Did you ever walk barefoot through cornfields as a kid? Southerners?

Anyone....Did you slay dragons, did you dig up artifacts, did you pretend? Did you have that kind of "barefoot childhood. Or were you a "baby jogger" kind of kid?

Did you make up your own sounds, and magic and wile away time?

Or, were your sounds, magic and time all provided for by TV, TV and Parents schedules?

Just wondering.

But, more interested in the "Barefoot in the Cornfield crowd.......because there are so few, or maybe NONE here.

Just wondering........

of course I did Stepped in a few cow pies too in my day

where I was. Just grass. and grass...and hard as one scraped it just mushed......LOL's

tree houses and organized 4th of July parades with all the neighborhood kids and collected lightening bugs and built snow forts and - oh lots of stuff.

But then we didn't get a TV until I was 8 years old and we weren't allowed to sit and watch it for hours. Also, I'm from a big family (oldest of 8) and I think my mother wanted us out of the house to keep the inside noise level down.

up! Some died overnight. I learned an environmental lesson at 7! And I never put them in a jar again. But, OMG, the magic of those lightning bugs! They needed to be free to shine! Good lesson that one. :-)'s

But yes, I grew up on a farm, and I walked barefoot in the cornfield.

I grew up a close drive away from several spots in the Everglades west of Miami, and my grandparents' place bordered Everglades National Park in Key Largo.

The Everglades suffered when they tried to drain it and turn it into farmland and it changed South Florida and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem.

Oh, and I was CONVINCED, as a small child, that one day at the beach (and there were many) I would be the one who would stumble onto Spanish doubloons in the sand that everyone else had overlooked for hundreds of years.

I never found treasure. But I still look down.

I was afraid pirates would find it and come and get me. Too funny when I think back. I was reading "Treasure Island at the time.

was 440 acres and it was half tobacco and half corn. As far as I am concerned it was heaven.

time......sometimes I wish........

...on later mentioned creek. And he sat up and looked at me and asked, "Mom, why did you leave here?"

I basically stammered out something about not being able to see things that are right in front of you...but I didn't have a real answer.

And sadly that was the LAST time home. My mother had a couple of years before. And we had just attended the funeral of my father.

It's not our land anymore.

We didn't walk barefoot in corn fields because we were semi urban (small city). We walked barefoot in the back yard though. Unfortunately, this is how I got my first bee sting since I stepped on one that was on a clover flower. We had dolls, stuffed animals, and plastic figures as well as blocks and crayons and paint. We were very creative. We did watch some television, especially Saturday morning cartoons. Sometimes this lead us to pretend other things. Our mother was dismayed that we were playing road runner and coyote with traps though.
Yeah it sounds cool, but unfortunately it was because my parents were rather neglectful. Of course childhood was cut short by the evil step father. That's another story though.

The smells of that, especially the hog pen, still haunt me.

stuff......ugh!

My breath smelled like hog shit for three days. True story.

delicacy among some folks. Passed that one up too.....Did try "white lightening" once. About as bad as your "chittlins" I'm a white wine spritzer person these days. LOL's. Tried that in a car under a bridge with some "fun" friends one night. that was as daring as we were in those times! ROFL! Maybe the "white lightning" smelled because the still was near the pig farm! Whatever, it was disgusting!

My "new" (new to me) old mountain log cabin is on a two-track gravel road called White Whiskey Way. At the bottom of the creek on my property is, not only signs of distillation years ago (cooker and dammed-up creek), but also evidence of mishap by either a whiskey runner or a "revenooer." Lying there, on my land and looking ironically like a Crysler PT Cruiser, is late 30-ish long-body Ford sedan, up-side down and useless.

Of course maybe you wouldn't want to connect with some of them! LOL's

But, it might make for some fun "reading up" this Winter about the "history" of your property! Those "revenue" boys must have been up and down your hill! Late 30's fits that time. Bet it had a long run!

Who knows we might end up back to "Prohibition" again with these Puritans in the WH! You might make a fortune off your new property. You'd have to be desperate to drink the darned stuff though. Better to use your Scuppernon grapes and make some nice wine. Not as potent, though. :evilgrin:

You are from LA? The REAL LA? I had no idea! (I'm from TN, but I almost married a guy from LA.)

Lower Alabama

my guy was from Enterprise. I used to work in Huntsville, Scottsboro, and Cullman.

Ozark/Enterprise 1969!

