By Avis A Townsend
In 1957, I felt very cool for a young woman of ten, and after Carl
Perkins and Elvis came out with the hit, "Blue Suede Shoes," I knew I
had to have a pair. Convincing my mother to buy them, of course, was
not an easy thing. She'd ignored my pleas for so long, I forgot about
my request until the day she came home and handed me a box containing
a pair of "flats." Not only were they blue suede on the outside, but
silver on the inside.
She wouldn't allow me to wear them to school, but I could wear them
around the house and yard, where no respectable people would see them.
Anything associated with Rock and Roll was not held in esteem by my
parents.
I wore them the day my friend Cheryl and I walked to the cow pasture.
It was spring, but we didn’t need jackets. It had rained a lot lately,
but this day was quite sunny. We walked the path behind my house,
picking dandelions and blowing their white fuzz at each other as we
walked the half-mile to the lush, green pasture.
We crawled under the barbed-wire fence so we could climb on an old
apple tree we'd claimed as our seat. It had a great branch that looked
like a bench, and we could sit on it and dangle our feet. It was our
secret spot and we went there a lot, just to talk girl stuff.
That day, we’d been talking for hours and never kept track of the
time. All of a sudden I looked up and screamed. There were cows, a
whole herd of them, and they'd formed a circle around the tree – and
us. They stood there watching us, and we felt trapped inside a black
and white jungle of fur and hooves.
Cheryl grabbed my arm in a death grip. “Are they bulls?"
“I don't think so,” I said. “I don’t see any horns.”
I studied the situation, trying to figure out how to get out of there
in one piece. I saw a ten-foot space between two of the cows, and it
was right in front of the fence. I suggested we squeeze through there
and get out, hoping the cows would move too slowly to be able to stomp
on us.
We agreed to hold hands and make a run for it, vowing if we got killed
we would die together. On the count of three we hopped off the branch
and ran through the space between the cows. We dropped to the ground
and scooted under the fence, like soldiers on bivouac.
The cows never moved. They remained in their circle, mindlessly
chewing their cud. We didn’t even faze them. The only injury occurred
when my pants snagged on the barbed wire and it scratched my rear end.
Cheryl said I’d have to get a tetanus shot because rust was embedded
in my butt.
We hurried to get back to my house, still thinking the cows would turn
and charge the fence and try to kill us. I kept looking back over my
shoulder, expecting to see an irate bovine ready to pounce. In my
worry about what was behind me, I didn't pay attention to what was in
front of me, and I stepped into a big, squishy mud bog. Like
quicksand, it sucked my foot, my leg, and my precious blue suede shoes
down into a deep abyss.
I was stuck in the bog, and Cheryl had to grab me from behind and hold
me while I wriggled my leg to free it from the mud trap. Eventually,
my foot came out, but it exited shoeless. My blue suede shoe was still
inside the bog.
We stuck our hands in the mud several times before pulling out the
shoe, which was no longer blue or silver. Using grass and dead leaves,
I began scraping the mud from the shoe. It seemed to smear it more
than take it away.
I knew I'd have to face my mother's wrath. I'd ruined the shoes I
begged for. I hobbled back home – one shoe on, one shoe off. Cheryl
found the scenario amusing, but she wasn't the one with ruined shoes.
Once back at the house, I sheepishly walked inside, holding my
once-beautiful velvety shoe for my mother to see.
"I tried to clean it," I said meekly.
My mother looked at the shoes and said, "Give them both to me."
I thought I was doomed. I handed them to her.
She sighed and threw them in the garbage. Then she continued wiping
down the counter like nothing had happened.
"These were my very best shoes," I said. "Aren't you mad at me?"
She shrugged her shoulders and kept on cleaning. "They weren't good
shoes. I picked them up at a yard sale. They were just silly play
shoes. Go put on your sneakers and wash up for dinner."
It took me a long time to get over the loss of the shoes. I never saw
another pair like them, not even on Elvis.
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