I saw a picture of a man tying up his tenny shoes or Nikes or whatever they are called nowadays. The laces were long, white and had those little metal whatsamacallits at the end of each lace. What I would have given for a set of them back in the day. Shoelaces during the Great Depression were not very sturdy. We always needed to have an extra pair in a drawer somewhere.

I don't remember white ones. They were either black or brown. Of course, they came in different lengths as they do now. There were problems, however. Most shoes had about five to seven eyelets, except the high tops my brothers wore. They had more. There was a little pocket on one side of one shoe that came with a tiny jack knife. I haven't seen those in many, many years.

It was a chore to keep the tying ends of the laces at the same length. But when a lace frayed and broke, usually at an eyelet, that meant you have to restring the laces to make the lengths even again. Oh, you could connect the broken ends with a knot at an eyelet, but that gave your shoes a shabby look. We only did that when there wasn't another lace to be found. That was a problem, too. You then had one new lace and one frayed old lace. With three kids in our house wearing laced-up shoes, extra laces were always in short supply.

Did I mention what happened when that metal thingy at the end of the lace broke off. A little spit worked then. You wet the end in your mouth, twirled it with your fingers to make a point and worked to re-lace your shoe. You probably had to re-wet it for every eyelet up the line.

The cotton material that made up the lace wasn't very strong, either. Nowadays, with all the wonder fabrics we have (That's what we called nylon and the other synthetic material we have now) it is hard to imagine having to use those miserable frustrating pieces of woven thread. We used twine when we didn't have any store bought laces, but only around the house in our everyday worn out old shoes. We took off our new school shoes when we came home. Mother would never let us go to school with binder twine lacing up our school shoes. We would embarrass the family.

Talking about embarrassing the family, I did just that went I started the second grade at that one room school so long ago. I had gone barefoot all summer. Those new school shoes hurt my calloused-freedom-loving feet. There was a solution for that. I simply took them off, hid them under some bushes along the road and walked on in barefoot comfort to school. I did this for a couple of days before I had to face the music. Dad was big on keeping the family honor intact. With me, not so much, but I soon learned to toe the line, so to speak.

I had retrieved my shoes from under the bush and was walking home, secure that my secret was intact, but not for long. There was a strange car in our driveway. When I went in the house, I came face to face with my irate, embarrassed father and my teacher, Miss McMann. It seemed that she was under the impression that my family could not afford shoes for me. She had offered to buy a pair. No way, Jose! After she left, I learned the hard way that to embarrass my family was to invite trouble. From then on, no matter how those school shoes pinched my feet, I hobbled off to school until they were broke in. Now, that's another story, breaking in my shoes, a very painful process. By the way, how did you learn to tie your shoelaces?