The South: A Market For Shoes

By Stephen March / March 1, 1977

This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 5 No. 1 "Good Times and Growing Pains." Find more from that issue here.

“The South is an untapped market

for shoes, ”

said Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor.

“Yes, shoes!

Put shoes on those poor barefoot Southerners

and a social revolution will take place!”

 

The South blushed red as a Georgia sunset.

All below the Potomac

backbones snapped

musket-straight.

 

And Josiah Bailey,

a Carolina knight

with a firm jaw and

moonshine-clear eyes

 

haughtily advised

the U-nited States Senate:

 

“Gentlemen,

even our mules wear shoes!”

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Stephen March

Stephen March, a West Virginian, has been a piano player in a bar, a photographer, a truck driver, a reporter, a farmer and a spare hand in a cotton mill. He is currently completing a novel. (1977)

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