This is a tale from the 50s. In the summer I’d visit my Aunt & Uncle’s place in a small town in Idaho. Since I was from urban SoCal this was like heaven to me. My cousin and I would, like you, be outside from dawn to dusk.
One day we came across a pile of warm tar—they were patching potholes. We found that if we walked through the tar (of course we were barefoot) we could create protective soles on the bottoms of our feet.
It was great. We could walk on stones without them hurting, even the little thorns that a low-growing weed came equipped with.
We couldn’t understand why my aunt was so upset when we came inside and walked across her clean floor.
It was a good time to be a kid.
“One day we came across a pile of warm tar—they were patching potholes. We found that if we walked through the tar (of course we were barefoot) we could create protective soles on the bottoms of our feet.”
It used to be a common practice to dip geeses feet in tar to protect them when driving them to market.