New Shoes for Easter! by Steve McGraw

New Shoes for Easter!

by Steve McGraw

Looking back some sixty years, I now realize that growing up in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia in the 1950’s and 60’s could have resembled those scenes of American families as depicted in classic Norman Rockwell paintings unless, like us, you had very little money.  So, to be completely honest, our lives were more like those we saw in the old “Little Rascals” TV shows where most people – and especially the kids – were poor and always trying to figure out how to make the most out of whatever was available.

One year, the consequences of our frugal lifestyle came into play beginning with the important event of attending the annual Easter service at Connelly Memorial Baptist Church.  My older brother, Tony and I really got dressed up, struggling with stiff, button-up shirts whose tight collars seemed too small for clip-on ties, and included wearing shiny black lace-up shoes on that special day.  Unfortunately, I had experienced a typical pre-teen growth spurt and discovered that I had outgrown the previous year’s Easter shoes at the worst possible time; Easter Sunday morning.

Fortunately, there was a Pic-Way Shoe Mart on our way to church and it was open on Easter Sunday mornings – a rare and amazing coincidence!  So, frantically, my father, mother, brother and I all piled into our ’57 Chevy, zoomed down Norwich Hill, flew across the little bridge over the Roanoke River, beeped the car’s horn repeatedly as we navigated through the Shaffer’s Crossing railroad tunnels, and finally skidded into the Pic-Way parking lot as all four doors on our car popped open simultaneously.  Wearing only thin socks on my too-big feet, I dashed into the store with my family and, with help from my parents, quickly found some shoes that fit our price range, shoved them onto my cold feet using a silver shoehorn while my father handed over the cash to the clerk, ran back out to our car and barely made it to the church on time...but I looked quite spiffy in my brand new shiny black lace-up shoes.

Proud of my shoes and very happy with all the compliments that I received on them from family members and friends, I decided to wear them to church each Sunday after Easter.  That worked fine for the first couple of weeks, but one Sunday it was raining really hard, and I wore my new shoes from our house to our car, from the car to the church, from the church back to the car, into my cousins’ and grandparents’ homes and back out to our car, and finally from our car back into our house.

So, when I got home after having done a lot of walking and running in the rain – and maybe a little mud puddle stomping and splashing as well – in my new shoes, I carefully took them off and placed them on newspaper to dry next to our house’s open gas floor furnace grate and turned up the heat.  A few hours later, I was horrified to discover that the shoes’ thin soles had separated into multiple layers of what looked like disintegrating paper, and the bottoms had also separated from their formerly shiny tops.

My shiny new black lace-up Easter shoes were now ruined and unwearable, but what did I expect for $2.00?!

Remembering simpler times. May your new clothes, your new shoes - and especially your fond old memories of days past along with thoughts of better times to come - last you a lifetime!

Steve with Lynne (McGraw) Goroncy from our 2015 Reunion.
Steve won the Visions of West Virginia quilt that Lynne hand crafted as our door prize!