The Soggy Sneaker Incident

First to understand the real flavor of this story you have to understand my Grandma Kearns from my eyes as a child. She looked 7 ft tall, very stern, unbelievably neat living in a small upstairs apartment from my Great grandma Spooner.  I could not understand how any one could be so neat and orderly. When our family would go visit her, I always had to wear good clothes that put me out of sorts and as has been a constant theme through out my life, the harder I tried to behave the more I got in trouble – especially with Grandma Kearns.

So starts the “sneaker incident”. My older sister, Mary, and I went to visit my Grandma Kearns on summer week. We took a bus down to Fairhaven, just the two of us on an adventure. On arriving at my grandma’s house, I do not recall how we got from the bus station to her house; she was horrified that my sneakers had holes in them. For me this was not an unusual condition for my sneakers because these sneakers were designed for girls who played quietly or jumped rope – not for girls that would drag their toes on their bicycle or climbed trees.

So horrified was my Grandmother at my sneakers that the first thing we did was to go buy new sneakers. When we arrived back at my grandma’s house it was time to play. Mary, my cousin Joanne and I, wearing my brand new sneakers, headed for the door and I hear “Stay away from the water. If you fall in do not come back!” I, being very frightened just by the mere presence of my grandmother, had every intention of heeding her warning, After all where could I go if I fell in, as far as I knew I could have been in Antarctica with relationship to my home.

My Grandmother lived four houses from the Fairhaven Harbor. You could see it from the street and smell it in the air but I still was going to listen to Grandma. Mary and Joanne decided that we could just walk down the road toward the water, no harm could come of that and Grandma would not know. I was easily persuaded even though there was initial trepidation. It did not take long to get to the edge of the harbor and it was low tide.

The Fairhaven Harbor at low tide is not a story book picture. The shore line was not the image of most beaches with nice sandy beach and the smell of freshness in the air. The shoreline of the harbor, as I see in my minds eye today was silty black like an oil slick and smelled awful. Nothing appealing there, except there was all these rocks along the shoreline that are usually submerged. Nice round, smooth, medium size rocks that would be perfect to walk on and they were on the edge nowhere near the water.

I had absolute confidence on my ability to walk on these rocks; I’ve done this type of thing many times – no problem.  So I started to walk on the rocks and one of my feet slipped off the rock into to the nice wet silt of Fairhaven Harbor. Horror struck me, Grandma won’t let be back in the house – I truly believed this at the time.  What am I going to do!

I am not sure who came up with the plan but it was beautiful and what could go wrong. Mary and Joanne were to keep Grandma busy in the kitchen which was somewhat blocked off from the rest of the apartment and I was to go up the front stairs and into the small bedroom I was staying in. I was to put what were new white sneakers that now were muck covered and wet under the electric baseboard heat to dry off. We were to go and play outside, without being seen by Grandma, long enough so that the wet sneakers were dry and I could put them back on. Grandma would never know.

 I put on my old sneakers, which surprising had not been thrown out by Grandma, and we went out to play. I do not know what we did or for how long we played but was sure that our plan was executed to perfection.

We went back to Grandma’s house through the front door and Grandma was waiting. There standing on the top of the circular staircase was Grandma, the sneakers hanging by two fingers like some barely tolerable object that you had to disgustingly deal with.

To me she was the Giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk”, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and the homeowner catching the Three Bears getting caught all roll into one person. “I told you not to go near the water!” she said more than sternly.

I do not remember much of what happened after that, only that my fear of her was deepened.

There was the question on how did she find the sneakers? The answer that I know now and quickly figured out then was what anyone that has been around the ocean would know.  The answer is that low tide smells badly and anything that is around low tide will smell badly. Sneakers that have low tide muck on them and were put under an electric heat register STINKS.

by Betsy Kearns