1950S SMALL TOWN LIFE: THE PERFECT FIT

Mother held Jan's hand and walked slowly behind her up the two steep concrete steps from the street to the walkway in front of Two County Shoe Store. Susan walked up real ladylike, and I jumped from the street to the first step with both feet, then took a modified frog position to make the second leap, landing squarely on the circle that surrounded the 2 in the shoe store's logo. Inlaid into the sidewalk, it was mostly made of bronze and looked expensive and classy. I felt proud that we bought our shoes here.

There were cars parked all along the street in front of the various stores. We'd had to circle the block once to find a place close to the store. People walked up and down the street, shopping. Mother handed some nickels and dimes to Susan and me and let us put them in the parking meter. The early April weather was pleasant, and the smell of dirt and magnolias was in the air.

Mother laughed about our grandmother coming and parking in downtown Corsicana on Saturdays, even though she didn't want to shop. Mother said Nettie would park and sit in her car for hours commenting on every person who went by, some remarks not very complimentary. "I think it makes her feel better about herself, I don't know." Mother had offered with a shrug and a laugh.

I liked coming here. The owner would always meet us at the front of the store, smiling, his teeth seeming to take up most of his face. He was short, seemed old to me, and just seemed tickled to death that we had come in.

"How can we help you today?" he effused.

Susan whispered that Mother might say, "How about taking some of these kids off my hands?", and we laughed.

He directed us toward the displays of shoes spread neatly about the store on glass tables. Boxes of shoes lined both of the sidewalls, lined up in neat rows in shelves from the floor almost to the ceiling. The store was spotless, mirrors for observing feet in new shoes, shining perfectly.

We didn't spend long looking before another man came and offered to help. He was named Gabby, and he had the most beautiful, thick black hair I had ever seen. I remembered him from previous trips because he was so gentlemanly and polite.

First, he sat on a low wooden box in front of each of us. Taking turns, we each put our bare foot on a piece of wood made onto the front of the box where he was seated. It had an uphill slope so our feet pointed toward his chest.

With our foot in place, he carefully measured it with a metal contraption with numbers on it. Uncomplaining, he helped us try on pair after pair of shoes until we found some we liked. Then he pushed on the toe of the shoe to see where our toes were located inside, looked at the fit at the back of our foot, and checked the instep. I had no idea what that was, but he seemed to think it was important, so I let him push on the top of my foot. "How does that feel on your foot?" he would ask. "Is that too tight? Stand up and walk on it a little bit. Now, how does it feel?"

"Fine," I would always say. "Fine."

On this day, he helped us with two pairs of shoes each, six pairs in all. One pair for Sunday and dressup and one pair of tennis shoes for school. After we had settled on the shoes, had them fitted, and been asked the final question by Mother about the fit, she walked to the counter at the front of the store, near the huge glass windows of the outside display cases, and paid for them.

"Ok, we're all set," she said, motioning us toward the glass door at the front. Then she remembered the gumball machine, standing like an exit guard near the front door, and she dug in her purse for some pennies.

We waited, looking up at her like puppies waiting for bones. Coins in hand, we rushed over to put them in, then all tried to grab our favorite color of gum as they rolled into the small opening: green, yellow, red, orange, blue. We started talking a little loud trying to get our favorite color until Mother had to "shhh" us and quickly ushered us through the door and into the car.

"Where are we going now?" Susan asked.

"I'm going to stop by the hospital and try to see Millie and J.C. You know Jake has been real sick. They think he's going to be okay though."

"Why Jake sick?" Jan asked, chewing her gum, her teeth turning blue from the dye. "What wrong with Jake?"

"He has polio," Mother said sadly.

I remembered that when Jake first got sick, it was talked about in hushed tones. And we weren't included. I asked Neila, though, and she said polio was real bad for little kids and all the people were afraid their kids would get it. But it turned out Jake was the only one in Purdon that got it, and he was doing a lot better. Neila said the shot a doctor invented to keep kids from getting it would probably keep a lot of kids from getting sick in the future, but the shot had just become available to people like us in the rural areas, she said, and we hadn't gotten it yet in Purdon.

"Can I wear my Sunday shoes?" I asked.

"Well, I want you girls to stay in the waiting area, but you can wear them if you like."

I dug into the tissue paper, grabbed the shoes, and shoved my feet into the white patent leather, buckling the strap with the tiny clasp on the side. Just then, we arrived at the hospital, so we all tramped up the long set of stairs that led from the parking lot to the entrance at Memorial Hospital. A duck with her ducklings.

Inside, Mother showed us some green plastic couches to the left in a small waiting area, told us to behave, that she would be back shortly, and left us there.

"My shoes hurt," I said, putting my feet on a wooden table in the waiting area.

"Get your feet off the table!" Susan reprimanded me. "What do you mean your feet hurt? Those shoes are brand new. They were fitted to your foot!"

"Yeah, I know. But they hurt a little in the store. I didn't want to hurt Gabby's feelings, so I just said they felt okay, but they're a little tight."

"Well, you just have to wear them. You need to speak up when you're asked. You'll just have to wear them," she said somewhat harshly, I thought. She looked perturbed and let out a loud puff of air, popping her lips and crossing her arms on her chest.

Then she turned totally away from me and immersed herself in her fourth grade math homework, which for some inexplicable reason she had brought with her. Nobody else I knew did homework on Saturday. Well, she did have one friend, Andrea, who might have, but that was absolutely all. It was embarrassing.

And her reaction is the reason I limped around for three months in an uncomfortable pair of shoes, and why I begged Mother to let me wear tennis shoes to church, which I knew she wouldn't.