I taught instruments and multiengine in the Baron at Cairns field in '67 & '68. Ross Aviation.

all my moms relations "on the farm",then lived on one for years..i only put on shoes when it gets cold and shoes and socks when it snows...

:)

It is!

It was an ancient hand cranked one though, and I had on a thick jacket so I wasn't seriously injured.

We had a small farm which was neighbor to a state-forest.

A neighbor had horses to be my playmates and a small pond filled to the brim with...you know. ;-)

A creek snaked nearby. Stretches of it were shallow and clear, full of flat rocks perfect for skipping. The best places were where shale cliffs towered on the opposite bank and we'd have contests to see how hard you could make your skipper smack the stone face.

In other places the water ran deep, and cool. Perfect for swimming. The best one required a hike of about a mile away from a road, which we gladdy walked because it offered a thrilling place to dive off an old stone railroad bridge. It still had an active railroad at the time. We could put an ear to rails and know when a train was about a half hour away. By the time the train was minutes away your could feel the rail vibrate in your fingers.

There was also an abandoned railroad tunnel that stretched for nearly a mile. We almost worked up enough courage to walk all the way through it once. But by the time we were old enough to not allow our imaginations to overcome our courage, our imaginations had turned to other things.

Well, that's a glimpse at some of my childhood.

I grew up in the Ohio River Valley, near Steubenville.

Farms all over...back then. I just think Southern because that's some of my experience. Just 7 acres by parents who bought after WWII and wanted to grow their own veggies and expriment with cows and chickens. City folks to the country. They had their ups and downs with that. Mostly downs. But, it was good for me......not sorry.

I was a city girl, but spent a good portion of my Summers at my grandpas farm. Ran in the cornfields (sometimes barefoot, but not usually), played with the dogs and toads, feed the pigs even. I miss it. I spent a lot of time alone (probably too much really) trying to find creative things to do with my time.

Sarah

Then we moved and I became "citified".

I live in the country. Grew up on a farm. Then went to the city and worked in the inner city (still do that too).

Worked on a Native "Reservation" in the woods for a coupla years.

But my father (an early kind of survivalist) milked the cow every day, taught us to shoot to hunt, made us use the compost, and rode with us on horseback. It was a dairy farm, mostly and we had chickens and the family had sheep and pigs before I was born.

I still go barefoot in the fields (now hay) and swim in the creek with my kids. I go to work in the inner city and work with PTSM vets, abused kids, wives, aids patients, drug dependents/addicts and the handicapped who are dying from that damned Clinton's socalled welfare reform.

I love the sunshine and smell of fresh cut hay and the babbling brook down in the valley. Barefoot? You betcha. Skinny-dipping family style (in the moonlight)? Yup.

Hell I watched tv all the time when there was anything good on (still do) but back then we only got two channels.

I think we NEED nature (but Central Park and Rock Creek Park are there) but we need to stay tuned to the rest of humanity too.

Nothing like a nap on a mossy hill under the pines on a warm spring day, though. Or a roll in the clover over and over.

still don't like shoes! And, after the farm, ended up in NYC! So, I know......

Another story from Eastern Ohio not far from Steubenville:
I was the oldest of six. When I wanted to get away from the little brothers and sisters, I would head to the woods or out in the fields. The cornfield was a great hideout. If you didn't make to much noise you could go a long time without being found. The woods were better yet. There were tree lined hills and valleys with creeks, grapevines for swings and rock overhangs where imaginary Indians used to hide out. On hot days we would wade in the pond and feel the mud oozing between our toes.

The barn was for rainy days. It was great to climb in the hay or just shoot baskets all day. Though I was never wild about the blacksnakes that laid on the beams and watched.

There weren't enough kids in our little neighborhood to make a baseball team. We spent the evenings playing first bounce or a fly and you are up. Then we would drag out our blankets and sleep in the yard. Memories.:)

I was a dirt-road-and-railroad-track-playin-kid. Woods, ditches, forts, bikes, and army-men.

-- Allen

Yes, to most all of those. Wading and swimming in the creek (only southerners know the word creek.). I had a passel of cousins. We were tunnel rats. The soft sandy banks of creek induced endless tunneling. We worked endlessly on elaborate tunnel systems. Then it was warfare. LOL For you who know a corncob thrown with the velocity of a Sandy Kovack’s fastball can raise a welt. The memories of childhood. Thanks for the boast to the recall.

