Keds. We must have been poor, because I remember making trips to the shoe store when Grandma was visiting us, and when we visited her in Chicago*. It didn't occur to me that she was subsidizing footwear for us.
There were ads, which I must have seen on someone else's TV, for "PF Flyers: THE MAGIC SHOE!" They "help you run your fastest, and jump your highest!" Ads showed a kid hanging from a church steeple, and her brother would lace up the PFs, dash down the street, and leap to save her! I don't know if I whined and whined or not, but I probably did, and came the day we went to the shop and I submitted to the foot-measuring device and came away with the sacred cardboard box with PFs in it. Subsequent experiments showed conclusively that when I wore these, I was still a lumpy little clod. Worse, I didn't even learn much from the experience until a lot later.
*A shoe department at a Chicagoland department store (Kreske's?) had an actual Fluoroscope in it, and I yearned to put my foot in and see the bones move. Sorry, kid, there's an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. No cancer for you today!
Re: Timmy O'Tool
There were ads, which I must have seen on someone else's TV, for "PF Flyers: THE MAGIC SHOE!" They "help you run your fastest, and jump your highest!" Ads showed a kid hanging from a church steeple, and her brother would lace up the PFs, dash down the street, and leap to save her! I don't know if I whined and whined or not, but I probably did, and came the day we went to the shop and I submitted to the foot-measuring device and came away with the sacred cardboard box with PFs in it. Subsequent experiments showed conclusively that when I wore these, I was still a lumpy little clod. Worse, I didn't even learn much from the experience until a lot later.
*A shoe department at a Chicagoland department store (Kreske's?) had an actual Fluoroscope in it, and I yearned to put my foot in and see the bones move. Sorry, kid, there's an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. No cancer for you today!