Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)

[Wilson Gray]

US Keds were the gym shoe (I'd forgotten that that term was also used
in St. Louis, but only among working-class kids; the middle class wint
with tinnis shoes) of choice among black St. Louisans in my day, too.
But we who wore B. F. Goodrich / Hood Posture-Foundation Flyers did so
only because our parents wouldn't spring for the more-expensive Keds
and not because we wanted to. In high school, I switched to chucks,
because they were what the campus bookstore carried, but I still would
have preferred Keds. Only the Irishly-named but otherwise black Walter
Joyce had Keds, among my friends.

-Wilson

On 9/22/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The only terms I recall hearing in NYC in the '50s were "sneakers" (mostly for the low-quarters but applicable to either), "tennis shoes" (low-quarters only), and "gym shoes" (almost exclusively the high-quarters). "Basketball shoes" may have been in use for the "hightops" (is that a recent coinage?) but I'm not sure.
>
>   US Keds were the prestige brand, but PF Flyers had their aficionados too.
>
>   There was a superstition, supposedly based on some weird parental injunction, that if you wore sneakers too often, your eyesight would deteriorate, eventually to the point of blindness "because of the rubber in the soles."  The hightops had thicker soles and were therefore more dangerous and "macho" (another unknown word at the time: there was no concise synonym).
>
>   I will leave to more experienced Freudians the explication of all that.
>
>   JL
>
>
> "hpst at earthlink.net" <hpst at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "hpst at earthlink.net"
> Subject: Re: Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson,
>
> Back in southern Illinois we either called them tennies of chucks though
> some of us wore Keds which were highly advertised as I recall on the backs
> of comic books.
>
> The odd thing if I remember it correctly was that shoes for playing tennis
> were low cut and advertised as such while tennies which were for the
> basketball crowd extended above your ankles. Low cuts, however, appealed
> mainly to the girls and most boys would not be caught dead wearing them.
>
> They were looked down on by the parents and school teachers who thought
> them in bad taste but we wore them none the less. At least it was a less
> personally harmful way of expressing our rebellion, as were blue jeans,
> than putting holes in ourselves or getting tatooed.
>
> The other thing I remember is that although it was prestigious to own a
> good pair they were cheap footware and only cost about 3 bucks a pair. In
> other words no one in their right mind would try to steal them from you.
>
> Take that, Nike.
>
> Page Stephens
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Wilson Gray
> > To:
> > Date: 9/22/2006 9:53:41 AM
> > Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Tenny Runners (tennis shoes) (1965)
> >
> > "Tennies" was popular in Los Angeles in the 'Sixties, as was "chucks,"
> > from Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. An Australian friend that I met
> > in the '70's has always claimed that "sand shoes" is the term
> > preferred Down Under. In BE, the "tinnis shoes" of my youth have been
> > pretty much replaced by "bastitbawl shoes."
> >
> > -Wilson
> >
> >
>
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--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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