"Why are you limping like that?" Elton asked as we walked up the never- ending concrete steps at the front of our church one Sunday a few months later. It was late June now and we were sweating and anxious to get inside where it was cooler, though only by a few degrees.

"My feet hurt," I said quietly. I didn't want anyone to hear, especially Mother.

"Well, didn't you just get some new shoes a few months ago?"

"Yes," I told him dejectedly.

"Then why are they hurting?" I thought for a minute I detected genuine concern. I could never be sure because he teased me a lot, but this seemed real. He was getting nicer and nicer the more he was around Deanna. Stephen said they were in love.

"Susan said I didn't speak up for myself and I just had to wear them. They never did fit."

"Oh," he said. "Well, try to walk right, or everyone in town will notice. Let's go inside."

The brightly lit auditorium was filled, people talking and laughing quietly, and I hopped up on an oak pew. My feet stuck straight out since my legs were too short to reach the floor. My shoes glared angrily back at me, pinching my feet to torture me.

I bent my leg and started studying the soles. The heels were worn in the oddest fashion. The right side of my right heel was worn down a good half inch, while the other part of the heel and the left shoe were not worn at all.

"I'm lopsided," I thought. The picture I'd seen at school of the leaning tower of pizza in that country where they made a lot of pizza came to mind. It leaned like that. "Is that how I look when I walk?" I thought, horrified.

I pictured myself walking down the street in front of the leaning tower,moving steadfastly toward it, my body listing to one side, right foot dragging, right side of the heel digging away at the asphalt. Tiny pieces of shoe sole flew out behind and landed in the street. Birds dove down and tried to eat them, but dropped them as they soared back upward, spitting out the dry leather. And still I limped on, stoic and uncomplaining.

"Could you hand me a hymnal, honey?" Mrs. Beamon tapped me on the knee.

Her navy blue suit made her skin look so pale ghosts would pity her color. She had big rouge spots that covered most of each cheek. Red lipstick juxtaposed against her yellow teeth was distinctly unappealing, and her breath smelled like some sweet tasting mouthwash I had once used that was blue.

But she was so sweet. She always hugged everybody, never seemed to be in a bad mood like some people at our house, and generally tried to improve life wherever she was. Sometimes she wore a navy blue hat with a plastic flower on it. It looked better than I can describe it, but today was not a hat day. She was like most of the women. She wore a hat when she felt like it and on Easter. Most of the men wore hats to church every Sunday though.

I had to stand up and walk a few steps to get the heavy book, which I handed to her. She started thumbing through the pages just as Mr. Simmons, the song leader, stood up to welcome everyone and tell us to turn to page 456. Mother slid into the pew just as everyone stood to sing "When the Roll is Called up Yonder", late like she was to everything. When they called roll at school, you had to be in your seat or you'd get in trouble.

Jan was in the nursery, and I guess the other kids were sitting with their friends. Elton had totally disappeared.

The ceiling fans and open windows had spread the heat out some, so if you didn't move much, you might not sweat. Mrs. Beamon was taking up a pretty good part of her section of the pew, so I was between her and Mother who sat at the outside seat, near the aisle. Mrs. Beamon must've been hot because she got a white cotton handkerchief out of her purse and waved it discreetly back and forth in front of her face.

No matter if I didn't listen to anyone else, I would listen to my beloved Brother Reames. Even if I didn't understand him, I listened and watched him. You could tell he liked all the people in the church and especially the little kids. He was just six or seven years older than Elton, who'd just turned 18 in May.

He'd tease us at the door as we left church, and sometimes they had parties for us at their house, where we played "Pinchy Winchy, Don't You Laugh" and somebody ended up with their face covered with lipstick. Only they didn't know unless they had a friend who would tell them what everybody was laughing about. We thought Hollywood had come to Purdon when we looked at him and his beautiful raven-haired wife with her dark red lipstick.

I was embarrassed when Mother gently shook my shoulder and told me it was time to go home. I had let Brother Reames down. "Did Brother Reames see that I went to sleep?" I almost pleaded.

Mother thought a second, then said, "No,no, my arm was mostly in front of you." I let out a loud sigh and a relieved "Good".

We walked to the back of the church which actually seemed like the front to me because everyone entered there from the grass parking area or the gravel road in front of the church. But it was the back door really, and Brother Reames hugged me and told me he'd see me at services tonight. His wife Jane gave me a little wave. I wished I could look like her when I grew up, but so far my brothers said I had dishwater blonde hair, nothing even close to the color of the raven hair of Jane.

Mother and I started down the unending steps to the grassy front area.

"Why are you limping?" she asked, seeming somewhat startled.

I didn't want to tell her the whole truth, so I just said, "My heel's rubbed off on part of my shoe. I'm lopsided."

Once we got in the car, she took the shoe off my foot, looked at it and said "Well, we'll have to take this to the repair shop and get a new heel."

I'm walking further toward the leaning tower. I am still stoic and uncomplaining, but now the sole of the other shoe is shredding in the street. I list to the right and now to the left. People on the edges of the foreign street are laughing at me, pointing to my shoes. I look at them, but for some reason I cannot say what I need. One finally yells, "The shoes are too tight. The shame of Italy. Look, she needs new shoes!"

Elton's exclamation of "Look, she needs new shoes!" and Susan's quiet affirmation caused my shoulders to relax. Mother looked over at me with a question in her eyes. I stared at the floorboard.

"Can I wear my thong sandals to church? Everyone is wearing them this summer."

"Your feet are growing fast. We'll get you some new shoes this week."

"Yeah, her limping is beginning to be embarrassing" came from the backseat, and peals of laughter followed it.

"Can we get gum at th' shoe store?" Jan asked. I hated to think about looking at her blue teeth again so soon, but it was worth it to have limp-free Sundays.
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