No cornfield, though. I grew up in the city. I remember trying to dig to China in the backyard. I also remember our clubhouse and making braided bracelets out of embroidery floss. We rode bikes and played catch, went to the park, played basketball. We weren't allowed inside a lot of the time in the summer. We made our own good times.

These are a few of my favorite things. :)

There are some nice memories on this thread. Hate to see it go to archives yet.

:-)'s

Did you ever hear that? Boy I did, lots.
I can still hear the screen door slamming behind me when Granny had run me out of the house and a split second later "DON'T SLAM THE DOOR!".
The early morning shrill buzzing of cicadas (we called them locusts) meant it would be a hot day.

You know you're from the south when you catch lightnin' bugs instead of fireflies.

I loved making dams and pools and sluiceways in the creek. There was a bank of thick, greasy gray clay and we had clay-ball fights. SPLAT! It was a lot easier to get it out of your hair while it was still wet. Grampaw said that if a snapping turtle ever got ahold of my toe he wouldn't let go till it thundered.

Although I went mostly barefooted (another southernism-never "barefoot") in summer, the annual rite of spring was a new pair of black, high-top tennis shoes. I think they were Keds, with the round white rubber patch on the inside ankles. What was that for?

Granny and Grampaw always took me downtown (Birmingham) to buy these and they called them "easy walkers". I'd lace them up as tight as I could and then I would just fly down the street almost able to leap tall buildings at a single bound (at least in my head).

On the new-easy-walkers Saturday we also stopped in a little hole-in-the-wall hot dog place for lunch. I've never had any so good. They used a special spice that I think had a lot of paprika in it. It was run by a couple of swarthy men, maybe Italians or some kind of Mediterranean folk. Belushi's later Greek diner skits on SNL reminded me of the place.

We played Tarzan in the big Chinaberry tree in the back yard. The berries made great slingshot ammo. I don't remember anyone ever losing an eye, in spite of all the warnings. We made tomahawks out of a flat rock and a piece of tree branch with one end split and then lashed with string. There were a lot of blood curdling warwhoops, but I don't remember any actual decapitations.

I could go on all day. Thanks for the memories.
BTW, we got our first TV when I was around 12.

Thanks for the memories!

I also walked cornfields with a my grandfather with shotguns to clear out rattle snakes before we sent in the folks to do the harvest. The fields were so close to the branch near the ponds that the snakes loved it and the mice were nice little juicy bonuses for the snakes as well.

(state not city).

I walked through the cornfields (and when I was a teenager did other stuff in there O8)). We had campouts outside, woke up early to watch the stars, played in the woods and built forts.

When I lived in NYC, I found I had to "get out" every once in awhile. I had a friend in the Mid Hudson Valley of NY and I would take the train out of Grand Central to get up to the "foothills of the Catskill Mt.'s to get relief for my "agricultural roots." I could go look at "waterfalls" pick strawberries and blueberries depending on the season and go BACK.....to my Southern Roots.

Do you feel this way?

I was born and part of my life raised in the country, but moved to the suburbs (YECH). I remember picking apples, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, making jams and pies. I remember climbing trees, and swimming in the lake. It's nice. I have no southern roots (north Pennsylvania is as far south as we go), but upstate NY can be surprisingly conservative and rural

But I grew up on 300 acres of cattle, hogs and corn.

The big question is, Did anybody walk barefoot through the chicken coop?

On Edit: Let me add some others. Fishing in the farm pond, berry-picking, haylofts, and coming home so muddy from the creek that Mom made us take off our clothes outside!

My Mom was always yelling at me to get my shoes on. I used to love to feel mud between my toes, climbing trees barefoot is the only way to go. She would yell at me for the tree climbing also and then I'd hear, "Little girls aren't supposed to climb trees." My Mom is very prim and proper.

Walked barefoot through the cornfield, barefoot through the grass, and even on the sidewalks in town (downright painful when it was really hot). What fun days those were in spite of getting many a beesting and cutting my foot open once while wading in mud puddles on our unpaved street after a summer storm.

while growing up. My family owned places in Rancho Mirage (long before it was developed -- we're talking sticks, folks) and Idyllwild (about 1 mile high in elevation).

