Kids used to go barefoot a lot more until there were public health programs aimed at combating hookworms in children, who got infected by going barefoot.
However, this was mostly in the damp southeast and probably never a problem in California. But these public hygiene programs did go nationwide.
Whereâs his damn emoticon then? I canât be expected to interpret everything.
(smiley face)
Actually, I wasnât joking and I wasnât jumping to any conclusions re: your post except to say thereâs a difference between going barefoot for fun and going barefoot because poverty demands it. Itâs about the photograph, not you.
Letâs just say middle class and rich children didnât go barefoot on city sidewalks, not to mention sell newspapers for pennies.
I will respond more gracefully this time. Someone up above here asked if it was customary for children to go barefoot in Los Angeles. My reply was to give my experience regarding the weather and common habits 50 years ago and 50 years after the picture was taken and only 40 miles away. The streets in the paradise where I grew up were asphalt and concrete, like in the picture. The clothes I am wearing right now are approximately as thread bear as those worn by our ragamuffins in the picture. Hey, here is another fascinating and relevant fact, Some of my friends had paper routes and got up before dawn to deliver papers on their bicycle. They werenât poverty stricken either. You seem to be jumping to a whole bunch of conclusions I wonât bother to list. Letâs just leave it at this; our little dead friends there donât really need your sympathy anyway.
Sewer gator tastes like mutant sewer chicken. Themâs good eatin!
I appreciate your deleting of the less than graceful post you made. However, I still would ask you to consider the social economic differences between 1915 and 1960. The kids in the photo were helping their families eke out a living before there were any safety nets except for some church or private charities. Notice all the men around them are wearing shoes and suits, obviously they belonged to a higher social stratus. Your clothes may be threadbare but clean, Iâll bet. And as to kids who had paper routes back in your day, they had the luxury of owning a bicycle and the money they earned was for themselves, right? Sorry, but you grew up during apex of our society (which not coincidentally was during the highest tax rate) and there is no comparison to the Dickensian era proceding FDRâs New Deal.
Dude, I was answering a direct question. You should at least apologize for calling me out on being self-centered.
My dad grew up in that era Los Angeles, though he would have been selling papers on the corner about ten years later. So it is not so distant from my own experience. I never heard him complain about it once. You might be romanticizing a little, possibly? Dickensian is a stretch. Chaplin was fiction, talking about his childhood. Los Angeles was an oil boom town then and would be for a couple decades more. It wasnât all that poor. Primitive by todayâs standards, but still far ahead of many places in the world even today.
Do people go barefoot in Southern California in the summer. Yes, they do.
(added half-way down the stairs): Even privileged little boys from the suburbs. That was my point.
Oh, I didnât delete my earlier post. The powers-that-be did that. When I make a fool of myself I just let it hang out there for everyone to see. Helps a little with learning not to do it again.
If you were offended you should understand I also was offended by your pointed insult to my character. I flipped you off with both hands. Did it really hurt ?
I commented on the photo. Not you. You went barefoot and loved it. Fine. In no way did I call you out, but sorry if you took it that way. I do think youâre projecting and maybe some anger management wouldnât hurt.
So this is all about a choice of phrase or something. If I need anger management you need to get out of academia and find out how real people talk and think. You have put yourself on a pedestal and then wonder why no one is so smart as you. You are suffering from the same cognitive misfire that I am. The difference is I freely admit to normal human errors and you think you are beyond error because you learned some clever arguing techniques in college. I, on the other hand, understood that my professors were full of crap and embroiled in academic battles that had little or nothing to do with real people living real lives. Stretching their already limited intelligence beyond the point of recovery.
Your game is more obvious than you think. I have been patient with you because I was rude. You have been elitist and produced arguments whose sole goal is to exclude those who donât use the language in the precise manner you have been taught. That works inside school, but it makes no sense when talking to someone in a public forum. I am not going to threaten your position or trick you into siding with the wrong colleague. So your attack is really kind of out of bounds and unhelpful in a profound way. Which is what those kinds of arguments are meant to be. I am sorry you donât see your own error, but that is normal, very normal.
Passion is also not an error. I am not an academic or a journalist so neutrality is not a requirement in my field. I do practice careful thinking, but I allow myself to feel my passion since intuition and emotion are the main tools in my trade. They are also some of the main tools evolution has equipped us to deal with daily life. Your insistence on passionless argument is an academic position, born out of working in small groups and making smooth feathers a higher priority than locating the truth. Artists generally regard their singleton status as protection against the graying of every thought into mush that occurs in such settings. You have chosen to take the gray path, not me. Please keep your stereotypical arguments where they belong and where they are valued, in academia. When you come out into the street you need to prepare yourself to persuade people who are not under the sway of having their livelihood put on the chopping block every time they open their mouth. New kinds of persuasion are needed. Like common sense and basic decency.
Not commenting on where the exchange is at right now, but his original post was pretty clearly in response to CLamb, who asked, âIs their lack of shoes a reflection of their poverty or was it accepted dress for children in a mild climate in that era?â
In his reply, he made it clear with his caveat that he was only speaking of his personal experience.
When you decided to âcall him outâ for sharing his personal experience in direct response to someone who asked a question, you werenât commenting on the photo, you were trying to police how other people responded to this topic and it did come across as rude. Just an FYI from an outsiderâs perspective on this back and forth.
CLamb was directly asking if the kids in the 1915 photo were barefoot due to poverty or was it accepted dress for the climate. A reply that someone did it commonly for comfort in the 1950âs-60âs might have been relating a personal experience but it didnât answer the question. Sorry. I just tried to show why it was different and also stated that middle and upper class kids would not have been walking barefoot on the sidewalks of L.A. just as a âladyâ wouldnât go out without a hat.
But donât let me stop anyone from romanticizing poverty.
I donât think there is a way to draw conclusions. I call two cities home, Seattle and Austin. I often go barefoot in both. Iâm closing in on 50, Iâm not poor, and itâs a hundred years later but you get the point - Not wearing shoes is indicative only of being in a currently barefooted state. I donât know about that era but going barefoot is currently acceptable for people of all ages as far as I know. If I had to guess I would say it was even more common and acceptable in 1915, whether due to poverty or choice. Even rich children run around barefoot, weather permitting.
yeah, like he said.
While the babyboomers experiences are interesting, theyâre mostly irrelevant. Social convention of the time was that if you could afford shoes, you wore them. Same with hats, though hats are far easier to make yourself than shoes.
That the older brotherâs shorts are stained and the younger brotherâs coat is missing buttons, should be a pretty clear indicator that these boys are not selling papers to save up for the latest Paul Whiteman record.
For newsboys, in 1915? The convention was to go barefoot. Prove me wrong.
This was the beginning of WW1, fashion styles were changing in a large number of ways, for several reasons. The US didnât formally enter until 1917, but a huge amount of resources were already being sent to the european theater resulting in some shortages in America, wasnât that so Historybuff? Wearing clothing until it was relatively worn? Perfectly normal for people of all economic status at that time. Again, wasnât that so? Add to that you have young children in a cash business here. Crime rates tend to be romanticized so Iâll just tell you flat out - you were a newsboy? You were a tough bastard, and watched out for yourself. You didnât wear your best.
Iâll agree, likely enough they were poor. In no way can you prove it one way or another from this photo.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
