Footwear

[Gambia]

If you go barefoot (or wear moccs) enough your feet will toughen up. My mother was a sharecroppers daughter during the Great Depression and was 1 of 8 children. She told me that she only got shoes in the winter and I believe her. She could walk on our gravel road barefoot as well as I could in shoes.

I believe frontiersmen went barefoot (or wore moccs) more often than they wore shoes. Shoes were expensive. The less you wear them , the longer they lasted.

[Minnesota Mike]

The less you wear them , the longer they lasted.

Now there is true frontier logic for you . . .

r/
MM

[Eric S Campbell]

I used to go bare foot all the time up north. Since i have moved down here these stupid fire ants wont allow it. But the good thing about sand is that the mocs last longer.

But im with Mark about them trying to use their fottwear as little as possible, be it mocs or shoes.

[Groundhog]

Rocks no good on bare feet... or leather.
   Gotta protect de doggs.

[Mitch]

21st century mindset doesn't work for 18th-19th century applications..

[Hota]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... :IT&ih=007

[Gambia]

I wasn't trying to use a 21st Century Mindset. I was relating what my parents told me about their childhood. They were born in the 1920's in rural Tennessee. Even though they were 3 generations removed from their frontier ancestors, they were still raised in much the same way as their ancestors. They didn't get electricity, automobiles, tractors or running water in their homes til after WW2.They farmed with horses and mules. Work was done with hand tools. Food was grown in gardens or gathered wild. They slaughtered the livestock for meat and cured it in smoke houses behind their homes. They heated and cooked with wood. Barter was still used on a regular basis to get goods and services . Hunting and trapping helped to supplement the farm income and dinner table.Worn items were repaired. If worn beyond repair, it was usually saved to be used for something else (i.e. worn out clothes became pieced quilts, flour sacks became dresses, worn horseshoes became nails,etc.). They only got one pair of shoes (clothes could be made at home but shoes had to be bought) a year and they weren't worn unless absolutely necessary.

Farm life didn't change much in rural Appalachia in the hundred or so years after it was no longer the frontier (especially during and after Reconstruction).

[Mitch]

Hillis816-my comment wasn't directed at your postings....it was directed at the " need to protect the feet with boots" mindset..no offense meant to your ancestors...

[Gambia]

Mitch, no offense taken. I did think that your comment was directed towards my post and I do apologize if I might have seemed defensive. My footwear theory is based on what 19th and early 20th century people have told me and I've been questioned because of this . I still feel that it is a viable theory because time moved alot slower in Appalachia than it did in other parts of the country . I am not saying that my 19th and early 20th century ancestor's life were exactly the same as colonial frontier people but there are similarities .

[oomcurt]

What Hills said...man...brings back memories. Now..I was not born in Applachia...however, as a kid, I can recall some of my relatives were farmers. This was back when I lived in Wisconsin. My Mother had an uncle..he, his wife, and one son had a good sized farm, milked some 30 head of cows by hand plus cultivated maybe at the end...600 acres. I can recall when they did not have electricity, had a wood stove..and uses horses to plow and such. My Mother's dad was the "baby" of the family...the youngest. He had an older brother..the oldest of the kids...this uncle was in his 90's when I was still in grade school. Anyhow...this uncle was a wonderful person to be around..would answer any question you had..sad thing was..at my young age then...I did not know what to ask always. Why was it sad...well....he was born while the Civil War was still going on. Think about it....that really was not that long ago.

[Groundhog]

I Remember my mother ...telling me while growing up in rural WVA... all 23 kids ran barefoot in the summer... one day she stepped ona pile of snakes... barefoot.
She got lucky...    no bites.
My guess is   people used to go barefoot alot when the weather allowed.

HUNT SAFE ALL

[macNnc]

When you read books and so forth written during the 18th and 19th century you get a real feel for what things were like back then.  (Mark Twain is amazing at this..Huck Finn gets all the glory, but Tom Sawyer is a much better book in my opinion.)  But it was fairly common for people of those times to go barefoot as soon as the weather allowed, and as someone pointed out earlier, if you do this on a regular basis, what "the weather allows" is lot earlier than for the rest of us.  But spring and summer (and well into the fall, at least down South) People did not wear shoes except on Sunday to go to church. "Sunday go to meeting clothes" (which included shoes) were special and as the name suggests, worn only on Sunday and for a relativly brief time at that.  

Don't forget the story of Daniel Boone sitting outside, relaxing in his Sunday clothes, shoes off (my emphasis, I assume if your feet have a steady diet of moccasins, "regular" shoes might be very uncomfortable) when Boone recieved word that his daughter Jemina and two other girls had been kidnapped by Indians. He immedieately took off after them.  Took them three days to get them back, but they did.

(Right hand to God, there really is a point in here somewhere.  I just sort of lost it..)

My guess is that moccasins were far more common along the frontier, folks in the villages and towns, (America did not have much in the way of cities back then)  wore shoe, but some one back in the wilds of Western Carolina, or further, or in the "Kaintuck'  or Ohio region wore mocs.

[Loyalist Dave]

One of my NA reenactor friends told me he uses the pad conditioning cream for hunting dogs to make thick but pliable callouses (hard ones tear and it takes months to properly heal) on his feet like it does for hunting dogs.  Even though he does landscaping barefoot, there are just too many places that require him to have shoes to enter.., so he can't build up several years of layers, but claims the pad cream works.

I wonder what else the cream might do to a person, but he says he's done with getting any new kids, so not a problem I suppose.  (Might improve scent capability AND make you fleet footed when chasing rabbits??)

LD

[TomG]

I started working on a pair of center seam mocs yesterday.
Got one of them finished.
[albumimg:193sdtf9]2955[/albumimg:193sdtf9]

[deadfallpaul]

My wife makes my centerseams for me.  Always have an extra pair with me if one pair gets too wet.
Don't take up much room.
Things is though, I cheat!  I wear a pair of innersoles in them. Saves on the "ouch" when you step on a pointed rock or such.