There was no TV (this was b.c - before cable), so your imagination was all you had. The place in the desert had a huge wash a few hundred hards in back, populated with coyotes, jackrabbits and roadrunners. My brother and I would make adobe bricks, and dry them in the sun, then build little huts out of them. We would give each other wheelbarrow rides. I would sit on the edge of the wash and clap my hands, and laugh at the flat echo off the other side. There was a palm-date orchard across the divide, and the setting sun would cast shades of pinks and purples over it. The night sky was awash with stars -- so many stars that it was impossible to make out the constellations. My cousins would tell fantastic ghost stories that would keep us all night.

The mountains brought more delight. A stream ran through the back of the house, and at night its endless, soft babbling would lull you to sleep. The summer wind sang through the pines. An old barn was our "clubhouse," and we shared it with many bats and an old yellow tomcat. One large, flat rock on the property had three ancient, weathered, hollowed-out holes -- where Indians had ground acorns near the stream. The days were full of bushy-tailed grey squirrels, bluejays, deer, and the occasional brown bear. In the winter, we could see the weather transform -- clouds would envelop the mountain, and by nightfall the snow would begin to scatter white dust on the ground. By morning, everything was blanketed in white.

God, how I miss those days, when time didn't matter, and the weight of responsibilities hadn't yet stacked up, and people were indeed kinder to one another.

And, it's good to know that there was "Another World" we shared back in the 20th Century!

and barefoot on the asphalt as well.

Summer in the country at the family farm...rest of the year in the city.

And yes, the best games were those that took imagination

Some days, it was just watching the clouds..some were day-dreaming away the time...

We had to pick corn every morning...the younger children ran ahead of the adults.

we played Indians (no one wanted to be cowboys, so they were inaginary). We made costumes. We went barefoot all summer and made our homes under lilac trees and in berry brambles.

Sometimes we played at being a wolf pack in Alaska or a herd of wild horses in Montana.

We rode our bikes to swimming holes. We skinny dipped in June, July and August but only on moonless nights. We went to the lake and spent hours in canoes we swamped to play ship wreck. Late at night we lay in open fields and looked at the stars. On hot summer days we went deep into the woods and followed streams up the mountain pretending we could find out where the elves lived.

At night in bed the crickets chirped us to sleep and the owls scared us in our dreams.

Had a fascination with American Southwest...and loved Indians! Had lots of time alone with my imagination. It's unbelievable what I came up with! And, to hear you all.....what you all did without the TV.....when you or we were without it!

We sort of divided our time between "barefoot in the cornfield" and watching TV.

Our home had 4 acres and two barns and was near the country so did a lot of roaming in the woods and fields and swamps around the neighborhood. Jumping from the hayloft into straw piled up on the ground. Climbing saplings and swinging down as they bent. Going to the pond and catching tadpoles. That sort of thing.

through Chicago city streets.

close in Chicago! You never got nails or glass in your feet?

the supernova household. :D I make concessions only to the chill of winter and having to be out in public. When I get home the first thing I lose are the shoes. LOL! :D

I loved, loved walking in the red-orange clay of my home as a kid. Still do. It's a great facial for your feet. :-)

My parents were both big gardeners. We raised a couple of acres' worth of groceries every year: corn, black-eyed peas, watermelons, canteloupes, bell peppers, snap beans, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, potatoes and sometimes onions.

My mother and I spent many summer days picking, shucking, cleaning, cooking, and freezing the corn. We froze just about everything we couldn't eat during the summer. We did this so that we would have enough to eat during the winter. Fresh corn and black-eyed peas sure did taste good at Christmas! :D

I recall walking through the corn fields at my great-grandparents farm. I also remember the men bringing in the corn for the pigs...and my mom explaining to me that there was "pig corn" and then there was "people corn"...to this day if I taste corn that is too starchy I refer to it as pig corn...

I also remember apple orchards, chickens...and geese that would chase us..

Evil happens in cornfields...Haven't you seen Children of the Corn?
It freaks me out. I guess this could have something to do with my mom letting me watch Children of the Corn over and over when I was 8. I think she's thinking she's pretty lucky I didn't imitate the movie.
Duckie

Picking blackberries, planting the garden (and tending the aftermath), chicken shit between my toes, slaughtering hogs (I like pork!), curing our own hams, yep...raising tobacco, too.

Fireflies on misty, lazy summer nights. Getting up to milk at 4:00 AM. I actually had a cane pole. Didn't know what shoes were from late May until after Labor Day. Fresh eggs! Hunting rabbits, squirrels, quail, doves, deer, etc. (we ate what we hunted). lazy dreams under the willow tree by the pond. Skinny dipping in that pond.

