearing shoes. You seldom saw a barefoot person, man or woman in public except for the occasional housewife or man after he finished work, going next door or down the block or across the street to visit a neighbor. You have to remember that, in those days, with women not working there were neighborhoods and people knew each other quite well. It seems to me that barefooting seemed to become less popular in the 1950s, for children but got its revival obviously in the mid 1960s, first with the beatniks and then the hippies and others. The insurance companies seemed to have gotten into the act and kind of wrecked things. One story I would like to tell... around 1965 or 1966, im not sure which I was living in Lod Angeles and I was walking with a friend, and I said to her " that's a younger person up ahead of us" and she said " you may think it's a young person but it's an old woman" I would have forgotten about it except that, a short time later, I was in Ralph's Supermarket on Santa Monica and Vermont, waiting in line, and a woman a couple of people ahead of me dropped her cigarette on the floor. I realized that she was barefoot, and I offered to step on it for her. She said "I've got it," and stepped on it. She was about 60 years old I think, and therefore I would have to guess that it was the same person that we had seen a short time earlier. I did not get the impression of a homeless person because of the way she spoke, and it was before the real homeless crisis that occurred and before Ronald Reagan wreck the public health program in California. Maybe some of you have your stories that you would like to add.
