The thought popped into my mind not long ago that I had some good times over the years wearing other people’s shoes.
That offbeat reflection came during a trip to Branson when we had a family bowling outing at Fun Mountain, part of the Big Cedar Lodge resort.
All of us had to wear bowling shoes provided by the resort. That became the highlight of the bowling event for our granddaughters Allie and Charlee Ann.
They had racks that allowed children to just push their bowling balls toward the pins instead of trying to pick them up. The kids got excited when a few of the pins fell.
But they were especially interested in their colorful bowling shoes. We were concerned for a while that Charlee might not give them back when we finished.
All of that revived memories of some early bowling experiences. We didn’t have a bowling alley where I grew up. The first one I ever went in was in Natchitoches during my college days.
Some of us journalism students would go bowling at the old Pecan Lanes alley a couple of nights a week. We never had lessons but got to be decent bowlers.
The owner of The Natchitoches Times decided to sponsor a team in the local league. He bought us bowling shirts and paid our shoe rentals and concession expenses.
I was late getting to the tournament finals and had to wear shoes that were two sizes too small. I bowled 30 points below my average that night, and we didn’t come close to winning.
To this day, I think the wrong size shoes cost us a championship. I nearly lost my appetite that night and couldn’t eat but three chili dogs from the concession stand.
Shoes that didn’t fit had been a problem for me before. One of our main activities as teenagers in Springhill was roller skating. The rented skating shoes were never the same size twice.
Skating was popular then, and the roller rink was packed on Friday nights. If you were not in line early for skates, you took whatever size shoes that were still available.
We skated in droves, starting clockwise around the floor and trying to stay in rhythm with music blasting from the scratchy public address system.
After a while, the disc jockey called skaters to a halt and powder was sprinkled on the floor to curtail slipping. Then everybody skated in the opposite direction.
There were a lot of rules in skating. A guy with a whistle continually zipped by to tell us not to bump other skaters, cut in front of folks or pass people on the right.
Everybody was directed to leave the floor periodically, and they would have ladies only skating for a few songs, then just guys skating and finally couples only.
Couples skating was exciting. Boys and girls held each other’s left hand. Then the guy put his right arm around the girl’s waist, and they held right hands which rested on the girl’s right hip.
That was about as close as most of us got in those days to erotic physical contact with the opposite sex. But that pleasure was usually diminished by the pain of skating shoes that were too tight or a few sizes too big.
My chances of ever being a good golfer also evaporated at a young age because of shoes that didn’t fit.
An uncle belonged to a country club in Cantonment, Fla., and he let my cousin and me play golf at the club when I was visiting.
The club made you wear golf shoes with metal spikes. We borrowed his used shoes, which didn’t come close to fitting. He wouldn’t let us rent a cart, so we walked miles in those oversized shoes that tore up our feet.
That was not even our biggest problem. My cousin and I are both right-handed, and we always had to play with my uncle’s old left-handed clubs.
When people invited me later in life to play golf, I declined because of memories of trying to hit left-handed and of how much my feet hurt.
Thoughts of skating and bowling still make my feet ache too.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES