THESE OLD FEET

I was clipping my cast iron toenails the other day - getting rid of a month's growth of claws - and took a close look at those two ugly lumps I call feet.

Most of our feet, unlike our delicate hands and the other prominent body parts we see and use on a daily basis, are a bit unattractive to the average eye. A quick look at mine reminded me that my simian cousins would be proud to own them.

Then again, when I take into consideration the incredible amount of abuse I have heaped upon my poor feet over the years, it's a wonder they are still with me. The visible and invisible scars that lace their surface and the many fractured bones within are mute testimony to the severe misuse and neglect that they have endured.

If someone had put me through even a small part of what I have heaped onto my poor feet I don't think I'd be around long. It's a miracle that my poor feet haven't up and left me a long time ago. I guess, had they a choice, they would have.

From the time I learned to walk until now my poor feet have been in steady use and under constant abuse. Like many Southerners, shoes during my growing up years were nonexistent.

There was no mud hole too deep, no gravel too sharp and no briars too tough that my feet could not endure them. Even hills and trees were minor obstacles. The major scars are still visible, but the thousands of minor scars have been absorbed and relegated to memory.

As I grew into adulthood the abuse I heaped on my poor feet was vastly increased. Old football and soccer scars are there, as are the strains from cross-country running, the sprains from a score of twisted ankles, and blisters way beyond count.

My Army years increased the abuse to almost Inquisition standards. Hundreds of parachute jumps, thousands of miles of blistering road marches, month after month of field exercises and more and more sprains and breaks.

My poor feet have been numbed by freezing temperatures, baked by steaming heat, bloated by incessant mud, and eaten by voracious germs. Yet, they are still with me, still working hard to carry the more attractive parts of my body, without complaint and with very few demands.

More so than any other part of my worn body, they have left innumerable prints in the sands of time. And, when I look back on those prints I can see areas where they were pressed down deep with heavy burdens, where they bled in times of war and anguish, and where they glided almost invisible with happiness and joy.

And, beside my prints is another set of footprints that have followed me in times of fear and times of sadness, in times of jubilation and times of joy and guided me down the right path. There are even times when the other footprints stood alone and dug deep and carried me over rough times and over troubled waters.

You know whose footprints those are!