My wanna be's

Take a journey with me if you will, back to 1974. I was 8-years old. In those days we only got new clothes at the beginning of the school year and every now and then at Christmas. We only had 2 pairs of shoes; a pair of school shoes, which we normally wore all of the time, and a pair of Sunday shoes, worn only for Church and special occasions. There was no such thing as a shopping mall in Knoxville during that time, so you either shopped at K-Mart or one of the department stores downtown, usually Sears or JC Penny’s. Cas Walker also had a salvage store that we often bought our tennis shoes from. However, in ’74, my school shoes came from K-Mart. They had a brand called 'Trax,' which looked similar to name brand shoes but not quite the same. I remember that I picked out a white pair with 3 blue stripes on the side. I tried them on, looked up at mom and said, “I’ll bet I can run faster and jump higher than anyone else with these shoes on.” She smiled and said, “take em off, we have to pay for them first.” So, with that we came out of the store with my new school shoes.

“You better wear your old shoes from last year so you don’t mess up your news ones,” mom said. I didn’t like that at all. I wanted to wear my new shoes all of the time. I would have slept in them if I thought I could have gotten by with it. Besides, my old shoes were a worn out pair of canvas Converse that we had bought at Cas Walker’s last year. We called them “Cas Walker street burners.” Those things were nasty after wearing for a year and they stunk. Finally the school year started and I was able to wear my new ones full time.

Just as I suspected, I could run fast and jump high in my new Trax. I took quite a bit of ribbing from more well off kids because I was wearing K-Mart shoes. I remember being in gym class lining up to run from one side of the gym to the other, and one boy looked down at my shoes and laughed. “Ha, ha, you’ve got on a pair of wanna be’s,” he said. “Wanna be’s?” I countered, “what’s that?” “It’s a pair of shoes that wanna be like real shoes!” I won’t pretend that his cruel words didn’t bother me, they did, but I didn’t let that stop me from pushing him down to the hardwood floor on our run across the gym.

As the school year went on, my shoes began to show wear. Of course running through creeks, climbing tree, skidding down red clay banks, and sliding into home plate, didn’t help matters any. Eventually the shoes started falling apart. It was only half way through the school year when one of the soles separated and started flapping around like a ducks foot. I went to my mom and told her that I was going to have to have some new shoes. “We don’t have money to buy you any shoes,” she said. “You’ll just have to deal with it.” I couldn’t run, jump, or do anything with my shoes flapping. My dad had a brilliant idea. “Hold you foot up here,” he said. I held my foot up in the air and he grabbed my shoe and started wrapping duct tape around it. He must have wrapped 4 or 5 layers around before taking out his pocketknife and cutting it loose from the roll. “There, that’ll do it,” he said. I tried it out. “Hmm, not too bad,” I said.

The next day, I marched into school just as usual. The tape didn’t cause many problems, just made traction a little slick. I shrugged off the funny stares and jokes, and went on about my business. I was sitting in class doing my assignment when my teacher, Mr. Howell, came over and crouched down beside me. He looked down at my shoe and smiled. Then he looked up at me and said, “I used to have to tape my shoes together too.” None of the rude comments from other kids bothered me at all after that. I made it through the rest of the year and was able to buy some new shoes before the next school year started.