Too many sweet memories of a simpler life. I went and got myself all misty.

They could be communes, or they could be family retreats or family camps.

Why do we have to give up those memories just because we grew up?

I didn't grow up on a farm, but on our oversized city lot we had a chicken coop and neighbors who had cornfields and apple trees. I remember sneaking ears of raw sweet corn. Mmmm. My brother and I made an outdoor stove with some cement blocks and made sweet mint tea from great handfuls of peppermint. One year he was cutting the grass under the fig tree with a scythe and told me to hop up in the tree so I wouldn't get cut. I did, and I got a three-inch cut in my calf. Mom had to take me to get stitches, on the city bus. My brother and I used to hide behind the fence when dad was about to kill a chicken, and peek through to see the grisly scene. One time I got in great trouble when my brother and his friend Walter had me stand under a tree and yell the bad words they were feeding me. (They were up in the tree.) They had me shouting "hell!" and "damn!" Whew! I really caught trouble.

Christmas was the best time. I had seventeen cousins on my mother's side of the family. All the aunts and uncles and the seventeen cousins would gather at grandmother's great big stone house. She would come to meet us at the door in her rustly taffeta dress and organdy apron and the old family heirloom sleighbells from Connecticut would jingle on the front door. The Christmas tree in the parlor had those bubble lights, fragile glass ornaments, and lots of tinsel. In the back sunporch would be set two card tables, and we bigger kids all cackled at the thought of our killer monopoly games that would commence after dinner. Uncle Bob would arrive last. He was a WW2 hero, having lost a leg at Corregidor while saving his men from bombardment. We were all intimidated by his hero status. It wasn't Christmas until he arrived with his aromatic cigar and with his pants leg pinned up where there was no leg. The cellar of the big house held wonders for us, with a wind-up Victrola and old ladies magazines and even (found years later) a live old artillery shell sitting on a 2 x 4! A laundry chute emptied there from the second floor bathroom, and many things started out in the bathroom and ended in the cellar, very nearly a two-year-old cousin one year. The smells in the house pointed to a Connecticut heritage transplanted to the west: Boston baked beans that had cooked all night, turkey, raisin-filled sugar cookies, plum pudding, etc. My grandfather used to check under the rims of our plates for black olive pits to know how many each of us had filched as the relish tray was passed down the table. When the gifts were opened, my grandmother would always take the nightie someone had bought and put it on right over her taffeta dress, and model it for us all, and then she would sit down at the big piano that had a black ceramic panther on top, and play Twelfth Street Rag and Nola. Then it was time for monopoly in the back room. Two tables of rascally cousins, many of whom cheated insufferably. On a coat tree hung several of those foxtail fur neckpieces women used to wear, and the glass eyes on them glittered as we rounded Go and hooted and pounded poor Bobby on the shoulder every time he went to Jail.

There never was and never will be, for me, anything sweeter than being ten years old in the bosom of that extended family.

"Backward, turn backward, O time in thy flight.
Make me a child again, just for tonight."

Oh, and I'm so very happy not to have had to walk in snaky areas. Snakes actually get on the rafters in the barns??? Good glory.

Very sorry, if so.

I'm telling you I would DO IT! I don't want some Commune Thingy from the '60's model. But, someplace we could go...yeah, I would do it.. Unfortunately, we are here, but maybe that we are HERE is more fortunate than we know! Because we ALL Never could all get along in a "Communal setting" where someone would have to decide whose turn it was to "slop the pigs!" LOL's How would we ever agree?

But, that we are here to share our stories of Americana in our time frame with... our individual backgrounds is what I hoped from my post. And, there are WONDERFUL stories of "DU Americana" here.

I'm hoping sometime to do a book on my expriences here on DU....and the folks I've met, and where we all came from (so much diversification) and how we all ended up here!

So, NO, you didn't kill the thread.....I'm hoping I can keep it going. I needed this...because I'm really so "down in the dumps" about our Dem Party and the Repug "Onslaught," that I wanted to know there were other people "out there" who grew up like I did, who understood? :shrug:

Limestone creek bottoms were the best.Sleeping out under the stars at night with friends.Riding our bikes all through town and sandlot baseball games.Heat never seemed to be a factor;we spent almost all day outside and were never bored. We made our own games,let our imaginations run wild, and came in when hungry or called.

says about many of us on this post. But, yeah, in my "rural world" at that time........I was NEVER bored! :shrug: