Barefoot Girl

When I was a child we wore our shoes as little as possible. We lived in the east county of San Diego. It was there we ran around our acres of avocado groves. Some days we would make a picnic of peanut butter and banana sandwiches. When our long day of fun came to an end we would gather up a bunch of peach scented wildflowers for our Mother.
Being barefooted in those groves could be treacherous at times. Especially if you did not pay attention to where those feet were stepping. Lots of trial and error with stubbed toes, a rusty nail and a cactus or two. Actually, I think twice was the number of times I stepped on one of those cacti. I can remember how hard it was to get the stickers out of my foot. The little fuzzy ones would just stay there until after a few days they seemed to have disappeared.
I also learned to listen for rattle snakes. In the stillness of long hot summer days, we could hear them off in the distance. Once, as I was just getting ready to step down with one little barefoot, I glanced down to see one slithering right under that foot. Rattler straight up, making that undeniable warning sound. The closest, that I know of, to ever being bitten. Since that not happen, I just went along my merry way. Thankful for what ever force saved me that day.
It was the carefree 1950's. The charmed life of this little girl will never be forgotten. Oh! It was not "Leave it to Beaver" perfect but what wonderful memories I have of that time.
My sister Anne-Marie and I were not all that well supervised. Someone was always around but they let us run around from sun up to sundown. We would go to our friends houses whenever we wanted. Some of those friends lived miles away. I have memories of hearing my friend's mother say to her, " be back in an hour". I often wondered why my Mom never said that to us. I did feel a bit jealous in odd sort of way but never knew why. A few words having a nice ring to them. It sounded more like, "Be back ina nower". "Nower" sounded so caring. Just a simple statement with some run-together words.
One of our favorite spots was what we called Rock Candy Mountain it was right near The Giant Foot. Oh! We had some fine times there. I will never forget the time my sister brought a box a Jell-O with her. She sprinkled it over the rocks and we licked it off....Hey, nobody died! We drank from garden hoses and chewed on black tar. Go figure.
We were well loved by our family and I never doubted that for a second. We were just little survivors walking through our childhood. We enjoyed that freedom. Now that I know what we lived through , I know we most certainly had angels on our shoulders.